001Oh, how is everyone doing tonight? At least you don't have a Well, my name's Jeff Baron, first selectman Tom Anderson. I actually have the balls to say I I was elected with 512 votes. So, a lot of you had to vote for me. That's about 7% of the electorate. So, just let you all know, my wife and I pay our taxes, unlike some people that like to throw stones at us. Yeah. So, I'm going to do All right. So, uh before we get started, I just want to do the same thing I did last time. Uh we will not believe we will dissent. It has to be a group discussion, all right? Before we discuss. It's all about working together. Um you know, when we work together, good things happen. Like the bathroom project that's
002going to happen here at the school. It's going to save $260,000 not $260,000. $200,000. Uh because we worked together. And it wasn't easy to get it done, but we did work together. All right? So, things good can happen if we work together. So, when I read this agenda, the first thing you see all this There's things we're going to do. First thing we're going to do is elect a moderator. Second thing we're going to do is the Board of Finance is going to start running the meeting. I mean, they're going to do a presentation. The third thing we're going to do is ask you questions to any of the boards. You can ask questions of whatever you want. And then what's going to happen is we're going to return. There will be no motions that
003will be able to entertain no reductions of anything that's been done by the Board of Finance. What the Board of Finance has put forth is going to May the 26th. All right? So, as long as we all understand that the game plan. All right? So, my requirement is to read the notice and get this started. Um Notice of bifurcated budget meeting Tuesday, May 12th, 2026, 7:00 p.m. The electors and citizens qualified to vote in town meetings of the town of Andover are hereby notified that a bifurcated budget meeting of the town of Andover will be held at the Andover Elementary School in the gymnasium, 35 School Road, Andover, Connecticut on Tuesday, May 12th at 7:00 p.m. for the following purposes: to choose a moderator for said meeting, for review and discussion only, no action upon
004the bifurcated budgets of the town and the Andover Elementary School for the fiscal year July 1st, 2026 to June 30th, 2027 as prepared by the Board of Finance. And voting will be deferred to the budget referendum at the Andover Town Community Room, May 26th. Also, the adjourned copies of the proposed bifurcated budgets of the town are available in Town Clerk's office. Voting by absentee ballot or any other means is not permitted for this meeting. So, we're going to get started and um we're going to sit there and do item one, to choose a moderator for said meeting. I'd like to nominate Myra there. I'd like to second that. Um so, Louise Lowe Katch did the nomination. Louise. Louise Kimball did the second. Does anybody have a a further nomination for moderator? I'd like to >>
005[laughter] >> Okay, so if there are Sorry, sorry. No other nominations, we're going to let him in there and take over the meeting. >> Good evening, everyone. Welcome. Um, we will just jump right in. But, out of curiosity, how many of you did get to attend the Board of Finance meeting after I do after the referendum failed and the honor Yes. Yes. Just curious. Just curious. So, the [clears throat] sound of this will be brand new for a lot of you. Okay. So, gentlemen over the guidelines. Um, also we'll hand it over to Mr. Edward for letting us know how this is going. But, also when we come to this evening part, we're going to have everybody come here and use the mic instead of running around with the mic. And as usual >> [clears
006throat] >> address. And also just that, you know, there's a saying, we can't necessarily control the wind, but we can set our sails. So, tonight is sort of part of our setting sails that asking questions, getting clarification, we're um sharing opinions. We will keep it to 3 minutes. But, please, you know, as you're as you're choose as to the budget. Hello, everybody. What I think Robin Newton from the Board of Selectmen is here. Oh, good. I think we're there. Too many lights. It's not those stories. It's about the It's those stories. Ladies and gentlemen, please be quiet. Thank you. Uh, apologies if I didn't go down here and use my laptop. I'm not all that competent. So, one of the elements is I've just been going over some of this because we've done it already.
007Uh, for those of you who are here though, there is this is just a basic budget process We go over the various budget requests from the various town departments and school boards. And then we're going to run you through what we did on the 6th at the Board of Finance meeting following the telling of the referendum. And my revised math on mill rates. People are usually interested in that. Bear in mind these are all revisable. Uh and some sample property tax calculations. So this is what's happened so far. I've added to it. The first bit of this is not used in any of the new book if you're following along. Uh what happened of course is that the referendum budget failed. The town spoke indicated you will uh revise the budgets. They felt the budgets
008were too high. So now the budget by function is split so they vote on it separately from now on. Uh so we took this issue these issues up at our meeting on the 6th uh to review and discuss changes. And then we'll be taking this budget to referendum this Tuesday, October 6th. Some [clears throat] things that have changed since Uh the first thing to take down, interestingly enough, was the state decided to allocate additional aid to cities and towns. Our share of this is listed here. I hope you can read it. But basically it's $80,000 towards education and 17.7 uh in supplemental town aid. My understanding is since the net budget is rising, uh you know, we can use that to to freight. And there's been some back and forth from state guidance on that.
009But my belief is that the latest and greatest is that we're fine there. So the Board of Finance went through the town budget again. Uh we made some relatively modest cuts on the town side. Uh the town operating budget $16,400. Little changes here, little changes there. $5,000 for each of the three departments that we discussed and we thought that we'd be okay moving forward with that. 5K reduced from the Treasurer's budget. Again, discussing with the Treasurer about the open position and programs that the community center had been tasked with doing with the number that we ultimately arrived at. And then there was a little bit of a very small cut to the recognition. Then we looked at >> [clears throat] >> the school budget, which somehow my my bullet item didn't make it. We reduced
010$50,000 from the school budget. Basically tripled the cuts on the town side and then we voted to use $100,000 from the modest side fund balance to defray tax issue. Again, apologies for not having that bullet point on AES. We did reduce We also talked about another saving that has, you know, action is not being taken on yet. So, I only put this in here for informational purposes. The number is not in the calculations. The 24-month plan on AES is just about done. We should have some money coming back from the AES budget, which we could use, but we had a vote on that. People are going to be As you know, both RAM budgets, capital and ops, their meeting as I understand it hasn't been scheduled. To lose I can't tell you what's going to
011happen. I got a text that the payment may be $100,000 on the cut. And I don't know why she had any idea about that stuff. But those numbers are not in as I could possibly have known going into this meeting. So, Oops, sorry. So, here's the vital chart of our expenditures. Again, as I think I went through with you guys through our last meeting, the RAM number, this is the true number for their operating, right? Not counting as many of you probably heard they they returning money that that they are giving us back because they kept money from the fighters that they shouldn't have. That 258 is accounted for but it's not in this expenditure fund which is it doesn't belong there in the budget. Town budget this is the adjustment. So, you're seeing it
012go up by 3.5 at the end of our budget year this reflects a $50,000 cut. That still leaves it as a possible 9.8. So, this is I you know I mentioned this last time and again if people want me to go over this again I will otherwise I'm going to kind of speed through my little history documents here and get to the change this one. Again as I mentioned a $50,000 cut brings us down to 9.8 for the school side. >> [clears throat] >> Okay, this is RAM. Nothing has changed on this side. Uh hopefully they will have a decent budget. We have a 12.6% share of whatever budget it is. That's the key thing I think keep in mind. So, those are again budget history documents I can go over them if you want
013to. Mill rate percentage. >> Robert Mhm. Could you slow down a little Okay. There are people including myself that are hard of hearing and some of it is the acoustics and some of it is just the rapidity. Yeah. Saying it inside my Just just just so you know like the hard of hearing myself and my father we have a really hard time hearing because of the reverberation and the gym that echo does not go well with hearing aids and I don't wear a hearing aid so I am completely deaf in my left side. So, it's just really difficult. And that's true best presentation. That's true for everybody. Best idea. Thank you. So, we can revisit any of the stuff that I already talked about that you might have missed. Back me up, any question, happy
014to do that. My apologies for the being a little modest. So, as you guys may remember, if you were here last time, following the process, their millage calculation is a little complicated if we go over a certain figure. The state of Connecticut, a couple of years back, decided that they wanted you to be in charge of auto taxes. We are, at this present moment, just slightly above that threshold, which is something [snorts] that we split millage. It's pretty minor, and I think by the time the ram situation is sorted out, we'll be under this number again, but again, I made the presentation before 4:00 p.m. today. >> [clears throat] >> So, this isn't my chart of the millage calculation. We know we need to raise our taxes just over 10.4 million dollars. And that is
015applied to our grand list. And it results, sorry about that, Peter. In a split millage rate. Again, like I said, the auto is capped at 32.46, and I have to calculate that, take it off the top, and then find the number for the remaining, the real estate and personal property, the rest of the grand list. And that's 32.5. Robert, can you make it bigger? Can you make it I Yeah. Yeah, I'm going to try to do that. I hope it doesn't cut everything off. Hang on a moment. Yeah, that's easier. Sure. Does that Does that help? Yes. A little bit. I know there's a lot of numbers on there. I apologize. And the answer is for the number that most didn't have everybody is right now this budget would be 32.57 on mill rate. Again,
016the auto is slightly lower but auto is minuscule in comparison I think to most people's house taxes, right? So this is just how I calculate this. This is just literally the basic math. The auto's capped and cannot raise more than this figure here. Right? Because of the state law. So then that's how I arrived at the 32.57. And again, I was very stressed that that doesn't actually get set until after the passing of it. And even [clears throat] now and then if Granite makes the cut that I hope they're making, if the state suddenly changes it and pumps more money in, then we would of course address it accordingly. So these this is an updated version of the slide I had last time to just give you a sense for at this mill rate level
017what real estate taxation would look like vis-a-vis last year. So depending on what your assessment is and again, I mentioned this last time real quick. Your houses are sitting or are assessed at whatever the their supposed fair market value is at 70% of that figure. If your house was worth $500,000, you are assessed at 350. Right? 70%. So if you were at that 350, that's your assessable. The tax increase this budget would require of us to find a dividend is $343 a year. And there would be a a few bucks on the auto side. Now, I don't have a ton of that. Uh oh, and we did have this I did have this file. So as you can see, depending on a what my house and my car is assessed at. Uh it it's literally
018$15, $20, $25. It it's nothing compared to this. This is where the difference is. But anyway, the interest in a full disclosure, that's how it works. So, this is just my little history slide. Again, I've updated it. I also want to point out that the last time I did this slide, I had an error in it because I used an an old file. When I created the cumulative was the cumulative number for the last 5 years not including this budget, I had originally had it in my head that I would do a rolling average, and I messed that number up again. It was wrong. A gentleman actually pointed out the very first question at the meeting. He was correct. I had a math error. My fault. Thanks to that guy. This is now been corrected.
019Uh the overall number was wrong, but the the last the 5-year 21 to 26 was wrong. So, this is the update. So, if this budget passes, over the last 6 fiscal years, inclusive of this budget, the tax increase would be 10.6% to be raised by taxation. That does not mean your individual taxes increase. During a reval, I mean, it's going to fluctuate depending on what's going on with your property. I should also mention I do believe the next year is our reval year. So, uh this we haven't had a revaluation in town for 5 years now, I think. And normally it would have been this year, but it's next year now. The state I think backed it up 1 year on us. That changed. What does that have to do with the budget? Um so,
020that's the only presentation. Uh I know about as much about the state money as any of you does, which is to say is the emails flying back and forth from various people trying to get them there. I genuinely think I have them all sorted out, but just be aware it was very last the state does do that sometimes, which is fortunate. So, I will leave it there. I don't want to take up the whole time with this, and I'll get to questions, and hopefully answer them. Only one more. Excuse me. me. So, we're going to have thoughts in the mic. Unless you can't, and don't bring to you. You got a microphone, please. Thank you, neighbors. I would like to amend the rules for this meeting as stated by the Jennifer White, moderator, to include
021not only during the public speaking, not only questions, but to add comments as well to where you're able to make comments rather than just questions. Okay. I agree. We need to listen to what you say then. I do agree with my rules. Okay. So, is everyone in agreement with us that we include not only questions, but also thoughts and considerations? >> [clears throat] >> 3 minutes. Welcome. You guys are really good. Anyone? Over there. Can I come to you? You want to come up? Or do you pass way for Bring it to her. Let us bring it to her. Yeah. All right, you want Name and address. Oh, my name is Georgia Conrad. I live at 117 Lakeside Drive. You have any more for the mic? Yeah. And the mic. Well, thanks. There you go.
022When I wrote my letter to the editor, I was contacted. We're close. When I wrote my letter to the editor, I was contacted by dialing who know. Um and she sent me a message request and it said, "If you have found any superintendent school contracts that is lower than mine, I would like to bring that to the attention of the Board of Education uh to be considered neither myself nor the board could find any. And I did some research. And what I found was maybe 10 minutes three. And it says it says part-time school superintendent salaries for small towns under 104,000 population in Connecticut typically average between 40,000 and 125,000 according to Carson Connection Media Analysis. While full-time large district This is very small, so roles exceed 200,000. These part-time what often multi-town or smaller
023districts lower compensation with some part that contracts in contracts in Litchfield County pay from 36,000 to 95,000. The average is 65,500 and the part-time superintendent Juan Toledo gets full-time benefits. If that's right, then I feel that the Board of Education gave her that raise, they should find the difference in their own budget instead of making the town taxpayers pay for that raise. I'm sure she's worth it, but not in a small town like Andover and Killingworth. Can I respond? He said one moment and we'll go to the next one. I'm not I'm not sure. Where are we going? We don't know. That's fine. >> When you put that into AI, it doesn't give you superintendent of schools salaries by district. We have gone through the districts, and 65,000 is not the salary. So, again, I
024do encourage you to find a specific contract for a district and bring it to the Board of Education, because we did go through them, and that is why it went to the Board of Finance by conversation and then the Board of Education in going through them, and it is still the lowest salary in the state. So, I absolutely would love to see them. If you can list one, and I believe in that message I sent, I do if you do find a specific contract, please bring it to the Board of Education. Again, there wasn't a town contract there for us to consider, but please, I know that Ridgefield is not a contract that is lower than mine, but I would encourage if you found another one to bring it to the one, because that just
025isn't the case. 65,000 is a lot to develop academic capital. Also, if anyone is interested, I'm a key Greenwich mom. For those of you who don't know, I am the head of the Board of Ed. Um, if anyone is interested, if you personally want me to email you um a graph that compares the salaries for superintendents according to 0.2, so that everything is equated right for a full-time versus a part-time for our town and similar towns, so like the towns that are in our DLT were listed as well as the towns that are surrounding us, and we're going to copy to email that to people individually. Um, What is the Yeah, so, sorry, that compares like the the district area for towns that are similar to our town. Um, so, if you if you guys
026want that information, I'm more than happy um to email it. Email it to you. It's a It's a graph that that shows all of them. That'd be cool. Okay, will you just share with us the actual contracts that you are using that would probably want to have rather than just a graph? Uh the contracts are all posted on the AES website. There's a contracts tab. The contracts The contracts that you used to compare. For the [clears throat] superintendent not not I just I'm I'm not going to email you like contracts from 20 towns. Is that what you're asking for? You guys can also find them. Okay, so we can do the work instead we can just share it and then work together. Yes, and share the summary of that information which is far more valuable.
027Okay. Any other questions? I I believe a member of your board did do that as well. Can I just ask a question rather than getting up and leaving? And I don't know what else there is to use that. Yeah, it's just to bring The The question is just really easy. Well, that being put the number of students in each of the superintendent districts. >> No. Um are you able to just ask are you able to offer a comparison that would look at not just superintendent salary but superintendent salaries of the districts of the 200 or less? That would be helpful. Yeah, so the comparison is actually and I can list all of all the towns out but it's comparing us to towns that are near us so like Seabrook and Rowley as well as towns
028that are similar to us like Salem. Um and in terms of comparison it's not based on the number of students that the superintendent is overseeing it's based on how many hours they work so are they a 0.2 or a 0.4 or a 0.6? So, you're taking the salary amount and equilibrating to like how much would that would that salary be if it was a point two? Right. Right. So, it doesn't mean to that makes any sense to me. That's If you want to speak, you need to come up and you need to say your name and address. Thank you. Catherine Gold from the Woods. Yes. And then Yes. Sorry, I intended to My name is Catherine Guard and I live at 44 Lake Shore Drive. And I intended to speak, but really there just wanted
029to ask the question so that I was confident that we were comparing apples to apples as we were looking at and evaluating the superintendent salary. Um and I guess I would also ask the question, was there a raise of 11% this year in the in the budget for the superintendent salary? I was mistaken by that. If that is correct, I would ask us all to consider, is it an 11% raise? If it is, then if it is, then I would ask us all to ask the question, when was the last time we had an 11% raise in our salary? And stop my clock so that So, yes, it is an 11% raise for the superintendent. I hope that we don't spend the whole meeting on this. Do you know that the town treasurer also got
030a 33% raise in that budget? So, she is not the only employee to get a large raise. And I will tell you it doesn't have to do with Valerie to a degree, right? She's phenomenal. She's a great superintendent, but it's also about our town being competitive when and if we have to go hire another superintendent so that we can actually hire one. Um thank you. You can start your clock again if you like. Thank you. I come to this as a mother who loves children. I come to this as a citizen who loves my community and I hope that we will be able to find a way to negotiate and talk together and work through perhaps some new solutions than the solutions we've found so far. When I looked at the size of the end-over
031budget for the elementary school, I did some research and I looked and I asked a question. Oh, I forgot to say, I'm also a former elementary school counselor and I was a school counseling professor for just shy of 20 years. And so I would ask as we asked ourselves the question, what shall we do to deal with this problem that many small communities like ours face, that's the shrinking enrollment, which is happening all over the state and all over the country. All over the country, really. The decisions that we make now are decisions that um decisions that are going to come back to us uh several years from now. But we I think there's a lot of talk about class sizes and what the ceiling should be and is a class size of 10 to
03212 something that's really good for our children. And I would say to you to do a little research and look and perhaps you'll find that a class [snorts] size of 10 to 12 for students in early elementary school grades, kindergarten through three, is a wonderful. It's great if the town is wealthy enough to be able to offer that. But for children in grades four, five, and six, I do not believe in my heart that that small size classroom is a benefit. I think it's a I think it's a disadvantage disguised as a benefit because kids in middle childhood period, They're developing socially, they're developing academically, and they need to learn things from a bigger classroom environment than one that includes 10 to 12 children. And so I could say more, but I'm sure my 3
033minutes is 48 seconds about Right. I love our community. I love our kids. I think we need to be reasonable. And with my remaining seconds, I wanted to say I hate the the division that this has created in our town. I hate the attitude that all of us who are elders might voice opposition toward you and the schools would present our enemies, you know, or people that should be spurned or should be looked at as if they don't care about children. We care about children a lot. We just I just I'll say I just see my community as inclusive of a wonderful school, but greater than that wonderful school. Ron Langlois? Who do you yield to? I'll yield to my brother. The gentleman said just said This far Who are you? far apart this is
034not great. Who are you? Ron Langlois. I'm sorry. Ron Langlois. I want to speak like So, I think I think the Board of Education I think what people are having trouble with is struggling with stuff that they don't understand. We're hearing things >> [clears throat] >> Valerie, your contract was due to expire July this year. But it's already been renewed before the budget. And I think that's what people have concerns with. When you care about the kids, when you care about the the community, it's it's working together. Like, let's wait until after the season and then go from there. If you need a psychologist, hey, Board of Education, we're looking to get a psychologist. Let's work together and see if we can do that in the next couple of years. And if anything were to
035uh fall apart, so we're just asking, you know, clarity on why did it get signed beforehand, okay? And, you know, some people are saying you could be full-time is that true? If you are and you are part-time, how come? That's it. What we just want to ask is think. If we get clarity on it, and it's transparent, we're not going to have this disconnect. This this town has always worked with with the school. There's kids that are graduating from these schools that have got great jobs and that have done well. And they'll continue to do so. And the town wants to continue to work with the school, but they don't want to feel like they're held hostage over the school budget every year. So, that's I think what we're think what everybody is looking to
036hear is just clarity. Any questions? I'm not here to interrupt. I'm I I just actually wanted to ask a question. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Sorry. So, a few mistakes happened explained before, so I know not everybody was here at the last meeting, so I'll be happy to explain them again. With the contract, when you have a three-year contract that's set to expire, you can't wait till to last day of exploration because what happens if in fact it's not what you believe or somebody's not going to stay. So, there's at least a 3-month span, at least a 3-month span because let's pretend I was going to retire. There would be time to find someone new and there would be time to go through the hiring process and fill that position. We did see what
037happened. Unfortunately, we had a couple of open positions on the town side where we were without somebody. You never want that to happen. So, you make sure that that position is going to be filled. The other thing is Mr. Superintendent puts the budget together before they give it to the Board of Ed and then the Board of Ed adopts the budget and then it goes to the town. I'm not the one that decides my contract, the Board of Ed is. So, I can't pull out the dollar figure in my proposed budget until I know what that number is. So, it is always done that you would do a contract months before March. it's set to expire. So, if the last day of this contract was June 30th, which it was, it would happen in October
038that they would decide what that new contract would look like so that if we were parting ways, there would be time to fill that position before June 30th. So, that's very common. There was nothing non-transparent about that. That's actually the way it gets done is that you do it a few months ahead of time. Um Robin, the other question was were the questions Benefits. Um benefits, yes, a contract does include benefits. Just like on the town side, you they actually have part-time people that get stipends for not taking benefits. A benefit is a part of a contract. So, yes. When I was hired originally, I was hired to fulfill a position that the retired person had been in. I'm not retired. So, I took a salary cut to have benefits. They said this was what
039the amount was. That was the whole package for the superintendent. And I said, I need benefits for myself. So, I took a cut in salary so that I could have the benefits included in that package. I didn't get anything more. And there was a third one on the list. Next quality of the superintendent. Oh, yes. We said this before. Thank you. We have to have a service provider. Some schools have a social worker, a guidance counselor, and a school psychologist. We don't. We have one person. So, I I feel like sometimes if it was called a guidance counselor or a social worker, people would think that it was um more appropriate. We just have a have all those three possibilities, we have a a school psychologist who does the testing for students. It's mandatory that
040we have a support position. In our case, it's just a school psychologist. And she wasn't always here. We had a fair amount of her salary covered by the grant though for 3 years. And that grant has expired. And our class sizes 4 through 6, they are all 23 and above. There aren't small classes in 4th, 5th, and 6th grade until uh this year we added the 4th and the 5th. It's Valerie, we have to have somebody available. It doesn't mean we have to have a full-time psychologist. Are you kidding me? Hold on. Hold on. That's not true, Ron. I wish it was, but it's not. We can't if we contracted a uh a psychologist just to come in and do the testing, the cost and as it for a contractor would be three times the
041cost. It's about $150 per hour for them to come in. So, we do have to have this position. Ron, I I wish we didn't. That would be a place we could cut. We cannot. That is a required position. The banks Okay. And I just want to clarify I apologize briefly, but one of the reasons is because frankly, I shouldn't we do the slide. The $90,000 figure is not the full cost everything here to four for two or three years running. $45,000 grant money that went away. So, the net change for the tenants is the 45. So, apologies if I if I confused anyone with my slide. Who is that? That's me. Anything else to write? I think we're good. My name is Michelle Roberts from 149 Lake Road. >> [clears throat] >> I've been here
042for 33 years. A lot of you know me. All right. So, just so everyone is aware because we can make comments this time. You got it. All right. Special education is not a joke. A school psychologist is not there to do therapy to children outside of school. A medical diagnosis is different than an educational classification. If your child has dyslexia, if they suffer from ADHD, autism, or any other mental health diagnosis, and they need help in school to survive, they need a psychologist to give an educational classification. Without that, they don't get the services. Okay? Now, the institutions have been closed for 20 years. We no longer institutionalize these children. Does everyone understand so far? They now are in the schools. It is inclusive education. Okay, so you cannot deny them their rights. As a
043special education teacher, okay? As a a parent with two children who receive services, and they have since they were 3 years old, both speech and psychology services, okay? You are denying not only the children in this town, you are denying my children the right to an equal and equitable education. And that's not fair. So you say your taxes are getting higher. Yeah, gas is $5 a gallon. Okay? But here's the thing, when you don't look at the budgets equally, the town budget and the school budget, really, are you looking at the budget at all? So my question is, I understand that we run on volunteers in this town. Okay? I get that. But my question to you is, are we really taking into consideration why people are voting no? And are you voting no just
044to vote no because you don't want your money to go somewhere else? All right, do you really Is it really that your taxes can't get higher and you can't afford it anymore? If it is, you should be relying on your social services that your tax money paid for. Okay? There's services in towns, there's services in state. But with that, the other thing is, when we were at the Board of Finance meeting, there were positions that were being budgeted for that haven't been filled in 3 years. I only heard two people speak up about it. So, what are we doing about these proposed things, these proposed positions? Can I just ask for a quick quick clarification? So, we did make some adjustments to a couple of the salary line items and at least one of them
045was for a position I don't think we filled exactly. We've been using money. So, the assistant line for instance for the town administrator, we have been utilizing some money in that role. I mean we've been paying money, but we haven't hired say a specific but sort of an extra person. We looked at that line and we cut it. So, can you just when you can you remind me the other bits that you were curious about that why we didn't that we may not have cut? I just want to make sure I'm addressing your questions properly. We talked about the assistant assistant line. I'm sorry. Right. Right. So, so that you have an assistant line, we cut it a little bit. The project manager we're using that money, that's different. Yeah, mhm. That was on hold
046for the past three years. We didn't fill that position. I'm trying to remember which one that was now. I apologize, but I will Can you Was it town position again? Oh, yeah. I think we were the one that said we could cut it a little bit, but there was no reason to cut it fully but we might actually get some of the work done. Are you talking about the property manager? No, not the property manager. Was it the community center, assistant? Center assistant. Okay. The property was something that wasn't able to be hired this year. I don't remember what it was. But it was in the video and then I was kind of shocked about I can go back in the video and Okay. I I apologize, but I I'm sorry. We'll we'll see again.
047Yes. Because I would like to do something specifically like that. Genuinely though, I I don't want to call other than that assistant to the um admin one that we talked about. Sorry. So, did you have a question? Yeah. Um Louise is not here and you want to let us know John. Um I just want to let everyone know that the special ed monies are mandated. We do not reduce any of that special ed money and we never will. So, a psychologist has an opportunity to meet. My daughter is in that field as well and special ed is very important and has never been reduced. They do require the social workers to do the testing and there has been social workers already doing that testing. So, we are not reducing the ABS at all in that
048manner. I just wanted to clarify that. Just real quick. The board of finance doesn't have line item control of board of education. When we cut $50,000 they're going to have to be the ones to figure that out. Where did they get it from? That's not up to us. So, I don't know in fact specifically that $50,000 cut will have to simply work itself. That's going to be their problem and they haven't gotten to it yet. So, I don't know where it would go. I don't think it would be cut from the school psychologist program. Just FYI, we don't know. All we can do is look at the bottom line and see if that number good or not. Hi, my name is Joe Hobby. I live at 218 Hebron Road. I don't have a question, I
049have a plea. I rely on senior mouth moves so I can understand what you're saying. So please, no cross conversations without coming up here so I can actually see you speaking as well as hearing. The mic is attenuated sound. The reverberation also distinctly affects the sound. So please, if you're having a cross conversation, do it over the mic and let me see your mouths moving. That's all. Thank you. >> [laughter] >> Okay, Georgia Colony, 117 Winthrop Drive. I've been in town I've been in town 57 years. And when I came to town, I volunteered everywhere and I eventually got on boards and things like that. I was on the Board of Finance for a number of years. We have never had special needs children institutionalized. And so I just wanted to clear that up because
050when I was on the Board of Finance and I was a chairman and this is like 20 25 years ago, they were not institutionalized, they were educated in the Andover School. And if we had to bus them out to a place where they could be educated because we didn't have the facilities we have today. So, let's clear that up. I'm sorry, but that's the facts. Hi, Ruth Besh, 111 Townshend Road. I just have a quick question. I understand getting salaries up to par. It is a small town, and I know other towns, other instances, when you're trying to get somebody up to par, you do it over two or three years, not in one fell swoop, to make it easier on the budget for people to understand. So, I'm just curious why all at one
051time, not gradually. So, it's not actually all at one time. It is gradually. We needed to make that much of an addition in order to get her closer to the bottom of the pack of where everything is. She's still at the bottom. And I do can definitely give you that information like the more information. I I just I guess my my common math is why are we spending this entire meeting talking about the superintendent's raise, which is equal to about $10,000? Is $10,000 a large percentage of your taxes? Is it a large percentage of what your tax increase is going to be? Are there other more giant ways that we could take money away from things that is not the superintendent. Absolutely. 11% is just an awful lot and people don't understand that. I've had
052the same salary for over 15 years and I still work. So, it just seems like a big jump to me. It is much It's all reason and stuff. Well, that's a different It's a different question. So, I was asking if she had a $5,000 increase last year and that is correct. Um, that was part of a previous contract. So, if you guys want to look at that school contract, you're more than welcome to do so. They are posted on the school website. Hi, I'm Ashley Johnson. Recently moved here from Texas. How do you spell Yes, yes. My address is 191 Lake Road. Oh, I'm sorry. Um, okay, so first I just have a question for everybody. Who believes that education is important? Please. All right. >> [clears throat] >> Everybody in this room saw all
053the hands go up. All right, cool. Who likes Andover? >> [laughter] >> All right. So, do we all just admit that we all love this place and that we're all trying to do what we believe is best for our town and our community? 11% is a bit of an increase, especially net focus focus, especially for people on a fixed income. So, I can understand why anyone would balk at that. Yes, there are social services for people. Yes, there are things that we can do. But anytime that you're going to ask more money from people, we're all going to have questions. We're all going to want to know where exactly it's going. It's not that we want to say no. I certainly don't. Shoot, my kid goes here and I love this school. Just remember that
054we're all on the same side and we're all just trying to figure this out together and to maybe give everyone the benefit of the doubt and not throw little side jabs here and there cuz I can guarantee you that ain't going to help anybody. Thank you. Hi, Stacy Kaufman, 164 Lake Road. Um What's sticking out to me about this budget is that this is the Andover elementary school budget failed, but the RAM budget passed in this town. I know it didn't pass in Hebron and Marlborough and that is shocking to me because that per pupil expenditure is $32,000 per student from the document they shared. And um I don't know if that's the norm for regional school districts. I'm not overly familiar with regional school districts, but that seems extremely high to me when most
055towns are maybe between 19 and 26,000 per pupil. So, the fact that that one passed in this town and the elementary school budget didn't pass, I felt like nobody was paying attention to that one. And we care about our kids, obviously, at all grade levels, but the things they've presented here are things that it appears they need. They're not trying to pull one over on anyone. They need all of these things. And yes, preschool is a legally mandated and we would have to have it regardless. So, that was my takeaway and I just maybe think you should look into re-evaluating also in order to push our class down. I'm going to take off my hat and say something as Linda. Sit down. >> [laughter] >> Um maybe we can try to respond to here uh
056Maybe we haven't mentioned tonight. It's not all about the teacher's salary. It's also about a huge increase in the APS budget overall. And when I look at budget and I am not on the finance committee, thank god. But when I look at the whole town, we do love our whole town. If it's 100% of a budget, right now don't we have 79% going to education and 21 going to the rest of the town? To me, okay, yeah, it might shift a little, but it's a very small amount for the town to do everything else besides the school, to me. So, I don't think we're just harping on the salary. It is a flash but I think we should also and we did the referendum saying no, it's too high. And we're probably going to say
057it again and sweep. May I ask a question? I'm done. The one thing I would just add regarding our educational expenses is it makes This is part of how it's presented in our budgets and has been for years. But you know, we receive that 2.9 million from the state every year the ECS educational cost sharing grant, right? And that's a big reminder that we need $2,000 to be paid out to When we display the budget, you you know, it's not lost on that what we do not do is show that coming off the end budgets, right? It comes off the whole town budget, which fine. But what The only reason I bring it up is if we're going to discuss, you know, kind of the pie chart of where our money goes. The whole idea
058that we're spending 70% of our budget on education usually in any given year. True. That's where our expenditures go. Um but we also list in the state aid. I have issues with, frankly, how we displayed the money and the grant money in general, and I will continue to address those as my time on this board continues. Um but I just want to point that out that if you're looking at it from the standpoint of what we are paying for, it is the expenditures, right? And then there's expenditures less funding. All right. So, that's the one thing that just do those numbers. I think you could get two different numbers. Both of them are up. Just pointing that out. Marcy Miner, 80 West Street. Um I just wanted to address the Board of Finance because uh
059I've sent a letter and I requested that we when we look past this budget and we look at this budget, um pass or fail, whatever, uh that we do not include the uh money that's coming back to the state and from RAM because um what I understand is especially the money from RAM is a one-time refund. So, I do not think that we should be looking at that when it comes to this budget. Any increases we receive now are permanent. Budgets don't go down. So, I don't think we should be looking at that at this budget because even if budgets are flat, it's going to be increased next year cuz this money is a one-time thing. Yeah. So, I would just say that on these expenditures that pull them off these expenditures, you're correct that
060there are one-time There are one-time chunks of money coming. The 258 from RAM and the additional state aid I presume is a one-shot deal unless they up and do it again next year. I wouldn't count on that. That's it. That's true. Same with the use of fund balance. We've done it in the past a couple times. It's not new that we're doing it, but it again, that's a one-shot from our reserves, not recurring revenue. So, that's true. Our expenditures are truly up in here. I think you know, I'm I'm not I hope you don't think that I'm misrepresenting what what actually is happening. Uh and I I came up with a couple of different ways to address the RAM, the 258K that they're giving us back for the money they kept too long. Uh if
061you take and I I had a whole conversation with him just by the way with the RAM superintendent about how we presented it at the referendum. I wanted to make sure that it's the true number. When you saw that on my side of the story, I think 4.25 million for RAM, that's our levy without the the offset because it's Fitch in the sleep. To Marsha's point, if I were to pull that number off, it looks like RAM's giving us this big cut, which isn't really true. Okay? So, it's always a question of how to present the information to show you again we're doing this to receive reduce tax rate this year, but yes, it's an all year away that all things being equal, no other change, that 350,000 which was 258 from RAM and then
06298 from the state, goes away. I say yes, correct. Point is is that it wasn't deducted from the line. Line item is the actual budget line item. We didn't deduct it. We're not hiding from the fact that the money's there. It's taken out somewhere else. Line items are what they are. We didn't deduct those amounts from those line items. We're we're stating actual budgets whether we get that money or not. Right. We we receive it. It's only when we try to play with the taxes that, you know, you pull that money out. So, basically we overpaid for a number of years. And if I were to have my way, I'd say um give me the refund cuz I had a property that paid taxes for a whole year and I overpaid on my taxes that
063year. Now, I'm not going to ask the town to do that cuz I know that'll be hard to do. All right? But that's what I'm just saying. You know, don't use it to tell me that we're saving money this year. Use it, you know, later. I mean, as a one-time one-time uh refund. >> [clears throat] >> Okay, so one thing I want to remind you know, we kind of have this conversation every year. Our budget always says ATS school budget and the assumption is that that $4 million is simply focused on the classrooms. And the thing is is it is 35 school roads budget. This gym right now, when it gets heated, it gets heated on our budget. That's $10,000 a year in oil to heat this gym and we use the gym half the
064time in basketball and pickleball and town meetings. We use it the other half of the time. We're only in school 180 of 365 days in a school year. So, all of those expenses are our expenses to pay at a large school budget for the largest piece of town property. Everything about this building is in our budget. We also do not have a capital budget. But almost every school in the state has a capital and an operational. So when you are looking at our budget, it is our operational capital budget up until now, all going in one. We talked about Ram, we talked about Ram just because it's our neighbor, Warshing Road, Walmart Road. Those schools have an operation and a capital budget. I do not. So everything that needs to be fixed in this building
065up to this date has come out of our operational budget. All the oil, the heat, the hot water, everything comes out of that budget. It is not just what goes on in the classrooms. The cutting the grass, everything is on our budget. You want to make a point? You all are invited. I'm Jeff Maguire, 422 Lake Road. I kind of have a problem with that logic because we're one town. We all have to pay for everything. And there are things on the town budget, let's say like sprawling the parking lot for the school, that are not paid for by the school, paid for by the town. So that whole logic drives me insane. Just to let everybody here understand that. God, thank God we don't allow the school to operate the capital budget because the
066town would have been out $180,000 on that bathroom. So thank God we don't allow the school district to handle the capital budget. And the same for superintendent for acknowledging that this is a town building. Everybody heard her, right? It's a town building. It's our biggest asset. It's what we need to take care of the most. And I really have a problem with the focus from the Board of Finance on how we're paying for what we need to pay for. Because you have to focus on expenses. I'm a I'm I know I don't have a lot of qualifications. That was made painfully clear. But I am a CPA and I own multiple businesses and I deal with budgets all the time. I have never had anyone come to me and give me a budget that I
067just pass through. Right? It's since I am the Board of Finance for my companies, I have never let anyone come to me and sit there and say, "I need this increase because I need it. I want it." And I have never sat there and just let anyone push it right past them without any changes. That's happened for 2 years. The Board of Finance has sat there and taken what the school has asked for and sat there and passed it right through. Right? And I'm not sitting there saying to cut crazy. I'm sitting there saying to listen, to collaborate. Cuz I'll ask the Board of Finance my question. Here's my question. Did everyone on the Board of Finance get all of the information from the town that it needed to make its decisions and from the
068Board of Education all of your questions answered? No. No. Town with the town, screw with you? Not sure. Yeah, fantastic turnover No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm asking if you didn't get information from the town. Did you not get all of your information from the town? I would say actually to my satisfaction personally is the least of our chair. Not really because we have a lot of turnover at town hall. It's nobody's particular fault. I'm not casting blame. I hate to do that. What I am saying is I had some questions about what the balances are in various capital funds. I do not feel we have a certain clarity on that. We have the almost finished audit. But I wanted our new treasurer to true up those numbers and reconcile them. She has
069not had a chance to do that yet for all of the funds. This is not some great tragedy. She's working hard. I understand. But if you ask me that question flat out like that, then the answer is not quite. It doesn't mean I don't think the town budget is good. From the board of education, have you got more information? Is there a balance in the budget? You know perfectly well that there have been requests made by members of my board that they don't feel have been appropriately answered. Yes. And is your question related to No. Um we're not going to Um so so those are problems I have with how we conduct business within the town. Because if we are not collaborative to the point we need to be, and if we were collaborative, this
070would be a lot easier process. A lot. And so the other thing that I have because I always ask it and then I'm going to ask the board of education and I'm just sitting here. Um I will ask you the normal question I ask is if the pre-K is costing the taxpayers money. And I'm going to ask you a question because it really goes to everything. Have you considered raising tuition on the pre-K program? So this has been discussed multiple times. As everyone is aware, if you've been to any board of education or town meeting, starting next year, so not this coming school year, but the school year after, pre-K is mandated for our entire state starting in 2027. It's not an option. It's not only for kids that are special ed. It is mandated
071by the state. We are waiting to change what we do with the pre-K program until we get direction from the state on what that entails exactly because there are different amounts of money that are given for different children in different income brackets and they need to be honest, quite frankly, haven't sorted that all out yet. Look at how it's sort of divided our state is in terms of giving additional funding to our towns at this time. So, we're not going to make changes to that, but yes, it's it's a great point because next year, the education budget will include all of preschool when you guys look at it. It's going to look really different cuz it's going to have positives and negatives. It's going to have tuition in, it's going to have grants in, and
072it's going to have money out. And to be clear, um special education is mandated currently for kids in between age three and five. So, after they age out of first to three until they start kindergarten, if we have those costs in our budget for all the kids that need those services, the Board of Education budget would likely be close to $200,000 more than what it currently is. We are able to take advantage of some of those services being grant funded because the teachers are grant funded because they are part of the preschool program. Mr. Mayor. I I also have a question. Um You have 40 seconds. I have 40 seconds? Yes, you have 40 seconds. Okay, okay. Take your time. >> Okay, so so my my my question related to that, I'll ask the other
073question. Are all the grant dollars that the Board of Education receives included in this budget that we see or are there grant dollars that we receive and extra costs that are spent by the Board of Education? Everybody needs to know this. So, the difference between what you're asking is if something is supplemental or if it's supplanted. Okay. We're getting to you know our expenses that we see on So, any grant that could be subtracted from the line item in the budget, it is subtracted. So, that line item looks lower than what it did look like, but the grants are not in the budget. You're not seeing those in the budget. You're just seeing the end lesser total. And And there are many grants that the school gets that are they they are in addition to
074or for specific things. They're not to take money away from something. So, for example, like the after-school program grant, that grant is not something that could have replaced something in the budget. It's to to provide additional services. So, so you and I could have worked together to really get all of the information out and done a really good job and made everybody here comfortable with how all of the spending was done. If we would work together. I'm just saying, that's me. Right? So, I'm done. Can I go to my three minutes? I'm Bill Wrochesky, 232 Birch Mountain Road, Board of Finance member, and I take exception to Jackie what you just said. This board spends hours. We got to meet for 3 months going through the budget. We don't pass anything through. We ask Randy
075to come talk to us. We have bonding explained line by line everything that's in that budget. We ask as many questions as we can to try and understand every line item, every budget, every salary. We never take anything and pass it through, and I dare anybody here to say we don't. Do we Do we just pass it through? We believe that hours trying to make sure we understand every single thing that but we never pass anything through. Yeah, sometimes I'm sorry I'm I'm sorry I'm sorry we you don't have the access. You don't have access to the line of the detail of any of this. Well, I I disagree with that. We see our full budget and we see 21% increase in insurance cost, $45,000 increase for the flight purchases, mandated by law, lost the
076plane. I go on and on and on. It's not a frosting on the cake here. It's real expenses to run the school. It's not just, "Oh, let's do this, that, and the other thing." It's it's all real stuff. We don't pass anything through without going through it. Sorry, I just assumed bad name. Um We'll take a few moments. Did she come back? I guess not. Okay. Hey again. Um so, again, 101 Lake Road. So, we uh asked Johnson if we could comment, right, on what other people have said. 3 minutes starts now. Okay. I'm so sorry, sir. I forgot your name. Jeff McGuire, sir. Jeff McGuire, okay. So, maybe I'm going to say this and not try to be mean. Again, I'm Texan, I'm Southern. So, if you want to work with people, you have
077to meet them where they're at. That goes for everybody on this board. And I know everybody knows that. When we're in school, we all learn this in pre-K and kindergarten, right? Um I'm going to be nice. No, be mean, James. Oh, sweetie, don't make me mean it. Oh, I lost your car. So, you say that you and this young lady could have met together and worked together. I will say that sometimes your tone does make it a little bit hard for people to address you. Just as sometimes her tone can be a little bit hard because we're passionate. You're both passionate. People about this and maybe Okay, so I see whenever you go ahead and you send out a newsletter to everybody in the community on your own dime. Anyway, by the way, like that's
078some good quality paper. So, you're sending these out on your own dime. I see someone who cares. But, I also see somebody who could It could maybe be taken as kind of undermining the the school budget and that is not a way to work with people. So, if when you're saying that you want to work with someone, we give everybody respect. Thank you for the information that you give out. However, you do need to show respect to these and to these young ladies and then you don't have to drag our buns out here at 7:00 at night when I could be at home in my comfy cheetahs. I'm wearing a bra for God's sake. Is there anybody here? So, I would just suggest that maybe y'all show some respect to each other and bring food.
079It always helps. What's up, kids? So, anybody who has not Anybody who has not spoken yet. Joanne. Joey Burke, 134 Bear Swamp Road. Um I just have logistics questions really. I know I usually have a lot of comments, suggestions, all those kind of things. Um can we please get um posted on the website um the mill rate page, you know, or you know, that really gives us all a lot of information that gives us the total tax dollars, the cuts, you know, the glad to see that we have what fund balance against it, but I kind of want to see the total projected expenses, things of that nature. It's hard to really all of us to make good decisions about our budgeting when we can't see that end game, you know, I know what the
080cuts are. The other thing I did want to ask is, you know, it was brought up that that health employee benefits are a big cost and a big driver, salaries, of course, things that can't be changed. We all get that. Um Well, I just wanted to ask real quick, in the Board of Ed publication, do we have the health benefit line on here that I could There is a There is a line line in the budget, yes. Okay, because I know where the benefits are. Just trying to get a dollar amount. I mean, it's very expensive what the town does pay on health benefits. We all know those are skyrocketing. We also I also want to personally point out I'm very much in favor where I'm going with this that I think all of our
081employees need to get the best of benefits. I'm happy, you know, that we're able to provide that and we want to keep that going if they're qualified. So, I was looking for the dollar amount so that I could have forecast what I know what the the town I think is going to be paying 254,798. I just couldn't come up with that order of that number. So, my only thought to maybe the Board of Selectmen, it's been brought up quite a bit of times that we do have this health care statement that's in the budget, you know, under health care benefits. Um again, I want anybody that needs insurance to get insurance. Please take it, family, single, two people, whatever that is. But, the stipend has gotten to a really high rating since health care has
082skyrocketed. So, now I think we're probably paying some of the employees maybe $7,500 not to take insurance, which equates to maybe $145 a week, $600 a month, and a big a big draw on our budget. So, it's been talked about for years dropping that to a level that other towns do. So, I'm hoping that the Board of Selectmen is considering that. Even $2,400 would be 200 a month, which is a nice token. If this was a good idea, you know, every other town would be doing it. There's no other town that I can find. They have statements, but they're like 2,000, 2,400, things of that nature. So, I'm personally hoping that we can drop that this year. We can work on that in the budget to a more livable expense. So, as we start to
083unwrap this up, I think there's much more discussion, but just a couple of one more questions. Yes, I can hear you. Just a second. Um I guess so. Yeah, it's Joanne was asking about Well, I just wanted to make sure she understood it. Cuz I think there was a question in the beginning there about, you know, what we looked at. One of the things about the payment in lieu of the health care same for the social town employees. As I understand, and I could be corrected if I'm wrong about this for a first one, I think. Uh that's tied to 50% of a individual plan what it would cost. Now, I think it would be up to them to alter anything they chose to do so, but the the flip side to that, obviously, there
084is is that when people say, "Well, all right, you know, I'll take the insurance." Which would be completely dramatically more expensive. So, that's why, for my money, I'm I think we're doing an okay job there. That would be my take on that. Okay. Um and then I'll I'll just really quickly I just want to mention one other thing about grant funding and what's in the budget and what's not in the budget. This is something that's occurred to me now for a little while, and I intend to continue to work on it um as board of finance chair with our new town administrator, with our new treasurer. There's not everything on the town side is displayed. We get insured. I think that it's not. And it never has been as far as I know this board
085and and probably since I've been in town since '07. We don't show the town aid road grant. And then the total amount we spend on roads, we show them what we're loading into the town road fund. That's not the same two things. So, I am all for I think we want to get as much information out there and accurate as possible going forward. But, if we're going to talk about what's in not in there and not in there, this is a both sides of that house issue, just to be clear. Okay. She's going to talk for me. She has a right to speak. Go ahead. Okay. She's talking for me, Linda. No. Okay, go ahead. I'm sorry. I'm going to have other people who have not talked. So, if you want to come up, you
086want to talk, come up. But, Michelle has spoken. All right. All right. Can't say this. Yeah. Once again, That's very interesting. Joe King, 86 School Road, Andover. Back. I want to know why front swishing from the town voters exactly why they voted up or down on the budget. Are you guessing what they had changed? Would they want change? Without information, you can't do your job properly. And what are you going to publicly do about it if you want them? I want you to address it here, here, teacher, in person and Zoom meetings as well. Check that. Okay. So, if you understand what I'm talking about, I got it. All right. Eight. Do you have a rebuttal of all of it? I'm not trying to rebuttal anything, first of all. We did What was that? Do
087you need me to repeat? I just want to So, I wanted to see you see me. You know, we just Okay, sorry. Don't worry. We discussed this before the meeting. I don't feel like we see exactly eye to eye. However, my take is we see the vote totals. We see the advisory questions. We get public feedback through the phone and emails from residents or town problems at our meetings. There is no perfect perfect information. But, I also don't really understand the mechanism by which we would canvas the whole town for their or at least the the people who participated in their town meeting or that we do that would work. I don't have a problem with more information. More information is great. But, I don't know how we would go about doing that functionally that
088would work and would be a workable process. And as I pointed out and we discussed this before the meeting, there's issues with what's representative. Who shows up at this meeting? Who comes to a board finance meeting? Who answers our queries? All of those would be subsets of the people who voted in the referendum. So, I'm open to ideas, yes, but I don't quite follow how we would go about doing getting more information about the precise changes that town residents want to a given portion of the budget than they already did. That's my take. Cindy, can you get the microphone in the back? Yes. Who? Cindy Music. Or not at the public speaking at meetings. But there are multiple There are multiple avenues of this. As I said, I said there's there are the referendum results,
089the advisory questions at the referendum, the comments at our board meetings, comments at these town meetings, letters or emails sent to members of the boards, personal conversations as well. Of course, that's always an option if you know someone. And you know, for those that monitor social media, I personally don't, I admit. Uh there's plenty of chatter there as well. All of those things represent subsets of people who would vote in the referendum. So, which slice is the accurate slice? You know, we do our best. That's my response. Okay. Yes. Let's see what else is Let's see. Okay. How are we going to end the meeting? Meeting next week. So, only one question. This is the same thing. Hi, I'm Bob Hamburger, Shadow Hill Road. I've only lived here 38 years, not like some of you
090long-timers. Um, I want to talk about something that um is really just a very small subset of what's been discussed here. Something that I feel though would be operational and could reduce some of the contention and some of the friction that we're seeing here. And this this idea that I'm going to talk about is actually something that is done to some extent, but not rigorously by the various boards and commissions. And that's the level of documentation that we have to back up our ideas. Now, I come to this uh as a lifelong electrical engineer who's worked in industry, I've worked in university research settings. And when I come up with an idea, I have to make sure that it is bulletproof. It is defensible, it is justifiable. And to do that, I have to establish
091a rigorous chain of documentation for the ideas that I have that lead to the conclusions that I draw. Now, some of this was alluded to very early in the meeting. Caitlyn, you responded to someone on this side saying it would be egregious to have to email them the 20 or so uh contracts that were used to justify Val's uh compensation. And Val, I don't mean to pick on you, but it's a it's a good example of what I'm talking about. So, I think it behooves everyone here on every commission, every board, when you're doing research, if you're doing something online, you find a piece of information, you find a document that you are going to be using to justify a position, you take note of that. You copy and paste that into a spreadsheet or
092a Word document or something like that so that you have an irrefutable documentary chain of where these ideas originated and how they relate to the conclusions that you're drawing. This is the kind of thing that's always done in academia. Val, I'm sure you did it when you put your thesis together. I'm sure you had pages and pages of references. A document like this where the curious reader, as they say academia, can go back to the original sources, can be made available electronically. We can post it on our website, and I think it would cut down tremendously on the amount of friction that we see back and forth because somebody who challenged something, you can say, "No, here it is. This is what I'm basing it on. There's no question about it." That's my idea. So,
093as we I I know. I know. I'm just throwing out the a moment of breath and check in because it's pretty soon we're going to wrap up. You know, good discussion, good questions. But we'll start to move towards that if someone at some point in the near future tonight has a motion to adjourn. So. Yes. All right. This is super quick. Guys, I'll take 30 seconds. Joan, you had something that I totally wanted to answer. You stole it out of my mind. Yes, I will try to get the new presentation with the new rate calculations posted to the website. I'll get to Kate and I'll ask her to put it up there. Right? I will ask her to leave up the old one so people can toggle between and see, "Okay, this is the change."
094All right. I'll try to get that done shortly. Good evening, everybody. I'm Jerry Frome, 118 Woodfern Way in Andover. I've lived there since 2005. Um I'd like to thank the people who volunteer their time for the board of education. Thank you. I've always wanted to volunteer. I I knew I wanted to be just for a long long time when I retired. So, the first thing I did is I read the greeting of Riverhead. The Riverhead had a meeting here. They wanted somebody for the board of education. Write your letter of intent. Why do you want to be on the board of education? I applied. I was the only one. There was nobody else. And I thank the people who are here this evening. I don't know if you care. I care also. I care from
095a couple of different directions. I am a senior citizen. I've had lunch with our seniors. I've enjoyed senior citizen activities. I am a senior citizen on a fixed income. And spent that way for over 10 years. But that's okay. Every time we've had one of these budget meetings every year I have to hear I hear the same things. Now, keep in mind correct me if I'm wrong, Justin, you take care of hiring and people for the job, correct? You You take care of board of education. Good boy. And you said our board was responsible for hiring the superintendent. That's great. So, I take responsibility for that. I want the superintendent. She was the best decision I think I've made in my 71 years of living. She's done an outstanding job. And she's taking the school
096and the town shining like the top of the Chrysler Building. And she's It's not quite the brand. I think she's done a super job. Mhm. I think the people you hire, if you want good people, you need to hire them carefully and be willing to pay them. I know it's hard on a fixed income as a senior citizen. I also talk to you as a former elementary school teacher. I taught at South Windsor, Pleasant Valley Elementary School for 17 years. Prior to that, I taught at Buckingham Elementary School in West Hartford with special ed. And that's where I I found that real belong. I It's not about me. It's not about me. It's about people. It's about kindness. It's about love. It's about care. It's caring for the town. Being kind to the people in
097your town. I want to thank you for coming out. So, you didn't And for me, please appreciate the people who are living in this town, are your neighbors and strong residents. And keep in mind, we don't get paid. And we we we work hard. That's okay. We signed for that. Wow. And I hope you all have a very much warmer heart for your people who take care of the job. They do a superb job. Andrew King, 2115 Lakeside Drive. I just elected move to a different meeting. I'll second it. >> [laughter] >> Second question is to change. All those in favor stand and vote. Oh, yeah. I see the lights. Thank you all. Second vote. Have a good evening.