Budget Workshop # 1 - April 24, 2025

001Good evening everyone and welcome to our um town council budget workshop for Tuesday, April 24th. if you could uh please join us in the pledge of allegiance. To the flag of America to the republic for it stands one nation indivisibley and justice for all. Okay. Thank you. So we'll move into public comment. This portion of the meeting is set aside for comments from the public who are asked to leave their to uh limit their comments to two minutes. Any person interested in providing public comment should email public meetings at rockyhillct.gov and will be provided with a link to attend the meeting and instructions on how to participate. Joanne, do you have anything? Um, I don't have anything. Okay, thank you. Hi, good evening. Alan Smith, 112 Old Main Street. Um, I ju just had a

002a couple things. One, a question that hopefully we can have answered and just advocating for one thing in the budget. Um, this is uh a lot of like the smaller line items obviously tonight versus like police and school and stuff like that. um and most of it seems um you know carried on from previous years and and just contractual salary increases etc. But I just had one question for the register our voters line item. Um, in the budget it says that right now the actual expenditures for 2025 budget, the previous budget is 119, but it says we're projected to be at 263. So, two things. One, I'm just wondering if we can quantify that actual cost that came from having to do so much more early voting. Um, I know that's something that that we

003talk about a lot in terms of a unfunded mandate. So, I just want to know what that exact number is. But also, um, in there, that's a pretty big increase from now to the end of the budget. So, I'm just wondering other than salary, what other expenditures for that department are going on from now to July 1st. So potentially when we get to that line item if that can just be specified a little bit and and although it does seem like next year that or in this budget cycle that cost should go down because it's not a presidential election year. I don't think it's two weeks of early voting. It's different anyway. But so sitting aside, that's just a question. Um because it says that uh we've got another $30,000 worth of election workers from

004now to the end of the budget, but we don't have any elections from now until the end of the budget. So where's that 30,000 that we're projecting is going to be? Um secondly is is just that the next thing on the agenda, the next department is economic development. So, um, this is one we don't have a lot of positions in the budget that are changing. You know, headcount changing. This is one of the positions that's changing, right? We're looking to take a part-time role and make it full-time. And anytime I think that we're growing headcount or we're increasing hours and stuff like that, it's obviously something we should scrutinize. However, the way that I see it, although this is an increase in um you know, from part-time to full-time, it's really the only thing in

005the budget where we're investing that we should be getting a return on that. Everything else, if we add another, you know, maintenance person, that doesn't necessarily return an investment. But I think when we go from a couple, you know, last year having nobody working on economic development specifically to part-time and now to a full-time, I think, uh, it's important to see that that should be more of a priority going forward. Um, so that we can positively affect the grand list by having somebody that specifically is working on that that one thing. Um, and those were just uh the the highlights I I took from this. Thank you for your time. Yeah. Thanks. All right. Moving on to budget review. We will begin with general government, town council. Yes. I'm going to jump ahead of town

006manager. I was wanted to point out a section I'm going to pull up on personnel, which is our new component to the budget. So, as you're going through and and looking at the information, it's under the overview. Uh I first just wanted to point out on uh personnel changes uh there since this particular uh spreadsheet there was a change in the proposed budget. So if you're looking at that the sanitation position that's over here is now one less position. So instead of two that would be a one. Total positions for the year would be 149 compared to this year which is still 149. So that would not be a a net increase. Uh, another section I know in the past we've had a lot of questions on salary lines. Why one looks like 2% the

007other one looks like 50. I wanted to give you an idea of in comparison the 2425 union contract increases and then what the 2526 is if we know you see one contract is not settled yet. Uh and also making the note on this one here for the FOP uh that because their contract settled after the adoption of the budget, you'll see that be doubled. So you won't see a two and a half, you'll see a five. All of these are just base salary increases. Keep in mind that um the employees uh that are newer will move up a scale in addition to so you may see slight increases uh greater than the percents. And I hope you all noticed. I think I'll jump over to Oh, I can't start on the first one. But there's

008a new section in and I'll point out to when we get there that you will see a section above the numbers that will say how many positions are in that particular budget uh and the salary that goes with it as well as the title. Um it's a new module that we have. Unfortunately, it doesn't go back and grab history, but now that we've got it going forward, this is going to be a I think a great tool. Yeah, that's awesome. Thank you. Let me grab you. See, give me a second. I will council. All right. Um, town council budget. Um, you can just go to the uh, if we're following along in our books the oldfashioned way, what page are we? 45. Thank you. Page 45. Uh, no increases proposed for the town council. Um,

009we retain the dues and subscriptions and the expenses for events, Memorial Day parade, um, and to attend any type of conferences that you might need to um, or wish to, um, attend. Just before I keep going, do we have John Emmanuel and Bill O'Sullivan here? Mimi said we had John Emanuel. Yeah, he's in the box up here on your screen, but I don't see Bill. I don't see Bill. Okay. I think he had asked for a Zoom. Dave, it's a few minutes late. probably about quarter. Okay. Make it good. Next. Um can turn the page. Town manager page 47. um increase of salaries. We have a uh $1,750 decrease, 70 almost 78% decrease in uh services. Supplies are unchanged in purchase professional services unchanged. Could you just say what that miscellaneous is? what what that

010money goes for miscellaneous would be um like um subscriptions to um like the Hartford Business Journal and other periodicals that you know we might get on a quarterly or or weekly basis. Okay. on to human resources legal compliance and that would be uh Ray uh before you go on to that one um I would like to you know do this like for every department anyway um so let's start here I guess can you uh walk me through your goals from last year versus this year what has changed um and if you can talk a little bit about the goals you had last year and um how are they evolved or accomplished or anything else you want to talk about? Anything else I want to talk about is that about the goals about about the goals.

011Yeah, that is that okay with everybody. All right. Well, we don't have your goals from last year to compare and contrast. So I um but we do have the goals from this year. So are you prepared to discuss and compare and contrast goals? I'm not not prepared to compare and contrast my previous year, but I can do that at the next session if that's okay. That would be fantastic. Thank you. I can do that. That's that's fine. Okay. Yeah. And I think that will be my expectation for everyone just to lay it out uh because from the last year we have at least in the digital side of things we have the goals here. So right uh I would just like every department to talk about them and their accomplishments and then about this year's

012goals. Thank you. Just as a note, um when I did my um quarterly, um performance um um evaluations for all the department heads, um they met every department had met their goal, all their goals except for maybe one or two. And those two departments had issues with um staffing, illnesses, family leave. Sure. But I was I was shocked. So we added more goals. Yeah. I no that that's great that's fantastic just just want them to be articulated for the public out there and for ourselves here at the council as well so it was good to hear from directly from the uh department sets okay moving on to uh human resources legal compliance um Dana McGee did accomplish all of her goals from last year that I Um actually even with the recruiting and there were

013some questions about recruits. Um so that is a positive. I'm just going through here um her page 51. Um there is a $7,945 overall reduction in this particular department which is a down 2.1%. Um tuition reimbursement has been reduced uh 44% um or $8,000. Um that's based on the actual requests and they have to request staff has to request uh tuition reimbursement by February of each year. So this is the actual reflecting the actual number and tuition reimbursement is included in the personnel rules. Training um a 46.4% decrease $5,200. Those are the items that jump out. Um in addition to a $1,300 decrease in advertising um you know the uh the recruiting uh advertising more a little bit cheaper than publishing. So, we're we're doing online and other forms of advertising. Pretty uh basic. Ray,

014is this is this a department? This is department, I think, where we had proposed to have a staff member that didn't get filled to work with Dana. Is that Yes, I was the uh HR specialist, right? And so, we we utilized um our our law firm to do that work instead. Is that kind of the plan going forward or and how is that reflected in here or Well, it's the plan is to continue uh you know to fill that position and actually when you get to legal to reduce the legal particularly the legal costs on labor that position is filled um we anticipate much less uh utilization of our labor labor council than we have in the past two years. Okay. So that position even though it's still unfilled is part of the full-time salaries

015proposal number. Yes. Okay. So see here Ray I have a piggybacking on that actually I had the same similar line of u thought here. Can you tell me like why that position should be filled now uh as it has been vacant and looks like Dana is doing a fabulous job without that person on the staff right now. So can you talk a little bit about that? Why you could work a full year without that person in the chair and we need to fill it now? Um currently why not take it off the budget? Well, I would think we would take it off the budget so we don't have to pay the attorney who's filling in right now $250 an hour to do that job. So, how much do we spend a yearly estimated on that

016attorney? I think we're at about 70,000 for this year so far. So, we are still in the plus 20 range. We are we are ahead, right? So far. So why not just continue that because you don't have to pay benefits to the employ. Thank you. Jeff Lavine is always great with those benefit sides of things. So that's I don't know that. So that's we are probably up by 50 right now. Why would we not keep it going? We might be up like 100 by next year. Well, you never know what's going to pop up. And we do need um you know Dana is doing a fantastic job in and there is there are other items or tasks that have um not been um um you know the focus wasn't enough because she had to do

017other items because we had quite a bit of issues with uh you know union issues which I can't get into. Um, so this position would go beyond what our town what that town attorney would be doing. That particular traininee came in and do particular tasks and it wasn't a day-to-day task. It was just okay a project by project by project. This is a full-time position and so that they'll be doing project by project but also daily tasks at the same time. I just think it's it's a better fit at this point. Yeah. My my welcome to you know you all know you can change. No no absolutely. I think the the case you have laid out that's great right and I think that was the case last year too. My question is fundamentally like if

018we are we have survived a full year why can't we survive another year two years three years well you know it's hard to predict the future but yeah I don't think we could you know survival surviving is probably not the recommended procedure you know if we can just hang on you know we're looking to be better to progress so that's my mindset under human resources is and correct me if I'm wrong but human resources it it's the director of HR director of legal compliance and director of risk management so three hats one director and the person that we bring in as a temp fills which helps fill which human resources. So there's presumably still work in compliance and risk management. I I'm speculating. I mean if if the position is there and it's asking to

019be filled, I guess the question is, you know, why? And so it it seems that maybe there's work that that cannot get accomplished that with with a per pdeium type of attorney. Yes. Abs, you know, that's what start my point earlier. you know, project by project. You bring in a consultant to do a single task as opposed to having somebody in the office doing the sing some of the single task but doing other activities within that department that really need more attention that's being done than currently. And where do the FOYA um things come under which HR legal compliance or legal compliance? Okay. because I remember last year you had asked for data with respect to FOYA. Didn't we have a presentation on what Dana was doing, how many cases and so on and so

020forth. Yeah. My my question is not so much about the rationale for the position. My question is how is the work getting accomplished today without that person in the chair? Yeah, let me call up Dana McGee, director of human resources, legal compliance, and risk manager. Maybe she can get a little more specific on her daily activities. And thank you for having all the departments here. It's great to be able to ask questions in real time and not flood you with questions after the fact. Good evening, counselors. Thank you for the question. Um and thank you for the vote of confidence. Um we um don't um publicize our failures. Um and thank you Lisa. Yes, we do wear three hats. Human resource, legal compliance, and risk management. What we have been doing is reacting and putting

021out fires. um for personnel um privacy and confidentiality reasons. I would never speak out of school and tell you about the cases that um instead of being closed in 5 to 10 business days aren't closed for 30 days, 60 days uh because we are dealing with volume. We are a volume business. Um, I am lucky enough to have an experienced attorney who comes for eight hours, one day a week and helps to put out a fire. Um, I have phenomenal colleagues, some of whom are in this office, in this uh room right now, um, who have asked for proactive policy development, governing rules and governing documents developments. My office is the office that sits with department heads and helps them to create these policies and procedures that keep their people um on track and safe.

022And I will tell you that these colleagues um have been waiting for a work product and they're waiting for that work product because if a one of your staff members comes into my office and says this is the experience I had today and I need someone to conduct an investigation. the clock is ticking in terms of how long I have to address their complaint or uh their concern and any work that I've promised from a legal compliance standpoint, leadership development policy, it all has to stop. The world stops so I can address that. And that one person who comes for eight hours, um, we have to be very careful about the work they do because they're not going to be here for the next three or four days during the week to respond to the

023department head or whatever because they're here for that eight hours and we don't want to be charged past those eight hours because we try to stick within those eight hour parameters. So, I guess um I will be very transparent and say all of the work is not being done. It's not. And again, I would never put us at risk by going into particulars at the mic. But respectfully, I've been very transparent with uh with my superior. All the work is not being done. Work that had we done it six months ago, seven or eight months ago, um we wouldn't be dealing with some of the things we're dealing with today. Respectfully, Ray Mona, can you tell us what is the dollar amount of the new position? Yes, we have it listed there. That is the

024one that's showing here at the bottom is the 90,000. So, we had Why hasn't that position be filled? I mean, we've had all this time. We haven't I haven't we have um we made the decision for budget reasons to not fund that position um at the six figure rate. We were trying to be very frugal. Um the position actually requires a certain skill set set, a certain level of experience and many of the labor relations specialists that are experienced um who would normally come to look at a position like that are starting quite frankly in the 120s etc. So we've had a really difficult time. Uh do I have uh Ray's permission to give some good news? I'm sorry. Do I have your permission without going into Yeah. Okay. We made an offer. We have

025a labor relations specialist with 10 plus years of experience who is interested um and willing to accept the $90,000 figure because this fits with uh a personal decision where they are in their career, where they are in their personal lives, etc. Uh so we have an offer on the table. Um and um going back to and I want to make sure I I answer your question fully without again speaking out of school or violating anyone's privacy etc. There are matters that are delayed in terms of being dealt with because I don't have that person in my office. So So is the answer that you were not able to hire anyone for I don't know 10 months. You were unable to hire anyone for 10 months. Uh yes, we had candidates who were not happy with

026what we had to offer. Did you think about reconfiguring the position? We did accordingly. We did. We actually uh lowered the qualifications. And the great news is that even though we uh decreased the qualifications, we still found people who were uh looking for a position and still were interested and applied. And I still have a senior person that we captured in the net. I think that's very important you let us know that. I I wanted to make sure I asked permission first before I did that. But yes, thanks. Have they accepted by the way? uh just made the offer. Yeah. Because see likelihood, yes, we'll accept. I I really hope you get that person, but I think a position that has been open for a while. It begs the question that that I was asking.

027I think I think you were assuming we were successful. I think that you were complimenting me by saying that you think we were successful. you do a great job. I mean, I have I'm not going to like I'm not going to like not say that, right? But that's different than the position itself. You can be a you can be Superman or Superwoman, but this position which is not filled for 10 months, it does beg a question like do we need it? And I think you have made a good case that it needs to be filled. Uh really the question to me is now I mean by lowering that expectation you had last year are you going to still get that person oh we did who you actually wanted in that position to start with if

028you are lowering your your expectations of the position. Now we we we have that phenomenal person in the net right now. Thank you. Welcome. So it becomes a bit of a moot point because this person presumably if all goes to plan would already be an employee before the next budget cycle it sounds like. So that wasn't the time frame we had in mind though fully aware of the budget. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Dina since you're here uh or you want to do this next time you want to talk about your accomplishments since we are at the you know the super man superwoman. I would gladly come back. I don't want to take up any more time, but I'll gladly come back and talk about the accomplishments because I'd love to give some credit to my fellow

029department heads and the other folks that Yeah, and that would be fantastic. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Just one quick question. Can I just ask procedurally, how are we going to do this on the schedule? We're going to have all of tonight's departments come back again to the next meeting and and where do we fit that in? What I was thinking is maybe they could give us a quick like summary in writing if we have questions on it and that might save time because we're going to have to add another hearing otherwise. I think that's having another. Yeah. Yeah. I think I think a good it's a good idea. Yeah. We can just we can just get it in writing looking at your everybody's goals from the last year. Then you have that from your

030review. Yeah. Thank you. I have one one last question. What are employee relation cases? Uh that's a mix of internal um complaints um employee um relationship issues as well as external matters like grievances, CHRO cases, uh lawsuits that have something something that arose from employees um interpersonal conflicts, etc. Thank you. You're welcome. Can I clarify one more thing? We're paying $2,000 a day for the attorney, right? 250 an hour, eight hours a day, but we don't have them 50 weeks a year because we're at 50,000. So, we have 26 weeks or 25 weeks a year. I don't think we've been doing this for a full year. Mona, have we been doing it for a full year? No, we we started late and then we're trying to make sure we tried as a goal that we

031would factor this in that she would not be exceeding the $70,000 because we made the decision to go with the attorney later on in the year since the filling it wasn't working for. So, we made sure that we fit this within the parameters of that salary budgeted line item. So, our our goal was to never exceed the budgeted line amount. Got it. And plus this new position would take care of a lot more than what the attorney's taking care of any eight hours 100%. And in addition to that decrease what we occasionally have to give to our um external law firm. Thank you. Thank you. Finance, finance and accounting. I will turn this over to Director of Finance and Operations Mona McKim. Okay, let me drive. Oh, I can touch on my goals if if

032you would like. So this is a my first one is an ongoing which is to upgrade and streamline the financial system and I think that's going to be an ongoing probably for a very long time. There's a lot of things that we can add and in fact this being the personnel uh component to the the budget was one of them. We're also uh working on trying to go uh our goal is paperless with all of our accounting. We've got now scanners that all invoices if you wanted to look them up, they wouldn't be in a a bunch of file cabinets. Everything is scanned in. U you want to look something up and you just click and you see your your invoices there. We're doing that with payroll as well. Second one is the uh budget

033award. Definitely going to continue to get that. We have two and I'm still staying with that goal. And uh again this is the uh the GFOA for finance as well as keeping the standard and pores A+. We did do our uh our bond sale and we kept the uh the same rating. So on track with the goals we got some performance measures very technical of what happens in the office. We'll get down to the money. Uh so did you want so bottom line about 47,000 about 7% increase again uh majority of that being salaries um we have uh it shows as a 7% I have new person and actually two new people so they're doing the contractual increases plus they're going up steps as well until they reach their maximum level u increase in auditing

034uh that's the actual fee that we're paying for the auditing service. In fact, um the current year budget is a few thousand short of that. So, this will true it up to uh next year's plan. Uh for software, uh all of these bells and whistles do cost a bit. So, there is a slight increase uh from the software company as well as the uh the additional module. I think other than that, not any major changes in finance. Can you talk about the auditing fees? seems like a understanding there's still a true up but it seems like a big increase is that's just how it contractually lays out and how much longer is our contract with them and before we go out we'll have right we've got this budget year is the second of three so

035we'll have one more and this is not a material dollar amount but just to understand because we may start to see this as a trend the photocopier is going back to zero so is this a change in how you guys are Oh Yes. Yes. There there was a few years back that it was a thought to be a good idea to have this as a decentralized cost, but with the number of copers, I think we do the same with the cell phones, just the number of them in various departments, copers and and so forth that to separate the cost by department by month was more time consuming than even warranted. So, we're going to return to having this centralized through it. So, you'll see them have a large increase in that. And we can talk

036about when we get there, but it'd be good to hear what overall photocopying like I just point to makes every hopefully we see that going down because like like you said, you're going you're trying to go paperless and Yes. And we did we entered a new contract and I'll save that for it if he wants to touch upon that. So, I we're in a a better place and we're centralizing the invoicing. Okay, great. Thanks. Yeah. For for the uh ex for the printing for pox and wreck though, right? Like that's not included in this one, right? No, it is not. This is just internal office printing. Just our own. So my question a quick question since John is here. I saw John somewhere. John is right there. Are we able to monitor like uh where

037is the the the bulk of the printing coming from which copers and things like that? Yes. Okay. Mhm. Uh for the record, John said yes. Okay. So, uh my next question is like do we monitor that? If we monitor that, uh do we look at that data? We don't we don't really monitor, but we can Don't answer from the back. You're going to have to come up if you want to answer. We can monitor it and we have we do have data. We can Yeah. I'm I'm just thinking from a perspective of like efficiency like you know where the most of our printing is coming from like that kind of approach and where can it be like reduced or shifted right like that that cost uh I don't know like if it's not a big

038line item but since I saw John I'm like let's use some it uh I guess yeah and if I may I said I think the the fact that we tried to go decentralized and you had all the different departments trying to look at that. I think the fact that we are bringing it centralized so that now all the data can be in one place and and analyzed it's there. It's very detailed for the invoices but I think when you're going out to each department the concern is not how do I compare to the other department. So I think fair enough I right tool to get us in the right direction. I mean this this topic like I've been on this for a while as you guys know. I've been here 5 years. I just want

039to reduce the use of paper. My heart like broke like when I saw that budget book come out. Uh I could have killed someone with that. Like some intruder on my door. News is I only did 10. Only 10 copies. Only 10. It killed me. No. And it's okay. Like I know people like to work with the printed material. I get it. No worries. Thank you. Quick question about your major changes. You've increased a new software and you updated one. Could you touch tell us what the new one and how the update went? Oh, it went very well. I said this is that personnel piece that you're seeing in there, the new module. So, what it does is basically piggybacks on top of our payroll system and then starts making it as a budgetary tool.

040So if rather than if I look at my payroll system, I'll tell you what I'm paying you today. This actually takes the union contracts, finds the person, and moves them up into the next year. So it was uh a great tool before it was done, you know, more of manually and spreadsheets and consolidating and then putting it back into the budget. So great tool. Not very helpful. I appreciate that in there this year. Thank you. I assume the auditing services are something at the end of that contract. Correct. We do. We've done a three-year bid, I think, historically. So, we'll bid again. Okay, moving on to Central's services. Just continue on. I'm on a roll. Why not? Uh again, the goal on this one is just managing the central banking advertising. These are costs that

041are falling in to place that are just townwide. U the large copy machines we're doing like the the bulk paper purchases, the postage machine and so forth. Um so what we have with uh and maintaining that goal uh constantly trying to to do something to keep it the best price obviously best um doing bulk purchases. What you'll see on here is the increase in banking fees. It is my goal that that number will hopefully decrease. We're working with our our bank. We have a consortium that uh if we are able to use I guess online payments a payments that they'll give us a reimbursement for for fees. We've been lucky and we're just working on uh the contract uh with them. Let's see. Do we have anything? Um also you were going to tell me

042about my uh GPS, weren't you? I knew it. uh added in there in addition to the banking fees tried this year and this is in a central uh location because I this is something should be townwide. Uh we are testing uh GPS on vehicles. We selected a like five or six vehicles just randomly and what it does obviously makes us more accountable. We put them on a you know a highway truck and you can see you know where it went went on the route. It also feeds data about maintenance as well. Uh so would like to see us going forward with that. What this does is it goes hand inand with a work order system. I get to be director of finance and operations and that's that operations makes me everybody's enemy. But I really

043think that a lot of our uh departments could benefit from a work order system. We become um I think accustomed to the manual. So, I'm looking at a work order uh system for the highway department, for example. So, we'd know, you know, which house, which pothole, which curb, and and be able to track that. So, we're doing that as well as the um town garage. Uh definitely was a very manual location, and this will be the work orders for that. So, this is where the centralized fees are the uh those type of projects, GPS, work orders, and banking. reduction in advertising. Oh yes, reduction. Yeah. Supposed to be a negative in front of that 15,000. Which one? The top one. Fees. No, cuz budget was 105. Now it's 255. Projection 45. Okay. Yes. budget. Okay.

044Are we good? I'm not sure I followed the question. Well, why did we how did we get to 40,000 projection by the end of this year on that? 40,000. Oh, for the uh the projection and again that will be the um I know we're only through March something, but yes, uh it's working with the bank. I there should be a transfer. They give us a credit. So until it's it's received, we'll assume that the expense will be there. I think we'll see that be less 20,000. Okay. It's a wonderful arrangement that we have with the bank. As I said, they monitor us. if you use enough AC payments, if you do enough credit card payments that you know if we reach a peak of a million dollars utilized with automatic payments uh being ACHs and

045so forth that they will give us a credit on the expenditure that we had put through the system. So we've uh last year received about 20,000 and we have met the $1 million threshold already in January. So I'm expecting a credit but unfortunately it comes around the end of June. So is that considered a revenue item or is that go against expenditures or credit to the expenditure for this since it's not measurable? I'm just looking at 142.9% change and I'm like shivering a little bit but you explained it. It will be I think we'll find that that change. I know the percentage is is large. the dollar amount that 15,000 you will definitely find I think with putting work orders in and these systems in the savings that we are going to have when we

046are actually able to monitor the work that we're doing uh this could lead to savings in a lot of areas I mean I've already four seeds in fact I think that assisted us with that recommendation for the change in the transfer station was that ability to monitor and see the workload load and when does it work? Uh was allowed actually need to make that recommendation that we reduce that position because the workflow wasn't meeting um the the staffing and I'm hopeful that that will be a tool that will lead to similar just so you mention that staffing person are we losing a person or somebody retire out it will be losing a person. Okay. who I should say who has a potential of retiring. Okay, that's good. Also, is that for central legal? Moving on

047to legal page 62. We are um actually reducing um the fees and legal accounts by $40,000. I'm looking at reducing the number of uh I should say maybe better managing um some of the uh tax appeals um that we're seeing that we have seen in the past. I'm taking a closer look at um the process and we're pretty confident that we could we can reduce that number um fairly significantly. Um as you see the rest of the legal account is there is no increase whatsoever. Um general fees which is Howard and Sage. Um in our labor um council is Rose Kaylor. Um no increase proposed on either one. What do you consider that miscellaneous? It's more than half our budget in your pie chart there. The pie chart. That's a tax appeal. Oh yeah. Oh

048yeah. What that's doing is it's a just so you show what the pie chart is. If you look down here at these line items, it's basically showing a pie chart of this group here, which is all the legal councils and so forth, uh that'll be this total amount becomes one side of the pie chart because it's called a professional service. The miscellaneous is the uh tax appeals. So, it's really showing the comparison of that 81,000 and this 85. So, it looks like a 50/50 pie chart. Um, a lot of that is just geared by the the structure of the counting system that it's looking at the uh the first digit on the way things are coded. Tax appeals uh stands apart from all other legal yet it's still legal though. It's a fee that we

049pay attorney. Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. Um so just going back to the HR legal position. So the expenditures we've been incurring there those been hitting the HR department not the legal section or no no that wasn't that the beauty of finance committee that we I've been haunting people on this one this was the legal that is going over budget uh consistently and I think did I so so you would have that labor council line for 22,000 and we are at this point probably about 70,000 so that's over budgeted now and in conversation I said in finance we've been talking about this being that overbudgeted line that is offset by a salary so it's budgeted in HR but this is a labor council bill going on the legal budget so the 22,000 that's budgeted is outside of

050that work that was being done for HR that just that was what we had budgeted just to go into the year normal occurrences okay can you talk a little bit about like from a broader like macro perspective because the number went up last year, right? It went from 166 to like I don't know what it was. Uh let me check. Okay, so it was it it was 206 was budgeted last year. It went up by 34,000 um up from the prior year from last year. Um and then now it's coming back. Why is there so much variance like so how much like this variability in this in this line item? Yeah. And I think you'll see went up 20% and then it came down 40% overall. Yeah. And if you watch again that's that tax

051pay line. Right. But that's included in there. But if you're looking at Oops, I can't do that at the same time. One of your more flexible lines is that tax appeal. So as you know we do a reval every five years. So you'll have it, you know, the year after reval it'll, you know, it shoots up and it'll probably stay that way for two and then once the reval is gone, then we would drop down. So you'll have that tendency to do a lot of peaks and and valleys. Peaks and valleys. Okay. Yeah. No, I it's not a big item, but I was just trying to understand like there's lot of peaks and valleys like you said, right? It's like goes up 20 and then goes down 20 next year. Thank you. Depends on on

052tastes. Yes. And I think we had in the general legal. I would probably have to go back and see what that case is, but definitely something in the 23 24 where I'm pointing there drove that 102. That was one of our large uh very large long-term cases that we finally settled. Just a quick thing on tax appeals. That that's a pretty significant drop. Is that because the revaluation year is not in play? It's a combination. You're going to say it's more management, I think. Yes, the timing, but management is going to be the biggest uh driver. It It seems like we we're 90,000 under budget. 25, correct? Good job. We're trying. There's still a few out there, but we we definitely few made a major effort of that rather than trying to settle before you

053go to court and so forth. So So with that, you know, we still are proposing 85,000 and we're going to have a better year apparently. Should that projection be lower? Probably just being safe. I don't you know just curious I think we're being safe a little bit padded just in case you know because a lot of these may rely on the kind of judgment by a judge you know in the courts but we're trying to trying to avoid that. Okay, probate fixed per capita cost. Um there we didn't quite get the um projected increase, but it will be minimal based on what the trend has been. Right. We'll definitely have that before the adopted. Yeah. Ju just a general question when we see fiscal year actual for 2025 is that what through February is that

054what when this is right it's around the time of printing the the book so around yeah mid 10 February. Yeah. So 2:30 to 3:26. Okay. On to registar of voters. Page 71. If you look Yeah. If you look down at the very bottom, there's a almost a $51,000 decrease in this particular department. Um primarily based on the election workers reduction of $38,600. Um that was for the uh early voting and going down to uh technical supplies another $20,000 reduction. Um there was a $10,000 increase or 12.5% um in the part-time salaries line item. Um we're uh the intent here is to uh you know the increases here is in anticipation of the final resolution that the town council usually does at the end you know just before the final adoption ask a question about the

055oh sorry oh just about the performance measures I was just trying to understand it said the registered voter number is higher than the eligible voters number isn't that backwards Not here. I would I would think eligible voters has to be higher number than the registered voters. I don't know. You can't see it. Is it on the screen there? It should be on the screen, right? So, the the microphone taking the microphone. Oh, I'm sorry. You can use the front. So, so, so the registered voters are whom we have registered, right? Some voters are either inactive because they haven't voted in several years or they're at the moment they're off and we have to keep them on the off for a couple of years even though they're no longer actually on our roles. So that's why

056the eligible would be less than the registered. So when you say off, what is that? Uh so in other words, um uh okay let So every year we do a canvas of of we send letters to people that we are told moved like either out of in town or out of state, right? Or out of town. And if you don't uh if if you send your letter back and say yes, I have moved out of town. We have to put you off in our system. So as a voter in Rocky Hill, you're off, but you have to remain on the roles for several years. That's that's mandated by uh state statute. Why? Why? So why why is that? Right. Yeah. Hi. Um, the state also requires that when we see somebody is deceased, we make

057them off and they stay in the system. I'm sorry, they stay in there because the state mandates for the same 10year period. It's a it's actually a four plus one uh four year plus one day and then the state uh purges the system. So the this this number we're talking about the number of eligible voters are deceased and not in town. That's what you're saying. 13,000 people are on the rolls off. They're off the roll because they don't live here. There's a difference between the regist. So there's 1,800 that do not live here and are and or are dead but we active also inactive. Right. What does inactive mean? I'm sorry. So Madame Mayor, if if uh we have a person that's on the inactive list. Yeah. Right. Let's say John Smith and he comes

058in and says, "I'd like to vote this year." Yeah. If he gives us proof that he lives in Rocky Hill, we take him off the inactive list and make him active again and he can vote. Yeah. Mr. Pagalis though, what does inactive mean? Um, literally to paraphrase what he said, inactive means that they're not currently voting and they can be But how what what defines not currently voting? They didn't show up at the last election. They did not vote just the last election. The last election and they can be inactive for three years, four years, four years. We're actually purging our This is a little bit on the side. We're trying to purge our system. We're auditing our system for the off people. Now, um we pulled a report and we have over 1,000 people

059who are off. That seems high to us. So, we're going to go through and we're going to verify. We're sending out letters to some and we're tracking them through other means. And and Mr. Thorough, how many is it is it every municipality has this off like a larger number of off people? I'm sorry. Every municipality has a percentage of I'm sure they do. Yes. Yep. Thank appreciate. I would have thought eligible voters meant anybody 18 or over lives in town and they're That's what I thought. That's why I was asking. I'm confused now. I thought I was pretty good. Now I'm confused. So So yeah. Yeah. There's got to be more than So should there be an off section here, right? Or it's just common sense. I guess we should know eligible voters. These are

060how the state defines these these numbers basically I assume are well the difference to our town our community and our this department the difference between inactive or off is very little because they're not voting. So that's why we tabulate the you know the full registered amount and the actual amount. Do we know how many Sorry, we're just hammering you with non-budget questions. No, no, I just Well, it showed up in the budget. Um, do we know how many people in town are 18 and over that if See I that's what I was always eligible to like like do you have an idea? I mean we could certainly find that out or rough I mean just probably I was just Yeah. I mean whatever. I'm just if you knew off top of your head. I was

061just curious. Well I was curious. I'll tell you what if you look at your actual which is uh 13,000 plus. Um that would be 18 and over. No, but I mean there's but there's other 18 and overs that aren't even that are not voting. Right. Right. Well, they're not registering. They're also not registering. Yeah. You could only be living here for a year at concierge and then why would you register if you're going back to your other town. So there must be a fair number of those. Yeah. Yeah. College students do that. Right. Right. Or just people just don't want to do it. Yeah. Right. Right. Right. I'd also like to come back with the opportunity to talk about the registar salary. Well, when you say come back, it's your opportunity now. My opportunity now.

062Thank you. But that's what I'm asking. Um my understanding is that the registar is slated to go up to 27,000. I just just before you which line item is this in here just so we know what we're part time part time the first one. Thank you. Sorry. Sorry. Go ahead. I want to know where folks here and I request that the registars's salary is 48,000 and the reason I request that is because last year I averaged about 33 hours a week. My highest week I had to work 88 hours and with that number of hours which was 1716 put me way below the minimum wage. Now, going up to the 27,000, if I get another year like that, I'm still below minimum wage. All right. Having said that, I'm doing so much more now and

063have last year that has never been done before, and I'm doing this for our community and for the office, that it's it's deserved. As an example, last year we brought in just over $16,000 worth of grants. Part of that was because we went out to the state, we pursued the use of um the the new tabulators. We were one of nine towns to get those. They gave us 5,300 for that. Um on top of that, we hired some of the workers that the state recommended and we got several hundred dollars for that. Again, the total grants were over $16,000. Last Tuesday, the appropriations committee and I'm working on the legislative uh committee for rovac, which is the registar of voters organization and we're working hard to support different communities and to get money for the

064towns. Well, we lobbyed very strongly and I'm very active there and we ended up with getting where is it? The government's budget recommended zero. We ended up with the $2 million grant and uh let's see $750,000 is going to the secretary of state. The rest is going to go to the towns. I think working that way is very very important. It's in our community's best interest and it supports the the need for the extra money. Can I ask a question, Mr. DC? Go ahead. I think Mona wants to say something. Yeah, just to clarify because these are the part-time individuals. So, this salary line is not determined here during the budget process. They actually go through resolution. They do a bianial resolution. And I know we've we've talked about this a few times already that

065the kind the proper scenario for this is it goes to finance, it goes as resolution and they'll be able to make their uh recommendation with all of their details at that time. Gotcha. Because it's part-time, it doesn't go into budgeted, but we did in discussion put in a cushion in there to absorb their request. But anything that's part-time that exceeds budgeted line is out of contingency. So we don't have to take the action. Although you know feel free to to discuss but this isn't the so the the contingency the reduction is reflected in it would be there contingency already. Yes. So if we chose anything greater than that 90,000 line at the time of their resolution then the contingency would cover that excess. Y information you didn't have. Thank you. So um Mr. Plesi and

066Mr. thorough first of all thank you for your service because I think it's an important job uh and it's a thankless job because uh if you do everything correctly then uh nobody comes out and actually gives you flowers which you deserve probably uh not probably you definitely deserve them because if we had an election like last time where like we had uh long times uh leading up to the like couple of weeks I think 10 days right it was it 10 days to for early voting periods. 14. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. So, I think all that to say, thank you for your service. Um, what I would like to do though is I would like to uh you to talk a little bit about if you can about uh other towns in similar roles,

067right? uh and registars who are working there like you know and in terms of like the hours you're putting in compared to them and what you're getting paid here like I I I fully support the notion of you getting u re uh getting more remuneration for more work you're doing which is which is clear to me right just just by looking at the number of days we have voting for Now right just looking at that metric I mean it's all metric driven in my head and I think I have you have a very clear case but I would like to add one more data point to it if if we can uh if you can look at other towns and provide that information at some point I don't know maybe town manager can look at

068it um and see like what the comparable like salaries look like and um I think if that is a possibility right I think if I may I think what you're asking is very reasonable under normal circumstances Um, but because I and we are going out and doing extra for our community, there aren't too many towns that are doing that. As I said, when it came to the tabulator test, we were one of nine towns in the whole state we had that the Yeah, we had the pilot, right? That was the pilot. Yeah, we got paid for that. Um, we didn't have to pay for the tabulators at that point that year. Um, we didn't have to pay for the old tabulators. So, we we made out well there. And there's other aspects of that which

069other towns just don't do. Yeah. Um for example, three hours ago, uh the secretary of state sent out a a a comment and in this comment about the way we're going to treat um the executive order from the president of the United States, we're going to hold off. And she gave several positions. One of the positions is that we can only hire people to work in the elections who are electors. I'm going to work hard against that because that would cut out all of our high school students. And if you watch that's something that I and some of the other registar voters um who I'll contact probably tonight will we'll jump on that and I have I've been in contact with over a hundred other registars both parties and I don't tell them what to

070think but I make them aware of what's going on and I'm doing that as a member of ROAC legislative board. Yeah. No, I just I just want it to be reasonable and fair because I'm asking these questions of every department and I want everybody to be able to justify right what they're asking for and I I think that's a reasonable standard in my view. So, thank you for that information by the way uh about the pilot and everything else uh all the other salient points you made. But you want to add something? May I? Okay. So, may I just clarify? So rovac the registar of voters association of Connecticut is made up of about 338 members because we have 169 towns in Rocky in Connecticut. So 169* 2 that's 338. Um so we are required

071to go to a meeting once a month which we do Tom and I. And we're required to go to two um conferences a year one in the fall and one in the spring. Um we have different um um committees, right? So I'm on the education committee, Tom's on the legislative committee. That's extra. That's not really part of our duties. We just volunteer to to do this. Um so and definitely we are working more than we have before. or I mean last year Tom had a primary that we did not have. The Republicans had a primary we did not and we had uh 25 days of early voting last year. Um but um our duties and responsibilities as you know are mandated by state statute and are directed by the secretary of the state. So, um,

072getting grants is fine, but I don't think it's part of our official duties. So, I mean, yeah. Okay. Mr. Thorough, where does the Secretary of State stand with respect to offering funding for us to implement all of these new early voting requirements and specifically salaries? Well, she she's fighting hard, but um but who's she fighting? Th things are you know we should we get that from obviously the state budget. Okay. But you know things are tight there too. So Okay. And does ROVAC lobby for that kind of stuff for like increases in salaries and ROVAC is Oh uh ROVAC does lobby for that. Um part of what I do is I sent out the information to because you're on the legislative committee because I'm on the legislative committee. And you're on education. Yes. Okay. Got

073it. Right. And the legislative committee we we work with um all of the registars and we try to notify them of you know the important issues that are coming up for a vote. Now what I've done was I just built a database and I said okay these are the people on the uh administrative and elections board and these are the towns that they're in and these are the register of voters for those towns. And I contacted that 100 plus people and I said, "Call them, write them, testify." And we we obviously got them to add money, add the $2 million, uh, which went over to Appropriations Board. And I did the same thing with Appropriations Board. I'm giving you all my secrets. I don't want to do that. And um, and the point is that

074the governor had zero going to the towns. The Secretary of State was on board with us pushing for it and we got $2 million and that's that's coming. That's coming. Tom, can I legislator still has to vote on it? Tom, on on that 2 million, like I'm I'm hung up on that. So you said the Secretary of State took 750,000 of that 2 million. That's correct. To do whatever they want. Correct. That leaves 1.25. That's correct. And you're going to ask me I'm sorry to interrupt. I I am going to ask you how what are we going to get, right? Okay. Once it passes the legislature, then it goes to the secretary of state and she will decide how that gets divied up. The first time they did it, they gave 10,500 to every town,

075every community all last year and all of the cities screamed because it wasn't enough. It wasn't enough for us, right? Um so I suspect Do they have a formula? Do you know like how to share that with me and she won't that's welcome to Connecticut. Yes. Okay. But we're getting something. Yeah. I know. We Oh, I was going to say I just wanted to point out that there was I guess concern about those projection numbers in there and just kind of give a little uh background on that. um the the projections uh departments are allowed to give us an idea how much of your budget you expect to spend and we're working on these things in February. So I believe around that time their expectction was expectation was to expend everything. So just to reassure

076people that those dollar amounts for the election workers to spend 86,000 is actually closer to the actual that 57. So I know that was uh concerning and the same situation with the technical supplies that was an actual number that we didn't need the full 70. So as we go into the adopted again this is the working document the adopted will show the actuals and is it less in a non national year whatever odd year 25 no presidential elections are we still going to have the same amount of early voting this year? This year it's it's a local election, so there's only going to be 14 days. Okay. The presidential, we had the presidential primary, which was four, the primary, which was uh 10. Tom had a separate primary, and uh then we had um general

077election, a general was 14 days, so it was 25 days total last year. Plus the elections, we ended up with a month worth of voting. Okay. Thank you. I just want to acknowledge. Oh, do you have Oh, you have a question. Yes. For the town site. Oh. Do these gentlemen have set hours and days that they work in our town or is it just whatever they want? Yes. Yes. The the minimum hours we have are um four hours a week, which is two and two. Okay. Right. However, if we only did that, we wouldn't be doing our job. There's way too much work for that. We have computers. We take them home and we work from home a lot. Okay, that's the reality of it. Bill, wait. Bill O Sullivan has a question. Go ahead,

078Bill. His hand is up. Hey, Bill. And and John Emanuel is missing. Window just covered. Bill, your wind your your window your hand is up. So, um I don't know if you're trying to say something, but um here you go. Go ahead. Did you take What is this? It's kind of helpful. It's up. Is that Who's doing this? Mona. No. No. Oh. Do you want to text him or did he press by mistake the hand up thing? But he should be able to communicate now. And where is John Dean? Where is where is John Emanuel? I just want to take a break for a minute just because we've had a lot of technical difficulties and counselors not being able to attend meetings. I apologize. Thank you registars. Thank you. We so appreciate it. Thank you.

079Should we start? Okay. Should we take a break, Ray, for just two minutes and contact them? All right, everyone. We're we're going to take a two-minut break. Not muted. All right. Thank you. Maybe having Stay one too. All right, everyone. We're going to resume and councelor O. Sullivan has a question. Counselor, you have the floor. Okay, I logged on back in. Can you hear me now? Yep. Oh, fantastic. Okay. Um, just my question was about technical supplies, which and and forgive me if this was addressed and I missed it, but I don't think I heard it. It was only $51 a year ago. Now we're in the range of 50 and 70,000. Can you just tell us what that refers to? Yeah, the the actual that shows in that column, the 2,660 is uh more

080realistic. Again, we were not sure entering into this with the early voting and the the equipment and so forth what needed to be planned for. So the actual uh for this year is closer to that 2,660 and that projection was created earlier in the uh the budget. So it will definitely change down toward to the 2660. We're done with this Mhm. year. So that'll be an adjustment, a reduction to that line when we start talking final numbers. It'll be a reduction in the projected file, but that's not affecting what our proposed budget is. So you're still proposing 50,000 for that. Still proposing the So maybe that's what Bill's question is. Why? Well, my question is, yeah, what what are those technical supplies? You had 26.80 80 as for an actual but projected of 70,000 by

081year's end and then a request for 50 for next year. What are technical supplies? Maybe we can get the registars back up. Yeah. Do you want to Hold on. We're going to have them step up. Is it those um things that that we got some for free? The tab tabulators? Yeah, mostly. Yeah, mostly the new tabulators which um you know we will now have to pay for. Yeah, because how many did you get? I'm sorry. How many did you get with the grant? We we had 14 for last year. I think they took two away from us. So, we have 12 now. All right. And then how many do you need? Uh well, we need we need uh two for uh all two more. We need two for all three of our um polling places.

082So, that's six. Yeah, we need um we need one for early voting counting, one for absentee voting counting. Um that's uh eight, right? I'm sorry. Oh, and same day. That's nine. Uh we're probably going to have maybe two. We need 12. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we definitely Yeah. So, what's the is that it's a cost of $1250,000 or roughly close to that or I don't know if they actually gave us an actual figure, did they? They never passed the that through our office. In fact, they sent a contract to the town, but I believe they're revising that. I think the contract went for $1. Now, the technical supplies that we're showing here, I can take and and send you a full report on what we bought. Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, well, the 2680 is

083not the concern. It's why we're why we're projecting 50,000, I guess. Yeah. It's it's going to be the type of leader, but so that's going to be like,000 for that. Or, but that'll be a one time that'll be a onetime cost. A one time cost. Yeah. Because once they're paid for, you know, I I mean, is there a way to know like how much per tabulator it is? I will get that four grand. That's your 48 grand and that's your 50. So, I'll bring it. Just trying to understand. Got it. Thank you. These are items. I imagine these items will be useful for multiple years. I assume this is um our last tabulators were good for almost 20 years. So, um yeah, I'd say they're going to be used for a while. If we had

084tabulators this past election, why the tabulators the last election, as Tom pointed out earlier, were we were one of the 10 test towns. They were the brand new tabulators. Oh, but so we only got the use of them for one year. We didn't get to keep them indefinitely. We we Yeah, we we did get to keep them. They took two back from us, but we we kept our We already have them. What are we What are we paying for? We didn't pay for them last year because we were in a test uh we were one of the tests. We did not pay for them. So, in order to keep them, you have to pay for That's what I'm asking. Yeah. Yes. So, the freebie is basically just for that one year. Then, if you want

085to keep them, you got to pay for Okay, I got this. Well, that's a scam of a grant. I'm sorry. That's a scam of a grant. Right. Come on now. It's like Yeah. That's like such a salesman. Yeah. It's like It's like the big tech in advance. Bring home the puppy, right? Yeah. For the pilot, they should let you keep it, right? I mean you I mean you went through all the stress. Yeah, that's right. All right. Thank you. Can I just ask on the town side, why are we having a 12.5 increase in salaries? What was the outcome of that? Such a significant increase in salaries. Yes. As we were hearing them start to to discuss it, they definitely feel that the the rate that they have is um probably not appropriate. So we

086chose a dollar amount. actually it was a round dollar amount. So at least we could build a cushion for that but they will come back through the finance and um and do a resolution. So rather than the entire impact because it is a big difference that they're discussing you know that it would go through contingency. So this is really just a building a cushion preparing for their resolution coming in the next few months. It'll probably be July. So we don't know what we're budgeting for. Is that what correct? No, they have to actually go through a resolution and change it. So, no, we don't know it yet. And historically, you don't because they tend to go on a by-early in January. So, now if one registered voter asks for 48,000, the other one has to

087get it as well. Correct. Yes. They have to be the same. Yes. That's significant increase from a 21 thou 27,000 currently. But all that gets vetted through finance. It does. Yeah. And and did you say Mona there's going to be no offset or not? Like there's an offset on the contingency or correct contingencies for anything unsettled. Just like that union contract that hasn't settled. It'll come out of contingency. You will only see what is uh contracted. And this hasn't been determined. So we're not budgeting it until it's final. Yeah. And to be clear, like that resolution like I mean this is this is like part A. The part B is the once it goes through finance. Correct. That's when the full determination. Okay. Yes. Okay. Who would have thought we'd spend that much time on

088register voters? I'm sorry. Can I just ask why board event is coming at seven if there's regular meeting? I believe you know why didn't we plan for that because like I just I I hate to have to I mean this is a budget workshop right I don't know like it just seems Yeah. You know like we we've planned extra and it's Are we going to have to end Yeah. We I mean we can keep going, right? Well, we have another 15 minutes, they said. But you know, that's the budget. Yeah. And we only have one extra, right? Meeting or two two potential. We have two unplanned. John Emanuel said that if he has any questions Oh, thank you. I meant to put that on the record. Yeah. John Emanuel, by the way, is in is

089part of the meeting. Um, and he's communicating through the town manager. So, is there another place for board of ed to go where they can be on the record or no? I don't I don't think so. I didn't I don't know. Um, probably not at this. Okay. I don't think that has happened in the past, right? Yeah. Yeah. I think as a general rule, they don't have all their meetings here, right? Aren't they usually? Or maybe those are committee meetings that go off campus. We have to wait for Ray to come back to the next one. presents. He presents them. All right, let let me just shut the mics off for a minute. I'm sorry everybody. Oh no, here we go. Maybe room 1C is that open downstairs and they can Yeah, this is their

090regular [Music] meeting we scheduled those. Oh yeah, they have a bunch of kids doing kind of presentation. But uh let's continue until it becomes uh an issue right now. So maybe we can just move along. Okay, we finished. We're done with that. Go to economic development. Okay. Economic development page 76. Um quick history on this. Um back uh in November 2022, the economic development director position was became vacant. Um in the 2425 budget, the uh position salary was frozen. um um that particular year and we appropriated $50,000 for a part-time. So in October uh we hired a part-time economic and business development manager position who you all met was Alandre Maine. She started six months ago. Um she works under the supervision of the town manager and um the position has been tweaked slightly from

091director to a manager which is more of um you know the intent of this position is to be on the ground out in the business community. um working with businesses, working with potential prospects um and also uh looking at um an arts and culture initiative and and and updating continually updating the business directory and doing outreach uh to different nonprofits and also with Middle Sex Chamber of Commerce. And the original um intent of freezing the position for that one year uh was to eventually bring that position back to full-time Um, so in the full-time salary line, we have a uh a budgeted item of 90,939,000, which is a $40 $40,000 increase over the current um part-time salary we're um we're working under now. So that's uh the major component of this particular budget item. Um

092you know if you go through the fees I we reduced by by $5,000 or 50%. And um training was uh increased also um to to get this position up to speed in the event it does get uh funded in fulltime. Um, I think I'd like to since this position is new, Alandre has been working with us for six months. I think um I'd like to introduce her formally to the commission. Um, maybe we can ask some questions if you have any that pertain to uh maybe some of these goals that we have laid out. Just a quick question on the numbers. So this position would be going for part-time full-time without also make it a a benefits eligible position where it's not now, right? Okay. So figure that it would be a union position probably

093and currently it's not a benefits. Currently it's part-time and nonbenefit, right? Previous 16 years it was full-time benefit, right? Yeah. No, I'm just trying to make sure everybody understands the the delta between not just the 40. Can can you can what did you say about this ex her expense budget? Yeah, this this particular budget um is the same budget that I've had for 16 years. Um the fees component was at $10,000. I cut it 50% to 5,000. um because we will we are anticipating utilizing MRDA for many of the you know some of those services um and also Southern Connecticut State University for a couple of projects that um we're working with. So, I don't think we need that much. I think the board of ed is going to try to move downstairs. No. Okay.

094We should be all set up. Oh, okay. Thank you so so much. Is Elijah coming up? Did you say Elijah was coming up? Okay. Would you like to do why don't you come on up kind of give a briefing of uh what you know these goals that we've laid out. Hello. Hello. How is everybody? Um goals. Um so Ray kind of did a speed through run of it because I know we're kind of on a time crunch. Um goal number one, plan of conservation and development. I've been working with um uh Kim Richie, Ben Winter. They're amazing to work with. Um and uh I hope you guys filled out your community surveys. Um I know I filled out my survey. Um also, uh building a business directory. Uh we do have a business directory already.

095Um Rey created one a few years ago, but part of my job is to make sure that it's as accurate as possible. Um, and then once we have emails and a contact list, if we could eventually do like a um a news blast, email blast um with surveys to all the businesses, I think that would be phenomenal. Um, also we're working on um initiating an arts and culture movement. Uh we have certain events lined up with the parks and wreck as well as um we have an event make music day which I just acquired a thousand grant for. Um we're also doing America's 250th um birthday celebration. So that's in the works. Uh more to come on that. And we're also collaborating with um the newly uh created Rocky Hill Arts Now nonprofit group. Um,

096and then lastly, um, sorry, Mona. Um, lastly, we're also I'm working on business visitations. Uh, we just had one yesterday. We just had one last week, and there's more to come soon on uh uh in the in the near future. Um, so I mean, this is a a snippet. Obviously, I do more than this. Um, I'm making great progress, but I feel I could work twice as hard if I'm granted twice as many hours. Um, and what I've heard tonight is that this council really likes efficiency. Um, so I just hope that you guys grant me the opportunity to do my job as efficiently as I can. Um, so I would be happy to answer any questions from here. Thank you. Is there a mechanism where people have some ideas for goal free of cultural

097ideas that they can contact your office and present those ideas public? Um so not exa I mean Kim Richie did receive some um ideas through the community survey that she was working on. Uh for example something that she brought to my attention was uh like a riverfront festival. Uh so that's totally up my alley. like I would love to make that happen years down the line. I know there's um a lot of work that has to be done in that uh area of the of the town. Um so aside from that, not exactly like unless people go onto the website, but u part of what I would like to work on is increasing our our marketing tourism efforts um where we can have more events that establish a culture um and then to increase communication.

098Aside from that, aside from marketing and tourism, um to increase communication with uh business owners and residents so that they have somebody, you know, preferably full-time. Um it's great to have it part-time, but uh so that they have someone that they can email, call, or make an in-person appointment uh Monday to Friday. And I usually I'm here Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Um, I try to schedule in all my appointments and all my meetings within that, but sometimes it's not within my control and I have to come in on a Thursday and a Friday. So, there is a a a demand and I'm super happy to to do it. Um, so yeah, I think that answers your question. Sorry, I got off track a bit. So, fantastic. Thank you. I have some questions. Oh, go ahead. Sorry.

099This role is we're trying to develop into full-time. Um, I think mostly economic development is working with business. I don't know about putting on cultural events. I think that might be a park and wreck goal. Um, it is definitely with parks and wreck. Um, we do like to collaborate. Um, part of or I would like to collaborate with them in the future. Um, but part of how I view economic development is uh what brings people to the town. like I I feel like I have a bit of a tourism aspect. Um at least background from when I worked at the Middle Sex Chamber of Commerce for two years. Um I did work with uh tourism and Rita's actually our uh tourism board member for the town of Rocky Hill on the central regional tourism district.

100Um so part of I guess economic development is developing what people want to see and to establish more of a culture. Um, so yeah, it's it's kind of a handinhand parks and wreck uh economic development thing. Okay. Could you sell yourself to us that what have you accomplished in the six months you've been here? Brought any businesses in town? Um, you got to sell yourself to us. It's to get you full. Um, so so I've I've had a um a few meetings with companies that are either looking to relocate to Rocky Hill or they're looking to um expand. They're already in Rocky Hill. They're looking to expand. Um I can't really say for sure um what places I don't know if I have permission to talk about some of these places. I don't Yeah. Um

101so I I have been in contact and I do a lot of business outreach. Uh and I keep a a list of businesses that I have uh you know either called, emailed. Um, so it's as of like six months, it's it's there are so many things that are still happening that aren't finalized yet. Um, but I definitely hope and it's hard to do that on a part-time basis when you're only granted 19 hours a week. Um, obviously I I do the best that I can with the hours that I have. Um, but as I said before, it I think we could see even more progress with that and we could see even more results of people that we're bringing into town. um if I were to be working more hours uh 40 aside from 19.

102I hope that answered your question. Yes, thank you. Um just another concern I have is I think directory should be very important to get accomplished and why isn't getting speeding up getting it done that's my idea of business economic development since I've been here. Yeah, it should have been done in the in the six months that I've been here. Correct. Um, I agree that I think it it does have that uh superiority that it it is super important. Um, but when I'm only here part-time and I'm, you know, I could be really like hunkering down and making good progress and then all of a sudden my 19 hours are up and I need to, you know, see you guys next week even though I don't want to leave and I'm making good progress. I have

103things on my desk that I'm actively working on. um I have to go or there's something else that my attention is drawn to or I'm thrown into meetings um whether that's town meetings or you know companies that are developers that are looking to um do an update. So uh I agree that I I wish it was more efficient. I wish there was more done but um the time hasn't really been allowed for me to do that. And Alandro, why don't you um speak a little bit about the progress you have made percentage-wise with respect to the directory. Um it's third I believe I saw somewhere. Was it a third that I saw? Let me let me explain the directory. Yeah, I started the directory 10 years ago. We was probably there were 954 960 businesses

104listed on the directory. Um, when I worked full-time on the directory, it would take, you know, I six hours to update a few of them because you have to update it almost at least quarterly. And that requires going through the now because I haven't worked on it in three years, two years, whatever. That's going to require going each business, making sure that it's still in business, making sure the contact information is still there, u making sure we have the emails because we can't get emails for every business, but we're compiling an email listing. So, that requires telephone, calling that phone call, that phone number, which many times is disconnected because the business is gone. doing a Google search and Google's not always accurate and then going out and actually fielding to see if that business

105or that sign is still up. So, it's very time consuming. So, when I was economic development director, by the time I I got to maybe updating, I would have to go back again and just keep going. And then in between that you have what I what I set up as business uh uh staff uh staff meetings, business assistance staff meetings with uh community development working with uh you know prospects. Alandre has already been on three maybe five of those um interviews with potential prospects looking to come to town. But we meet with planning, zoning, wetlands, fire, all those anybody who's involved. And my experiences in the past is okay, you work with them, they're very interested, you work with the commercial realer, a year goes by, year and a half goes by and either the

106deal dissolves or a business does locate, but you really don't know if you had any impact. You know, you don't know if it's is it because of me that that job created. As you know, government does not create jobs, right? The market does. So, we just try to create an atmosphere to create jobs. Um, so that directory, it does take a long time to update. Um, and then follow up with phone calls to try to get their email addresses because what what Alandre would like to do is do email blasts like when the small business administration when they do or small business uh center when they do um offer courses, we can email blast that out to all the communities. So if there's like an issue with water with something with infrastructure, there's a problem,

107we can email blast that out to as many businesses as we can. So that that's time consuming. I think go ahead. Are there aspects of this directory um updating which it seems very timeconuming but very data intensive. Are there aspects of that that can be farmed out to an intern or outsourced or something and then when when time comes we have to go visit somebody on site obviously that's where you get involved but seems like there's a lot of background data crunching that your time could be used better than doing something like that I would think. Do you want to talk about Southern? So sure. Um, so we have had a couple meetings in the past few months um with a few professors um from Southern who want to potentially start a um a class

108next semester um where the business students can uh kind of tackle problems that Rocky Hill has. And they wanted to know what like my department is struggling the most with. Um and I said you know the business directory is exactly like like what you were saying is um a bit time consuming and there's a lot of internet research or you know going out and actually driving around very timeconuming. So um they were thinking that the Southern University students could potentially tackle that. So that's still in the works. That's not like finalized yet. Um there's more meetings to come with that but that could be an option. Yeah, that whole process would have to really be over overseen by you know by that position you know just to make sure that the information is accurate and

109it's coming from you know yeah I wouldn't absolve her from the entire but I think there's a lot of leveraging that could be accomplished with with something like that. Sure. So I have a couple of questions for you. So uh the first one is apart from not having enough hours in your day to be here in the town hall and working your best, what has been your biggest challenge in your role for the last six months to do what you need to do and what you want to do. Um I suppose aside from the hours it's um kind of juggling many different things um many different tasks and um trying to be a part of so many things with the town and um trying to to have support support other departments um and being involved

110in in a lot which I'm I'm so happy to do and I I love helping out my colleagues wherever I can. Um, so you know, I'll be doing something with like doing the website for like make music day and I'm going in between that and uh potentially doing like a Rocky Hill restaurant trail and then uh we've got Dana that's like we're doing America's 250th and we're going to get a a planning committee for that which um I absolutely love and I'm super excited to do that. Um and I think Rocky Hill will be a great showcase for celebrating America America's 250th. we already have some ideas uh rolling. So, I would say um and this is not even really a problem because I love my job genuinely. Um but aside from not having enough

111hours, it's kind of being thrown in many different directions, but I'm happy to be thrown in these directions. So, thank you. Okay. So, my so my second question for you, uh you know, the town manager had your job uh potential full-time job that you're uh thinking about. So if you were the town manager for like six months and Ray wasn't available he was in Australia just making it up. He never goes to Australia. Um what is your vision for the town in terms of growing its uh grandest if you were in charge? Um what would Ray Carpentino do? Um so I guess what would she do? What would you do? What would you do as a what economic development director? Economic development person. How would she grow the Well, I what is your vision for

112it? I mean the vision is I think we need to capitalize on the empty um land that we have that's not currently being used. Like there's there's a lot of land that's available that's just sort of been sitting for a while. And um we would love to have some manufacturers come in and potentially build new there. And that is something that I've also been working on is talking to a few manufacturers that um are from out of town or they're already in town and they're looking to expand or just build new. And then um obviously I would love to do more with the riverfront properties. Um it's amazing that Rocky Hill is on the river and and it's so underutilized and we're so fortunate to have that. Um, so if if I could if if

113I had Ray's job, um, I guess if if I had a magic wand, um, I to to increase the grand list, I think if we, you know, built more things with like manufacturing, um, that would be the perfect, I guess, solution for me. So, thank you. I go ahead. I feel like you're going through a job interview, which in essence you are. Um, it's okay. You know, the grand list has been somewhat flat since and you could maybe make a correlation since we haven't had a full-time economic director. Um, and you've only had six months and that's not a good sample. Um, couple questions and kind of goes with Fran and and U Punkage a little bit here. How long have you lived in Rocky Hill? I don't live in Rocky Hill. Oh, I thought

114you said Okay, my bad. Um, why Rocky Hill? Why should a business come to Rocky Hill? Um, well, we have a great town manager. Um, no, but I I honestly think that, you know, Rocky Hill is in the middle of the state. We're about like 15 minutes from Hartford, and there's a lot of attention to that where people want to be um close to Hartford. And um at the moment we are our tax mill rate is lower than Hartford by a long shot. Um and by Weathersfield we're also lower and I believe lower than I think Middletown. Um, so I think that's definitely enticing uh to be in a central location that's so uh close to Hartford and and uh to have a a lower tax rate so that these manufacturers can come in and

115and see that there's potential and there's a there's saving money. um which is something that I've also worked with uh with a a manufacturer who was headquartered in Hartford and and uh they were looking to come here and they were impressed. So I think that's one reason or a couple reasons to consider Rocky Hill and there's so much going on. We have a great parks and wreck department, so many great events. I mean, you could I before I started working here, I didn't even know about the events that that we put on year round and now that I'm in it and I'm working with everybody. It's it's really phenomenal um what these guys do all year round and not just parks and wreck, but everybody here to help make it happen. So, there's a lot

116to offer and it'll just get better. So, and then uh the progress and this might be more for Mona or Ray, but we that position was supposed to help us uh submit or apply for grants that would help us grow. Now, this is not the MDR thing I'm referring to, but do we have time to do that? Are we doing that? No. This position um the grantmanship portion of the this position has been reduced. Um I would still be looking at doing some grants um along with community development staff Steve soak. Um eventually we we would work in grants. Um you know everybody loves grants. Guess let me I'll just spew my opinion. Grants are great as long as you don't have to like match significantly, right? Um and then grants are great until you

117have to administer each grant and do quarterly reporting on each grant and administer the grant for you know a year or two three years after the grant. Um there's a point where we become saturated and I think we're at that point. You know, I don't know if you remember when Steve Soilak had a a spreadsheet up on the number of grants that he was managing and we have grants in all sorts of different departments and um it's difficult to manage. Um it's also um being Rocky Hill, you know, we're we're good and bad. We're we're not distressed. Therefore, we do not qualify for many of these grants now that have come out in the past two, three, four years. Um, which is a good thing because we don't need them really as much as other

118communities may need them. Um, so you know what you really need to do is tie the grantmanship, the grant projects to the capital improvement plan. Um, that's really how it should work. It really doesn't work that way in many towns, but we're trying to do that here. So, if it's in the CIP, then that's like, oh, you know, the funding agency will say, okay, so you're planning, there's a plan to it instead of just reacting when a grant comes around. So, um, grant getting grants is important. You know, we have many of them right now. We've we have obtained many of them in the past, but I think um this pos particular position will kind of focus on the um outreach to local businesses, visitations, trying to get the trying to get the uh businesses

119involved in like the arts movement to draw people in so people spend money. Just one quick question. How did you come up with the salary town manager for this position? Well, um the actual salary for economic development director I think starts at 112 or 115 or whatever thousand goes up from there. Um you you approved 50,000 last year. You know, I had I think we had I think I think we had 112 in the orund something in last year's budget, the previous year's budget and last year I think the C town council at the last day cut it to 50,000. That's how that 50,000 came about. I thought that we had created a position that was lower than an economic development director and that's why we came up with a lower salary. It was and

120that's the e the um director economic and business development. Yeah. Manager. Manager. It's a different position. Not the director position. Just concerned with that number because we're trying to hire an attorney for our town for 90,000 who's an attorney and we can't even find that. I don't understand why this position's so high. Just this actually says a bargaining unit. So, and I won't go into the uh the uh human resource position. That's a non-bargaining confidentiality which wouldn't necessarily fit, but we have bargaining units. And this is a group of not highlevel managers. It's kind of the uh like the the assistance to some directors. It's kind of that lower level. So this is the range that exists within the town for uh perhaps a an assistance to the uh parks director or an assistant to

121you know human service director. So this is a a group that felt like the responsibilities felt within the similarity of that level. So not a high level manager but a a report to second below. It was a step down step down classification in the in the union. Yeah. Thanks. I I just want to make a couple comments um before we move on. Mimi, did you have any comments? Yeah. No. So, first of all, I want to say thank you. You did an excellent job, Alandre. I don't think you are anticipating coming here and answering those questions. So, you did very very well. Um I want to talk a little bit about economic development. sort of what my my what I see in my mind when we say e economic development and Franny kind of to

122your point um because you said you know about arts and culture and it's not necessarily growing the grand list or or or or working on a business directory but I was up at the lob today um advocating for our community in a variety of different ways and one of those ways was with respect to trails and one of the things that um in my legislative committee we agreed to with Krag is that trails are part of economic development and trails are a big part of tourism and Connecticut has this incredible line of trails and we're trying to connect them. There's a gap, right? But what all of the small towns were saying is we really need to get behind this from an economic development perspective because once people can connect through trails and ride their

123bikes and walks, they're going to come into new towns and they're going to come into the restaurants and maybe they're going to like what they see and maybe they're going to come back and they're going to shop and you know, it's just sort of this this thing that you promote, right? And it generates a nice brand for your community. And and when I think of economic development beyond growing the grand list and beyond doing the directory, I think about housing, I think about arts and culture. I think about trails and and and tourism and creating a brand and an image and um my I always go back to New Britain where uh we know they are the New Britain bees and that bee is everywhere and that bridge is spectacular, right? That's economic development and

124that's driving people to that community. And I think at the heart of economic development is the POCCD, right? The POCD is the opinion of the people of our town. It's a 10-year vision. And that's where I think the focus the focus has to be. And and so once we we look at all of those things, I think organically the grand list grows, right? Because we have what like our logo says or our slogan, right? make new history here. Um so so that's where I see the position uh being super valuable. Um especially as we have just joined um it's not MRDA by the way. They they no but they took out redevelopment. I guess they got in trouble. So we just had we had this just came up in the yesterday's crowd meeting. Um they

125had to get rid of redevelopment. Now it's just the development municipal development authority. Um but anyway, that's just a long way of saying yes, I I do I would love to see the business directory and certainly I want to see grandless growth. Um but those things happen organically when what I think you're doing is looking at the community from a a younger, more vibrant perspective. And one of the things, let me just say this because I get so excited about this topic, but you know, every year our community is recognized as like a top community in Connecticut for something. It's it's for seniors, it's for schools, and this past year it's been for for young um young uh professionals, right? And so now we have a young professional who is thinks different than I think.

126I'm just going to put it that way. Um, and so to bring make music day is something that I'm very appreciative for because a year ago we actually met with the with the Arts Council of Greater Hartford. I don't know if you remember that. It could have even been a year and a half ago. And these are the things that they said, you know, you really should be taking a look at and engaging your businesses. It was always going back to the arts and culture engages your businesses and that's how you grow. So, I'm going to just leave it at that. So, thank you. Thank you. Can we let Alandre go? Go ahead. Run away. Thank you. Thanks everyone. Thank you. Page 58. 58. Mhm. I steal the thunder of the uh page 56 start

12758's the uh 58 is the uh the finances So looking at the uh goals um preparing for documentation of the upcoming set tax sale um that is done routinely when we have tax tax tax sales Um, and also training employees. Um, we're we're pretty heavy on training and making sure people have the knowledge to do what they need to do. And and this this goal fits right into what the the culture of our town hall is. Um, aggressively um collecting delinquent taxes. Um, as you know, the town council entered into a contract with a tax collection agency for the delinquencies, long-term delinquencies. Um, a value on that do probably about 400,000 of a 2 million that we had sent them out on. So, it's it's moving well. There's no expenditures related to that in here

128because they just get a piece of what they collect, right? Correct. It comes out of collection, right? There's there's no upfront cost. It's just whatever. Correct. Yeah. I think at this point we've expended about 25,000 because it's based on when it's actually collected. So, um on page 58, um total expense increase of $16,559. five just over 5% 5.1%. 11,000 11,000 of that is in full-time salaries. And then we have a seven almost a $7,500 uh increase in technology software which basically is um u the geographic system in the QDS. This would be the actual tax bill. You have assessor in your mind. tax collectors. The Oh, yeah. It would be the uh I'm sorry. That would be illegal. This is the actual bills and mailing them out as uh as well. So, the entire bill

129side. Yes. Collector side. I got that wrong note there. I know. Oh, overtime. No increase in overtime and $2,600. Okay. We photocopier every line item in every department. that that'll be doing the same. So there's not much excitement going on on the tax collector's page. The uh the 4.1% salary increase is that just contractual or is there a step up as well in that or they have there's three individuals, one is newer and going on through the step up, right? And it's also two bargaining units involved in that. percentage-wise that 7500 increase is a 20% increase. So that can help us collect more taxes. Yeah, you really should. How do I do that? Yeah, they I brag about it. I know people don't notice, but I know tax collector and I were looking at that.

130So, actually your bill becomes a little more exciting now. They do the little QR code on the back and it says it reminds you. I mean, they're they've got a quite a bill. So, if you ever uh see your next one, you know, take a good look at that. It's a very informative document. Ready for clerk. Town Clerk page 66. Unfortunately, Sandra could not be here tonight. Last minute call out. Um going through the the goals. Um we revised, you may know, we we revised many of these goals throughout the document. Um and some of the performance measures. Um um goal number one is to continue to improve the communications between the registar voters and the town clerk's office and she has done that significantly. They are working together very well over the past year

131um maintaining goal number two maintain training and open communications um between her office and the registars as it relates to the procedures legislative changes. again uh she wor she was working side by side with the registars's office and has been um goal number three um we've been scanning um many historic documents and and getting those big in books into microfilm and she has these remaining volumes left to do to be linked to the index so that is uh what she's working on now I think she has only a few left at this point. Goal number four is a yearly uh yearly task applying for the $7,500 grant. On page 68, um overall there is a 14,000 almost $14,300 increase of 4.6% 6% and $14,600 of that is in um full-time salaries. Why is the salaries

132a big increase? Is it a step again? Correct. Thanks. Ready for it. Page 74. This is a financial page. So, let me run down our financial page quickly because I'm pretty sure uh we'll have to have John come up to interpret many of these items that non-ext. Um bottom line on page 75, um total increase 6.4% or $50,127. Going back to page 74, um three we have a 3% increase for full-time salaries. That takes up uh $12,377. If you move down to technology software, there is an increase of uh $9580. running down to the telephone, which is usentrics uh for town and then AT&T for the police only. There's almost 43% increase of $9,000. Jumping down to technical equipment, we have a 14.3% increase of $2500. And that's that the two keys are the phto

133two keys and the wireless access points and so on. And jumping down to computers just before that just below that we have a $10,000 increase. Those are to merge the remaining uh desktops and laptops uh from Microsoft 10 to 11 get and up upgrade those uh those laptops and and uh desktops. Um and that's it as far and also we know we were looking at monitors also um to upgrade some of those in town hall. So, if there are questions on any of these items, um, let us know. Does the audiovisisual equipment in room 1C fall under some of this technical equipment because I know it goes through the computers or is that a different That would be the uh the three AV units that we had to buy to replace the uh the balloon

134outlets. Is that correct, John? Here he comes. I think I'm Dave. Hello. So yes, the um some of the AB equipment uh is in there. That is that's under the technical equipment. So um actually nope that's not the technical equipment that is under technical supplies. Technical supplies. Yes. So that there there's money that's put aside now um because we you know uh that equipment has been in there for a number of years now. Starting to see equipment failures, things like that. A lot of that stuff always is always powered on. Um and power and circuits, they're great until they're not. So yes, there there's money set aside in that budget for replacing some of those items. Why is the telephone significantly increased? Again, uh that has a lot to do with the um with the

135nature of uh the phone carriers themselves. So a lot of those Centrics lines and things like that are older analog lines um and they just jack the prices up on us. Can we go out the bid and try to get more updated one? That's it. It depends. Um, we certainly will do, you know, uh, I don't know if necessarily go out to bid, but we, you know, we we work with other vendors. Um, there are some other vendors that will try and get us the best rates, but typically we have the best rates as it is right now. Um, the phone companies just don't want to support the old copper lines anymore and they make you pay. Speaking about the old copper lines, you know, I assume some of these updates we're we're not going

136to get like hit one year with this major thing we have to do. We we kind of allocating for like replacement so that we don't have like full replacement of all computers or all monitors at the same time. That is correct. This is actually um a project that we started two years ago. So, we've been, you know, very cognizant about trying to just replace and mm mass a lot of computers. Um, this uh Windows 10 goes end of life October 14th of this year. Um, that means it's no longer supported. We want to make sure we're especially supported, you know, on a supported operating system. Uh, we've been replacing computers for the last couple of years. uh any computers that um we've been targeting full-time employees. Uh and then once we get that done, we're

137going to start working on the police um some of the mobiles and the police this year uh this budget cycle as well as taking any machines that are capable of running Windows 11. Um Microsoft has a very strict, you know, kind of like this processor will be supported, this one is not. So, anything that we have that we can recycle into like, you know, the shared computers for like the library and stuff like that, that's when we're going to start, you know, or the kiosks that are that are downstairs. We're going to start taking those and and bringing them on that way as well. Uh John, uh can you talk a little bit about uh in context of this budget like your priorities? I I mean there are some um tech software increases here, right?

138obviously about 5% I think but can you talk a little bit about the infrastructure updates and the security updates and yeah and and also if you want to kind of loop this in uh the maintenance contracts uh they are going up significantly looks like so contracts themselves I I'll start with that one first just because it's it's a nice easy number So, the maintenance contracts, uh, I don't know if $2,000 is, you know, or or $2,400. Maybe I misread it. Um, yeah. Uh, yeah, probably I misread it. Okay, never mind. Talk about the software piece. Okay. So, software itself, um there there's a an awful lot of uh software that you know that gets used through the town. Uh a large more than more than 60% of that is just Microsoft costs. Um that's that

139and that doesn't just cover end users. That also covers servers and infrastructure like that. So, our Windows servers, we have to pay for it. Our SQL licenses, we have to pay for those. um any client access licenses we we could pay for those. So it's a Microsoft world. We just pay them for it. We just live in it. We all live in it. Yeah. Okay. Uh so from a prioritization perspective like the biometric stuff and like can you talk a little bit about that in some like network security and things like that? Yep. So um the the the 502 keys I had it originally listed as biometric. Um, a lot of the vendors are actually hiding the biometrics behind a stupidly high um, you know, like uh, UB key. You have to have a subscription

140for 500 or more annually. Uh, we just simply don't need that many. So, um, you know, so they're 502 keys. Um, just a point of order. There's no like scanned retina or fingerprint on them. So, I just want to make sure that point is clear. Um, so th those are a big priority. Uh we've started you know we're starting to roll those out right now and um what essentially happens is uh in lie of a password you have a digital certificate that's on that phto key um that gets you into your services. It's a more secure it's a it's what they term a fishing resistant form of authentication. So um it's hard to fake that certificate if it's done properly and y you know that that's kind of our our main priority. uh the criminal

141justice information systems uh is a big proponent of that. Um so that that's one of those things that we're work you know starting to work with the police department to get them up and running on that. Additionally, all the new computers that we're bringing in with Windows 11, we're bringing that under the Microsoft 365 umbrella. So we're using that mobile device management platform as well that we're paying for. Yeah. And like in terms of like the the the security infrastructure in terms of uh where we are like as a town right do you feel like we are at a at a good place we have been having this conversation for a few years I know but where do you I ask you this question every single year because I think just benchmarking ourselves to like

142other towns and like what's going on because you know it's it's a moving target and and that's why we have this conversation every year because it is a moving target and I fully appreciate that and I I do appreciate the fact that you are cognizant of the fact that you know we do have security needs. Um so we're in a good spot. We're um a move to um about three or four years ago we went with a managed uh endpoint detection and response. Um, we're using the, you know, uh, uh, one of the vendors that that's very popular and very good. And, you know, I've gotten phone calls at 2 am that said, "Hey, something's happening on one of your servers. Let's, you know, let's stop it and dip it in the butt." So, an

143investment well worth well worth made. Um we also in addition to you know using digital certificates and improving our um authentication methods uh right now uh most of the times you actually need two factor authentication just to get in. You know a lot of that is through the Microsoft authenticator app but as we move to the digital as we move to the 502 keys um even that I hardly ever use mine anymore. So that that is increasing that level. We'll always have the authenticator as a fallback, but you know, we're we're constantly trying to move ahead a little bit at a time and increase our throughput. Um, one of the things we're looking at this year is uh security, information, and event management. Um, SIM for short. So, um, that that's always been one of

144those things. It's um it's always been on our radar, but it's very expensive um traditional uh and resource intensive. Uh so if you're talking you know putting it on your own physical infrastructure you're talking dedicated storage just for that correct right you in the tune of you know 30,000 plus dollars. So what's happening now with the move to cloud services uh that's becoming more attainable for smaller organizations like us. Absolutely. Thank you. I'm not sure who the question is for so whoever wants to take it feel free. Um just going back to the photocopier uh discussion we had earlier. Um is this in it where all the expenses are going to end up or Yes, I'm a bit concerned about that. I have to say in all honesty, so I'm going to have to double

145check that and I hate to tell you the terrible news, but if that is not correct, I may have to come back with an increase rather than decrease for you. But uh yes, that was the intent. Okay. Um because and then the other thing is well you know let's let's see what the answer is then we'll I will because may not have to answer ask the other questions thank you human back on to human services thanks John human services We will u be on page 29. Youth first. Youth's first. Yes. Page 129. Sorry. What are we doing? You're doing Youth first. Youth services 131. 129. 131. I'm just walking through the first page on 129, the the uh youth services goals. Um um always pursuing fundraising opportunities to support any of their uh newly implemented

146programs. Um Melissa and her people do a fantastic job at that. They put on quite a number of different uh uh programs um and educational and fun uh fun items. Yeah. Qualifying to meet the requirements uh uh as a recover friend recovery friendly community. That's something I think that Melissa might have to explain, you know, briefly. and um cultivate and enhance newly implemented programs to continue to address community needs. As you can see through these goals, um Millison people, they do much outreach with community in adding more programs and more programs and more programs uh all the time. Let's jump to page 131 before um we have questions of uh Director Director Hicks. Um overall at the bottom we have $11,700 increase in this particular department. Um $5700 of that is in full-time salaries and

1476,000 that of that is in um what what's termed the positive youth development program. And I believe that's primarily transportation related u moving the kids here around to different programs. And the rest of those line items are zero increase. Want to do human service and have her come back? Should we do human service and then have her come for That's a good idea. Why don't we go jump to human services on the on the following page because Melissa will uh address both human services and human services. page 132. um very similar calls as the youth services. Very jumping to page 134. Again, the um bottom line bottom total expense increase of 4.6% or 14,525. of that increase 4 point I'm sorry of that increase um sal full-time salaries account for $13,000 $381 and we have

148a uh $1,250 increase in training. Um we do have a fairly new position um um in that department. So additional training is required. And then moving down you know we have several uh reductions and of course telephone protocopier and the remainder line items are zeroed out as far as zero increases. Um, as far as the evictions go, there is a storage container at our transfer station. Um, and our highway superintendent has worked closely with Melissa for some of those tenant for all of those tenant evictions. Um, therefore keeping the price down significantly. And then the contributions. Um there are many different um different professional organizations that uh need to be uh retained uh assistance and charity software tracking uh um components, constant contact, charity track, things like things of those natures, dues and subscriptions. If

149you have any questions, um, Melissa is here to answer any specifics. Could you just address the positive youth development? There's such an increase in that. That was the transportation issues. Yeah. Good evening. uh specifically the $6,000 increase. Correct. Um that is for transportation. So in order um Kelly specifically in youth services started up a program which is phenomenally successful this year. It's one of our most successful programs. We have a significant weight list. It's called Girls Empowerment and Boys Connect. Um it's a middle school program. So, it's all about working with community um businesses here in town and we bring in all sort of um business leaders and self-care and self-defense for both boys and girls in order to transport them from the middle school to our facility here. Um we're paying transportation costs and

150that you know used to be incorporated when we had transportation. it's utilized for senior and disabled services in that department now. So unfortunately it's a specific set of because you have to have certain endorsements with that driver's license. So we're at this point having to pay for transportation in order to provide that and they're coming to our building here so that we're not renting out any other space. We're utilizing the two rooms that we have for a lot of that programming and it's it's a program we feel is essential and it has been very very positive. In fact, this summer we're the entire staff is shutting down all of our other programming so that all staff can be on board to run sort of what we're calling a boot camp to sort of get that

151weight list down so that we are servicing all the kids in the middle school that want to be a part of this program. How many kids in there now do you think they're enrolled? Uh we take 10 to 12 at a time. 10 at a time. And we've had three. So we're going to be doubling that. So this that one week we're going to do two sessions. So we'll have 20 girls, 20 boys there and then roll into the next school year. So already 60 or 80 within the last year with once we do the summer boot camp. Nice. Thanks. I'm not sure if it's for Melissa or for Moda, but um it's not a big document, but meeting expense. We budget budget 2500 last year through twothirds of the year. We spent 339. We're

152still anticipating 2500 to be spent and budgeting that for the following year. Are you on youth? Youth youth? Yeah. Sorry, I had to change my page. Let me go see. Oh, let me just double check. I think that obviously the expenditure is higher on that and and I and I hate to say, but we have because of the financial status of the year have put a freeze on u anything that's like a non-mandatory or you know things that will keep the program from going. So that may be seeing a reflection, you confirm me on that, that a reflection of uh holding back on a couple of expenses where needed as well is mileage reimbursement for Lori underused services. So that's her traveling to meetings um hosting meetings. She is entitled to that parking fees. We

153require both uh Lori and I are licensed through the state as mental health providers. So we have CUS that we have to do. I mean we have certain requirements. Um, most of my staff very honestly eat the costs on their own vehicles, but that is that line item that they're entitled to under union contracts. So, yeah. I guess my question is are we going to get from 339 to 2500 in four months when we spent 339 in 8 months? I would say unlikely. Okay. And but we still want to budget that for the ideally they'll continue a normal full year without restriction. Okay. Thank you. Going months. Did you want me to talk about the uh recovery friendly committee? Y'all, that was this year's goal. No, I'd like to hear about it. Please, since you're

154up. Um, so certainly I will join the other directors and give you um an outline of last year's goals because we did accomplish them. A lot of that was new programming here and collaborating with other departments that um my staff absolutely crushed all of those goals and I'm very proud of all of them. They deserve all the credit for that. But this year uh we're sort of taking on another huge undertaking and it's it's not going to be done in one year. But under Deeus, the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services through the state of Connecticut has what's called a recovery friendly community. Um it is a few pages. It it requires buyin from the town council. It requires buyins from some of um my peers here in town, other departments. But in essence,

155what we're doing is trying to highlight um like we have in other sustainability and other things here in town. I would really like to be uh have my department be a front runner and say because I know a lot of what we are already doing here in Rocky Hill um surpasses a lot of what the social and human services departments do in other towns. And so taking this deemus checklist and implementing things that I know that we're already doing and perhaps can be doing better to highlight us as a community that's taking the strengths of all of the things that we're already doing with sustainability with uh helping homeless with providing mental health services that we already do. A lot of that is sort of checklist. So it is provided on the DEAS website. Um

156but you know for instance municipal leadership so the mayor town council andor board of directors is in agreement with developing a recovery friendly community. So we would go through but it requires things like working with parks and wreck and the schools fire and police department. Again a lot of these things we're already doing. So, it would be highlighting, creating safe spaces, reference books, places or maybe some events here in town as examples that would be uh recovery friendly that would be um alcohol and drug free um safe places for people here in Rocky Hill to identify resources to access those resources and take that responsibility as a community for us to do that um within our 14 miles and 21,000, you know, here and and take ownership of that. And I many very very few

157if any Yukon uh underwent this and just achieved it, but I'm not aware of any other towns in the state of Connecticut that have achieved this, but I'm going to I'm super super excited about that. Thank you. Yeah, I think that's a wonderful testament to what what you guys are doing and we would love to be a recovery friendly community. Perfect. I appreciate it. Great job. Any other questions? Thank you. Thank you, Melissa. All right, here we go. Fire department. Oops. Fire administration page got I got a driving problem. I'm okay. Page 96. Feel reckless for a second. Okay. So I'm going to do what I've been doing and for now I'm going to jump to this particular budget page and then with questions because you know is it is a specialty. We'll have uh

158all three of you guys come up and speak if if need be. to page 98. This is fire administration supervision. Again, I'm going to go down to the bottom line. Increase of uh 3.1% $7,737. Um full-time salaries account for $5,737,000. Um, then we have a uh $5,500 increase in support services, which is hazmat compliance and training sheets and which need to be updated every so often, maybe every three years. So that those prices have increased. MNX, I have a difficult time saying that still. That's up. um including the the cloud cloud storage fees are up in OSHA training and and so on. Um there's a $2,000 increase in training which is 3.9%. It stands at protect proposed at $53,000. That includes the 20% discount we will be getting from uh mission CIT and that is

159up um primarily because we have uh 18 new recruits that we have to train um in July and September. We have a total of 72 uh of uh firefighters. Um so that's the reason why that's increased a bit. Moving down, we have a uh $6,400 decrease in building repairs. Um building repairs for the most for the vast majority is housed are housed in the facilities department. Um the remaining 14,000 is for fire department specialty items that you know the fire department can only address, you know, bay vents inspection and maintenance on on the training trailer and so on. Another sign, let's see any we have a thousand increase in technical supplies. That's training supplies. They have also flags and plaques and ceremonial items that they uh that they uh utilize throughout the year. Um communications

160have remained 0% increase. Um, this is radio service and ISO mandates and reduced uh and headsets in the trucks and and items like that that the chief might be able to to speak to. Um, so questions on this particular page. I saw see full-time salaries increase 7.1%. There step ups in there or what's Yes. Yes. There's a a step in there. One person's had the cola in the step. What position is that? You know, that's the administrative assistant. They're office manager. I suppose I should correct that. Sorry, I misspoke. That is office manager. I have to get the titles correct. That's straight. What about the support services? That one went up significantly. Support. Which one? Support services. Yeah, that went up $5,500. Those were increases in uh just a cost for compliance with uh with

161hazmat again um and training sheets which which are documents that need to be updated every three years and also increases in the uh the fees for the red MN RED MNX and the cloud storage fees and uh other miscellaneous such as uh access to their IFS SA library for document uh training documents. Those fees have increased. If I missed anything, just let me know, guys. Did you do each page and then have them come up? I don't know. It might be I don't know. There's a lot a lot of pages. I don't know how you want to. Do you want to do each page with questions or you want to do the all three all three pages and then have them come back with questions? I'd rather do each page. Yeah, there's a lot of

162stuff here. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff here. Anything on any any questions on this? All right. Uh, moving on to fire fighting. The following page, page 99. He says a note to chief has uh accomplished his goals from last year. We'll get to that next next meeting. Now on page 101, you'll notice bottom page bottom of the page total expense increase of uh 7% $55,500. Um that is a result of uh 47,000 in the part-time salaries which incorporates uh the 18 new recruits. The more recruits we have obviously the more we have to um pay to respond and also the calls are up over 17%. When the calls increase, um the uh when the calls increase, the uh the payments per call increase. And running down, we have a uh $2,500 decrease um in

163fees. Um fees include um drone supplies um um decontamination um costs, physicals, things of that nature. Um running down to turnout gear, we have a $18,000 increase, 24 and a half%. Um, firefighters are required to have two sets of turnout gear um with a 10-year lifespan, but we do have some we do have new recruits, so they need to turn out gear two sets each. Can you talk about the increase in part-time salaries? Uh, almost 14%. Yeah, the uh part-time salaries I just he went through that a little while ago. That's uh because of the calls pime primarily because those calls are up 17%. We have 72 full-timer full 72 firefighters and you know we pay them per call. So when they respond to the calls, the payment fee that that line item increases incrementally

164with the call each call. Just piggybacking with that, last year we gave them a significant increase as well for part-time salaries. Is all that money actually being used for salaries? Oh, absolutely. Yeah, it's a pay per call. So, it's every firefighter and they have to submit on a monthly basis the calls they went to and they get paid. Um, so that's all it's for. Do you have the rates of what they get paid? Is it different based on the ranks? I'm going to throw 20 25 20 flat. Okay. For all ranks. the mic. Yes. Thank you. Question about the equipment and supplies. We're at um 15,000 now, but we're projected to use 47,000. Do we know what that's about? Yeah, we have that going to jump up to that. We're at $15,000 now and we

165do have uh $12,000 on order right now. So, we're waiting for that to come in. We have a legacy hydraulic uh set of spreaders on the heavy rescue truck that are no longer supported by uh Hurst. A good chunk of that will be to replace those next year. We have moved to battery operated equipment, rescue equipment on uh the two rescue pumpers and the rescue truck and next year that'll be the last piece. If anything happens to it, we can't get it fixed. So, uh we have the documentation from the last uh factory inspection that says it's obsolete. Parts are no longer available. It's time to replace. With that replacement though, we turn the corner and we no longer have to support hydraulic pumps and hydraulic lines because everything will be battery operated at that

166point. So, I see some of the maintenance costs going down uh once that's removed from service. So, we're going to be lower in this 2025. And but we're going to are we pushing some of that to 2026 because you you you said 12,000 for the balance of this year. We have two pieces right now, Dave, that are hydraulics. Yep. In this current budget year, we have a small hydraulic ram being replaced by a battery operated ram. Again, that's no longer supported either. Next year, we want to replace the spreaders. Yep. Which are the large uh the old draws of life. And that would uh bring us to 100% battery operated which also increases the effectiveness of the tools. Believe it or not, you get more torque and more uh power out of the battery operated

167tools than you do out of the hydraulics would not. Okay. Okay. I should comment that again that's um as of when the this budget printed he's actually actual probably closer to 20,000 at this point, right? Um get plus the 12 coming. Correct. Yeah. About 18,000. Mike, I've got it. I I shouldn't even have to. Your numbers are always 100%. So, theoretically, we hit around 37,000. Right. Right. Which does save us 10. assume we had no other supplies to ride the year out. Correct. So, um, so I want to go back to the part-time salaries thing. Yes. So, just so the stipen is the same amount per call, it's just more causes. Exactly. Okay. So, how is it determined how many firefighters go to a call? Are there certain firefighters that are on call for a

168particular period of time or if you get too many to show up, do some get sent back or like how does that just That's a great question and I'm glad you asked that. Um, we currently don't have pre-desated responders. Once we've get the new group, a lot of stuff's going to happen once we get the new group trained. Um, we will be able to turn a lot of three company calls into two company calls. reducing the trucks and the amount of people on the road. Um, but we're currently not there uh until these people are certified and we have 18 that need certifi certification. Down the road, we could even get into the pre-desated uh responders if if that increases efficiency. Um, and and it's a game of dominoes. You have to train them, certify

169them, evaluate, and then you're able to look at call response from there. Right. So, do you have instances where you have Well, I guess there's two Do you have instances where not enough show up or do you have instances where too many show up to a particular call? I I don't ever want to say too too many show up. Um, we do have we have preassigned assets per call. Okay, we load up the assets, the fire trucks, fire engines, rescue truck, whatever it might be, and then we have a standby. Um, we hold the remaining crews back in the firehouses. We are a little over 20% right now at simultaneous call. So when one call's going on, another one's going on. Easter Sunday, I think we had uh three at once. So, um that's why

170we do that. Well, at this point, we don't want to turn anybody back. I know it probably doesn't look great from efficiency standpoint, but it does work for us and for the town, right? Yeah. because that was kind of you kind of went a question a direction I was going to go is how do you make sure you have firefighters still available if a second call comes in while you're addressing the first call and just that way um the person standing by uh in the firehouses now Ray was stumbling over the word red NMX um red NMX is on all our phones and when a call comes in um the members sign in who are available to go to that call. So, as chief officers, all we have to do is click on our app

171and we see who's available and we see who's going to we know how many we'll know how many going to station one, station three, station two, whatever. We know each truck will uh run with six. So, we have a good idea who's behind for the next call and trying to think 20, 30 minutes ahead of where we're at. Gotcha. Okay, great. appreciate that's good information that I assume by how you explained the two you know replacing the two hydraulics for next year the spreaders and whatnot you you have kind of looked at allocating like replenishment of equipment improvement of equipment you've laid that out over the years so that we're not as I asked the other department we're not going to get one year hit with oh my god we got to update this and

172it's going to be a big ticket item. Um, yes, but I might as well put this on the radar screen. Um, our SCBA uh air pack bottles once they hit 10 years, they have to be um removed from service. We're at eight years now. We have 144 bottles. So down the road, it was a a purchase based on a referendum. We received 72 packs, each with two bottles, hence 144 bottles. And once we hit the 10-year mark, we're really going to have to start um purchasing bottles. Now, they're $1,100 a bottle. We didn't put them into uh these budgets as we really want to look into grants and other um creative funding before we come here and really hit it hit you guys up on this. But it might be something we have to consider

173in two years. Yes. And I'll put another thing on the radar screen apparatus in about 10 years. Yeah. I I I do want to like pre-plan for some of this stuff. Yeah. Okay. Um the increase in calls are those uh mainly I'm going to try to differentiate local or Interstate 91. Um they're mainly local. They are. We are up and I reported this out to the public safety committee Monday. We're up 17% this year over last year. Um, I believe with the call number today, I think it was 260. We were there the fourth week of May last year. Um, the second half of the year is typically busier than the first half. Where we land December 31st, you know, is anybody's guess. Um, with that said, and I don't know how they're doing it,

174but we've seen uh a decrease in highway calls the past six weeks. And I don't know if it's different enforcement. What's going on out there, I'm not sure. February was an extremely heavy month. We were out there uh better than every other day. I believe it was 15 calls. Uh March slowed down and April has slowed down. Uh again, the crystal ball being a crystal ball, it's fuzzy. I I don't know what the highway's going to bring the rest of the year. Um and as you know, September through January, because I already mentioned February, was just right, you know, up there. We were up there three, four times a week. So then we do we get compensated for the calls that are on the interstate and we do not get compensated for the local call.

175That's our our dime so to speak. We get compensated at the tune of $500 for every fire company dispatched to to the highway. Um per highway call. We dispatch three companies. We dispatch three companies for a safety factor because we want blockers up there. We want apparatus cutting down and slowing down traffic for with our people working up there. Um, with that said, we do have a revenue recovery policy for certain calls within the town. Um, it's kind of like the false alarm policy where you have three false alarms, then you're able to charge $99 after that. I believe it's a town ordinance. So, the highway pulls in considerably more than the in town residency requ uh revenue sure uh recovery. Did the governor put the money back in to reimburse the highway calls in

176his proposed budget? As of now, as of Monday, we received a document from the Connecticut Fire Chiefs Association that the legislative committee recommended the governor put the money back into the uh limited access highway fund. Whether he's done it at only three days ago, we're not sure. Uh I can tell you last year they ran out. This year we're more than halfway through the year and they've a little more than onethird. They're at they've spent about 600,000. So they've got 900 left in the fund. So it's not there this year. I mean for the new his new. Thank you, Chief. Two apparatus. You all done with me? Apparent. All right. One more page. One more page. Don't move yet. All right. Yeah, you'll see a $17,980 increase and it's pretty simple. Uh $7780 is made

177up of uh full-time salaries, two mechanics, and $10,000 increase for repair and maintenance. basically is wear and tear in the trucks and parks and the trucks aging and tires going up, you know, double of what they were a couple years ago or last year. So, um, chief can talk to details on that. Any questions? Just with the technical equipment, we spent nothing at this point. I'm anticipating 10,000 be still. Hold on. I have his actual want to double check. It's unlike the fire department to leave a line item unexpended unless I uh I had put him on a freeze and I know I did. Uh he's about uh close to 4,000 to date. What do you anticipate a lot of tires to be replaced in the vehicles? The uh the tires we replace. Uh I

178don't have all the amounts for next year, but we replace them not when not like our own personal tires where you start seeing the wear bars. There's a replacement rotation for these. They've gone up. We used to pay about $600 a tire. We're up to $1,100 a tire now. And you can't find them cheaper anywhere. Oh, and and the trucks are starting to hit uh some of them are starting to hit 10, 11 years old. Typical lifespan is 20 years. you can ek out 25 years. Um, so we're we're getting about the mid-range on these the next few years. Uh, and the other thing is, you know, when the town was nice enough to approve the referendum in 2015, I believe it is, and we ordered and began receiving the trucks as they were coming

179in. Some of them were at 6, 8, nine month delivery time. Now we're talking two to three years. So um and probably double what we paid uh back then. So we probably do have to do some serious planning coming up. Can I I'm going to clarify on that was actually your technical equipment question which is your hose. Do you want $10,000 for hose or Right. And then we moved on. Fran asked about the tires, but as for the technical equipment, um we received money from the state which we did purchase uh some hose for for the object is or the objective is to have a full engine worth of replacement hose. Um and that's a lot of holes, close to 3,000 feet. Um the technical equipment we were going to purchase some stuff um uh

180new computer readers for the apparatus etc. We're on hold right now um with the spending freeze. Just give me the nod and I'll sit down. It's okay. Yeah, I'm all set. All righty. Thank you. Thank you, Chief. Fire prevention has been moved to the uh next workshop meeting. Oh, that would be the fire marshall's office. That's good. Does that concludes this evening? So, motion to adjurnn. Second. All in favor? I. Thank you, everyone. I Thank you, Bill. Thanks, Bill. There you go, Bill. You got