001We're going to get started. We have some few people that are checking in, so I'm required to read this. The electors and citizens qualified to vote in town meetings in the town of Andover are here hereby notified that the annual budget meeting for the town of Andover will be held at the Andover Elementary School at the gymnasium 35 school road and over Connecticut on Tuesday, May 13, 2025 at 700 p.m. for the following purposes. Choose a moderator for set meeting to receive the budget for the fiscal year July 1st 2025 to June 30th 2026 as prepared by the board of finance to approve budget for the fiscal year July 1st 2025 to June 30th 2026 to adjourn. I'm going to have before we get started with any of the specifics I am going to have
002the town attorney discuss item number three. Dennis O'Brien is our town attorney. Great to be here again. Can you hear me? I'm Dennis O'Brien. I live in Willamantic. I've been a town attorney here for more than 20 years. I've been to a few of these meetings, but I've never been able to vote. Never been able to vote because I don't live in Andover. But tonight, I'm afraid to tell you, yeah, I am afraid to tell you that there won't be any vote taken tonight. Okay. It says so on the on the notice, which I actually reviewed, approved, but I hadn't looked at the charter in a while. Okay. The charter was changed in 2022 to to require 2022. Scott again in 2024. I I'm refer I'm going back for it. Okay. Thanks for trying to
003help me. Appreciate it. Anyway, the charter was changed in 2022 to add a section 803D that required that if a budget failed at referendum, it would be split into two parts bifurcated. One part would be the education budget. One part would be the town budget. Okay. As you all know, the budget failed at referendum. So it has to be bifurcated. And so I got a call late last week from our chairman of our board of finance, Mark Rinker, telling me that there was some language in section 803t that I hadn't been aware of because I hadn't looked at it for 3 years. And the language says that the town meeting after the budget fails and it has to be bifurcated and it's on its way to referendum. The town meeting can only uh review and
004discuss the budget before it goes to referendum. So all we can do tonight, I'm sorry to tell you, is to review and discuss the budget budgets before it goes to referendum. Now, the board of finance met like la last week and they modified the budget. Okay? They're going to talk about that tonight and inform you about the budget. You can discuss it, but sorry to say, you cannot vote at this meeting on the budget. You have to go to the referendum. The referendum will be held under that charter section two weeks from tonight. Now, when I first saw that, I said, "Oh, no. That can't be in there." I looked at it and I saw the language in there. It's in section 803D. Clear as clear it can be. The one thing I had the
005same thought that our former town clerk and now member of board of selective Carol Lee had that we need to check this out to make sure that this language was properly put in there. Charter revision is a long and sometimes can be long and sometimes complicated process whereby you start out with a charter revision commission and panel by the board of selectment and then it goes to the commission works with the board of selectment over a period of usually months and and tries to finalize the language of the proposed charter and then they have to formulate questions that go on the ballot. So, we needed to check to make sure that everything was done properly and that this language which is keeping us from voting tonight was properly put into the charter and I checked
006it and Carol checked it. We spent hours checking it. We wanted to make sure that we we had that I had to come here today at the request of my good friend Mr. Maguire and be the one to give you the bad news that you cannot vote tonight. But I have no choice. There's no question that the charter will not allow us to vote tonight. Charters can always be changed. You may want to recommend changes. We do charter revisions quite often here in Andover. So, that's a possibility. But anyway, there will be no vote. There cannot be a vote. And I'm sorry to be the one to have to tell you, but I'm always happy to be in Andover. Thank you very much. So what does that mean for us? Um we can review the
007budget um modified by the board of finance. We cannot make any motions to sit there or accept or reduce the budget as put to move it to referendum. The budget as stated here will go to referendum. We all are here because we need to ask questions and be more informed about what is going on related to the budget. Okay. So, we're going to move on to item one within our agenda and that is to choose a moderator for said meeting. Nominate Martin. Wally Martin is my nominee. We have a second. Dave Gustanian uh is second. Uh Scott Soyette was the nominee. Do we have any other nominees for the moderator? hearing. None. Wally Barton is said moderated. All right. This time the floor. Thank you, Ming. For any of you been to budget meeting for
008the past few years, you know who I am. I'm Mark Rinker. I'm the chairman of the board of finance. You turn the volume up. Yeah. we buy a second microphone someday. So, I just want to welcome you on behalf of the entire board of finance. This is truly a team effort. Um the town uh uh staff, the board of selectment, the board of finance and everybody who's interested in Gary and said everything else. So, thank you for participating. Uh I think as Joe and um or Dennis and uh Jeff have explained uh what we'll be doing now is primarily anformational session. We'll go through it. I'm not going to spend a lot of time going over the past stuff that hasn't changed or we will talk about the top numbers and I'll talk about what
009has changed and then we'll open up the floor for any uh questions that you may have. So just uh this is our agenda for tonight. Uh I want to talk a little bit about the site process. Now we are in new territory here. This is part of getting budgeted. I believe it's the first time it's happened. Um we are going to cover the expenditures uh which are generally for education and then also to the town itself and then we are going to talk about the revenue uh see a summary talk about the capital plan. We go over that briefly. covered it last budget meeting in depth and then we'll have a question and answer periods meetings. So I'm not going to read through this whole thing. Most of you have seen this before I'm guessing.
010Uh but as you know the uh RAM budget uh and over and ram budgets the referendums were held on May 13th. Uh the RAM budget did pass the Andover budget um did finish. So according to the charter that means we have a bifurcated budgeting that automatically splits into two different budgets. The town budget and the ades and over elementary school district budget and they're treated differently now basically two separate budgets two separate bills. Okay. um the board of finance uh met last week. We made some changes as uh Dennis and uh Jeff mentioned and uh we're going to review these changes tonight and we have the new town meeting today and as Jeff mentioned there will be a budget referendum on May 27th so two weeks from today. Okay, this is our new budget. It's
011$12 million I'm sorry 12,899,425. This is really a misnomer. There's two separate budget, but that's the total top line just so we have it for reference. So out of this we have the U and Annover board of education budget. The recommended budget is 4,565,461. This is an increase of $27,43 or an increase of 5%. The RAM is not changed. is 4,135,532. Slight decrease from Andover. And as I covered in the last meeting, the reason we have a decrease from Andover is because the proportion of handover students at the Ram district has decreased for this year. Therefore, our estimated aotment is really based on the percentage of Andover students. So, we're fortunate to have a decrease this year. And then we have the town budget. The overall count limited is $4,198,433 with a decrease of $14,195
012and it's a debt change of minus 2.4%. And we'll talk about how we got here. Uh this chart is pretty much the same as a change bunch. We did see a slight decrease in the breakout uh for the handover board of education budget. Uh but it's really basically the same. You can think about it as a third, one/3 ramp, 1/3 at ads, and 1/3 to town. Okay. And over elementary school budget. So, we had some changes here. Okay. Uh the Andover board event originally requested a budget of 4,729,155, which was an 8.8% increase from the last approved budget. And after the failure referendum, the board of finance had a lot of discussions and we ended up reducing the requested budget to 4,565,461 which is still an increase from last year's approved budget uh of about
0135%. So $217,43. So drivers for the increase or need for the increase uh budget for the school uh it's been covered quite a bit at these meetings. The board of ed had a lot offormational meetings etc. Uh but basically the drivers are we have new staff that we request requested a plan uh benefits cost increases and there's some technical licensing costs increased. Okay RAM budget I'm not going to spend any time on this it is what it is and pass so it's just here and if anybody wants any more information on it really the RAM website would be the best place to go. Okay, town budget. So the town budget is uh all of the uh everything on expenses for the town except for education. There's two components. There's an operational budget. This is just
014the day-to-day operations that uh we have to spend uh in order to keep the town running. And then there's the capital budget. Those that's the budget for the major town expenditures. So roads, buildings, etc. Things that we have to uh save a lot of money. So the town operating budget, so we made some changes to the town operating budget. It's both up and down. Okay. The uh overall increase is uh about 130,55 or about 4.1% over last year. the major increases. Uh there were a lot of staff salaries and salaries staff salary increases uh per the contract with the town employees under cover unions. Um we had a corrected billing for top actors at the transfer station. Um they were under billing us for a long time. We got taught now we have to pay
015for it. It's okay. We did it for a long time. We have the addition of a community center assistant part-time about $11,000. Uh we had a estimated uh uh cost increase for the state troop for the resident state trooper. Uh I'm sorry. Yeah. About 4,000 there. We have to remove the brush pile at the transfer station. We do that about every 3 years. So that's the reason what budget did it last year this year. That's about $20,000. Um it was offset. The increases were offset by a reduction in the tipping fees. These are the fees that we have to pay in order to empty the uh general waste uh compact reduction. So those costs went down. So what changes we made on the pound operating budget? So, um, I think all of you that were
016here last year or last, not last year, last meeting, see if I can hear last meeting might remember that, uh, Joanne had discovered kind of last minute of a possible error in the spreadsheet calculating the health and dental benefits and we weren't sure because it just we didn't know, we didn't have the data needed to know for certain whether that was a mistake or not. It turns out it was a mistake in the original file calculation. So we confirmed that with the treasurer and we corrected that in this budget. So that was about a $30,000 reduction to the operating expenses from the level one we approved last meeting. We also added back $5,000 siphon for the assistant treasurer. Uh we and the board of finance had originally taken that out because it was um we
017we're concerned about some liability exposure issues. Those were resolved. So we put that back in. So capital budgets the the capital budget is as I said the major budget for the major funds that we used for uh for buildings for road work for tree removal those kinds of things. Okay. We increased the uh contributions of the capital budget from 1.247 million to about 1 million 15,000. So it's about 232,000 down or about 18.6% reduction from last year. So there are a couple drivers for that. Uh we reduced the amount for the road improvement fund by 25,000. If you remember from last meeting, we had actually reduced it to 50,000. In this past or this past board of finance meeting, we decided to restore another 25,000 there. Uh and then we also reduced the uh change
018to funding for the AES capital fund. Uh you might you might might remember that last year we contributed kind of seated that fund with about $100,000. Uh we may need to do that again. Uh but right now what we're doing is by agreement with the board of education any surplus that they can contribute back to town from their budget at the end of the operational year will roll into this capital budget. There's a lot of improvements needed in the capital you know for the capital type projects. school, parking lots, bathrooms, bathrooms are not serviceable, one part of it, etc. Whole whole list of things, right? So, those things all need to be saved for the town or the school district itself does not have any capital funds. So, that needs to be part of the
019town's funds. The way it's set up, we reduce the amount for the building maintenance fund by about 67,000 and we also reduce the amount for the open space fund, but that really wasn't changed somewhat from last last. So the main change in the last proposed budget was that we restored the 25,000 to be of the 50 we reduced from the town road fund capital contributions just a pie chart get the numbers if we you need them they're in the they're in the budget. um major major contributors fire department uh public works equipment and road improvement. That's our number one uh biggest uh fun contribution that we make for a very good reason. Uh tree removal and then bridging public repair also a very big need in your probably no longer fun. So revenue, excuse me,
020there's a lot of GS uh many sources of revenue. Um the the budget sheet lists them off and if you have questions about them, you can let us know or let Eric help. A lot of them includes interest. We have state and federal grants. We have state educational cost sharing. We have permits and fees and estimated revenues. Uh overall it increased about 85,000 uh or about 3.2%. So that's changed over the last budget meeting. And the only the main driver for that is we added back $89,000 for educational cost sharing. We believe that we're going to get that into the state. The original governor's budget proposal had cut the educational cost sharing funds. So we lost that as a source of revenue. It looks like it's going to get restored by the legislature. So everybody
021cross your fingers and uh we getting that back. Uh so we have added that back into the revenues in this budget. Okay. So here's the budget summary. Um again, it's really two budgets that we're looking at, but this obviously has an overall impact and that's what you know you're going to want to know about as we go forward. Yandover Elementary, we've already said uh we're at 4.565 million about an increase of about 217,000 or 5%. Okay, down from the original 8.8% requested by the board of the board of finance took that down quite a bit. Uh the RAM budget is as it was. There's no change there. And then the town budget um again down slightly, $104,195. That's uh after the changes we made. So down on the capital or down overall on both time
022fund balance use. So the fund balance is our kind of our contingency fund if you will. Uh there's recommendations from the state about how much we should have available should we encounter a natural disaster or something else that would prevent us from providing services or really uh highly uh increase the amount of services that we have to provide flood hurricane that kind of thing. So uh that's what the fund balance is there. It's kind of a safety fund or contingency fund. There are guidelines from the state. We feel that we're well within those guidelines. In fact, we're probably a little bit overly funded. So, we did increase the amount of the fund balance by 40,000. So, we're going to take about $190,000 total out of that fund balance used towards basically offsetting taxes. And that's
023not uncommon. We end up with a surplus at the end of the year. If things go well, we'll put it back into the fund balance. The fund balance ends up getting overfunded from time to time. We can use that offset taxes on a regular basis. And you've seen that in previous. So, what does this mean? When you combine these uh budgets, the total by taxation is 10,3,445. That is a reduction of $47,330 uh or 0.5%. So we actually have an overall tax reduction in this budget with these two budgets. So no mill rate calculation. So there's a differential between the mill rate and the uh taxes. So the mill rate is basically a calculation factor based on the value of all the personal property in the town. Now you divide that by a,000 blah blah
024blah and uh that is where your estimated uh where you how your property taxes are assessed for you know when you get that tax bill from the county clerk's office. Okay. So milary because of the changes in the way that the state is valuing but the state made a pass some laws that required that we value uh automobiles differently than in the past. So the mill rate has to change a little bit. So that basically the value of all your of all your automobiles uh for the purposes of taxation was reduced. So because of that the actual tax on your vehicles is going to go down. So the calculated bill rate actually goes up. Okay. So we ended up with a mill rate going from 3.146 last year to 3 I'm sorry 31.59. That's an
025increase of 42%. But I do want to estimate that your taxes overall are still going down. The average household in Andover will pay slightly less for your vehicle taxes, slightly more for your uh property taxes such as your uh you know your home taxes or land or something that you own in the town, right? But the net result is a reduction. So here's a summary of his total taxation with given these two budgets offset by revenue. Uh the calculated bill rate 31.59 as I said it's a slight increase house assess of 200,000 would pay roughly 6,318 in taxes. However, as I said for most taxpayers your uh tax go overall will go down with an overall taxation decrease in hand over of 0.5%. U capital plan. I'm not really going to go through all these
026projects. We covered them quite in some detail at the last meeting. Uh but there are quite a bit. A lot of them road bridge construction, municipal generator, general road work, long road, over replacement generator backup, some additional projects, and that's pretty much what we hope that uh that was clear. We didn't go through a lot of the line items, but I hope you see what has changed and uh if everyone understands the uh the budget that presented here will go directly to referendum in two weeks. So, we'll give you the opportunity to ask any questions you have now. Thank you, Mark. Hence for Can you say anything about uh Bart Wood Lake? Uh can you say anything about uh what line items were changed in the education budget between the point and private service? short
027zero. We didn't change any line items in the education button. So the uh the question was uh can you can you tell us what uh line items if any were change or what line items were changed in the school budget? And the answer is the board of finance and the town government do not have the authority to make any changes within the school line items. That's up to the board of ed to determine how they spend the amount of money that's allocated to them. It's okay. Uncom. [Music] Okay. How's this? All right. So, my first question, and I guess this is really the moral attorney. Uh I'm looking at the 803 section B and I'm assuming that B was based on the line that says the budget be that first refer or for it. Um
028it's not saying shallow. It's saying or that's a little big squishy. So I want to know why insurance. [Music] Anybody wants to read in the language and it's excerpted up there on the screen. Where is the order in there? First line. The sentence that I'm relying on, it says, "The board of finance shall review any rejected budget that was rejected and present for review and discussion only the same or revised budget." Oh, there's the or to a subsequent town meeting held exactly one week after the day of the referendum. So, the budget was revised. if it was helped. It it just that that's just there to tell the board of finance that they can revise the budget as they did or they can leave it the way it is and present it to the town
029meeting. I don't see where that changes anything with regards to whether or not you can vote tonight. So, I'm on the town website and I'm looking at the charter for November 2024 and that is not the language that is there. Well, I thought I was looking at it, too. Where's it? Can you read that to me again? Entire sentence if you like. Or I can even bring up my phone. I'm happy to help you out there. Because I have an issue with the fact that the challenge and the school did not. So you said grabbing a pair of So it's the same thing I have. I don't see what shows you. I'll take the mic. Um, give us a couple seconds, please. You can all talk. Talk bad things about the government. Get at it.
030Okay. Okay. Here's what we're going to do. These two individuals are going to go over here and determine the legal side of this and we're going to ask some more questions and move on so we don't waste our Is that okay? Back. Like I said, I'm old and I'm a little slow. Okay. Hi. So, I have a different question and it probably would help more if you go back to the slide um where you're showing the the three different projects and the impact is being um you said that you guys had it back in the 89 2000 educational cost savings for town. Is that divided uh by student and applying to the school budget and the RAM budget or where does that show in these numbers overall as a percent increase or increase? So in
031the educational cost which is revenue helps offset the educational cost in the town. Um so it's under the town budget but it's directing it directly those it's under the revenue. Yeah. The whole the whole thing is the town budget, right? It's just that the numbers are being approved. So all all the educational cost sharing is under the revenue for right. Okay. So so that 9,000 is it part of that negative 184? No. No. It's it's it's in the it's in the revenue. You don't see the revenue line here. It shows. But wouldn't it be part of that 104 difference if you guys from the last time you did a budget? No. 104 is the town budget exclusive of education. So, so I don't the budget the town budget is just cost. It doesn't include any
032revenue. The revenues are not there. The the taxes are not there. The permits are not there. The educational cost sharing is not there. The state grants are not there. None of the revenues are So I don't understand. I thought I thought on that other slide you guys said that you added that 89,000 back in because you're expecting we needed the $89,000 into the revenues. Yeah. It's the overall revenue loss setting and and we didn't it doesn't affect the school budget one way or the other. The same way it didn't affect the school budget when we lost the $89,000 and we thought the governor was taking it out. So, okay. I'm sorry. I'm so confused. I just don't understand like if it doesn't affect any of this where it's easier if you look at the budget
033spreadsheet which is obviously it it's not even that Kaitlyn if we do not get the $89,000 back we have to tax the residents of the town $89,000 a year that's all it means it's the educational cost sharing grant that we get it's about $2.1 million I I don't know the exact number but it's in that ballpark right I know okay so so if it's 2.1 1 million we we get and or it's 2 million. There's $100,000 in revenue we've lost. We have to tax the residents $100,000. Has nothing to do with a budget, nothing to do with an expense line. Zero. Just about what we have to raise through tax. Okay. I was just confused because you guys had it on a slide, so I wasn't sure if it ended up being part of a
034total of something. Yeah. Maybe in the future it'd be helpful to include in the summary in the revenue line also, you know, cuz because that really just total my taxation it would make more sense. Okay. Do we have um Wally, do we have an answer? Yeah. Okay. My answer is that I stand by my original opinion that I stated earlier tonight that that this you cannot cannot have a vote to tell me. Okay, it's clear it's clear to me in that section that's that that is correct. Okay, she's focusing on a different section of the uh of the of the of the rule. It says there's two contingencies that can generate a split budget. One is the rejection of the budget at a referendum or rejection of the budget of at a referendum has happened.
035So we're the or doesn't matter. This or at a second town meeting unlikely to happen anyway. Okay. So you're not likely to get to a second town meeting has been rejected budget for you will but the budget you put up the the language you put up there was the old budget correct the old start right no I see it answer is no let's move on question Um, can you tell me if the fund balance um that was the numbers that were up there when you're getting ready to use the surplus that we need to use so that we don't we stay in favor of the state's amount? Um, does that what is now happening with the surplus money that the board of education budget gets to hold? Yeah. No, they're in completely separate funds. So,
036the state's not looking at that money of the $400,000 that they now have. State isn't looking at any of it. They just want in a sense. They just they're providing some guidelines. Right. I understand that. You know, we have we have the uh we have the um the contingency or the general fund. We have the town road fund. We have the tree fund. All of those funds are in theory those are those are funds available to those pounds. Should something happen, we can do it. I totally understand that and I am always in favor of using our fund balance to reduce taxes because as I stated in many meetings, we've already paid taxes on that money. So I would rather use the fund balance to decrease what we're moving forward for in the next year
037for taxation. That's my problem with the board of education budget getting to keep $400,000. I know we're still responsible for fixing everything at the school as a town. We're committed to, you know, all these capital uh projects, but I stated last time and I want to state it again. I don't agree that from year to year they should be able to keep 100% of their surplus money in a separate account because I think what you did this year by using part of that fund balance to offset our taxes is what we should be looking at every single year. And and if you don't mind, I'm going to say that sir, Mr. where I do not agree with you either on being able to vote at this meeting. I take that and from when he voted
038in the charter, I thought I remembered that it would be two votes before it got separated. One being the referendum vote. Then we come here, we are presented with this new budget with a decrease. we vote on it as a town to send it back to referendum. If we don't vote on it as a town to send it back to referendum, that's when it gets separated. That was my interpretation back then. And as I read it tonight on the screen, that's still my interpretation. I know we have to go with you because we're paying the big bucks, but that I don't No, you're not. I don't think I don't think that I don't think that's the language that we're seeing on the screen. Thank you. I I disagree. I know you do. The first thing
039is the board of education does not keep all of their surplus each year. That's that's not the case in this in this last year. And there's there's some issues related to it. They had a surplus of $400,000. They put 2% in their non-lapsing in your AS surplus fund and then the board of finance agreed to move the remainder into their capital improvement. I understand that. But I just want to say, but I'm I'm just sitting there telling you it's not every year that the board of education I thought moving forward it was going to be every year. No, it it No. Okay. First year. This is the first year. I agree. First question is like who's responsible for an account is it is it not it is the town of handover and the board of
040select. Thank you. Okay. But then again the board of selecting should be responsible for sending to the board of finance its requests as to where the capital and where the money goes to which funnels. That will be dealt with after that will be dealt with after this this not this meeting. So here here's what here's what I'd like to do because I have some problems and I have some problems with this budget with the process of this budget. So I'm telling you as as a person that's board I I just want to address some questions and I'm going to tell the board of education members um can you bring the microphone back for now? So here's my problem board of education members you should be up front with us again. We should have you up
041here. who should be up here. You know that. I know. I wasn't here. And then you guys, you guys should be up here. We're all one town. We're all one group. So, here we go. All right. Did the board of education when the budget was presented to you, did you make any modifications to the budget presented to you by by the superintendent? We didn't make any modifications to the budget as it was presented on the day when it was presented. All of those are recorded meeting, but everyone who lives in this town has free access to at any point in time. I don't think that your line of questioning right now is appropriate meeting for this. No, this is this is questions I have. I wanted to ask them at the last board of finance
042meeting and I was not allowed to deal with public speak again. And so I have to ask a question. The people in this community, listen to me, please. I'm begging you. I am not anti-school. This has nothing to do with anti-school. I sent two children through the school. They got a tremendous education. And I am so thankful to the teachers within the school. But if we as a community cannot understand that we have to have balance as to what we do within these processes, we're in trouble. and and I'm just I'm I'm I'm I'm asking you I would like to just ask some questions not really difficult questions just trying to get an understanding because we as a town have to understand this as a group whether we agree with anything or not it's a
043budget process I will tell you it from from doing hundreds of budgets then I have never had gone through one process where someone didn't make a modification to a budget and what has happened in this current budget is our board of education doesn't appear to me to have made any major modifications to the budget as presented in the board of ed board of finance. I need to interrupt you then. Sure. Now you're making allegations towards our board. We had several budget workshop meetings having the budget presented when we passed it. Just as you guys do at the board of selectment and I really think that this is inappropriate for what this meeting is supposed to be right now. Okay. Okay. I I still I'm not a board. I want to be a resident because my
044tax is oil. But you're not a resident right now. You're the first sector of the town. I will tell you the last time we had this meeting which you were not at. I am. I asked if you were supposed to sit up front and I was told I don't know because you guys want to. So Valerie and I sat at the end of the table squashed next to each other. They made a mistake and I apologize. Well, where were we supposed to sit tonight? I I would have put more savings on. So, show me where they are. You have a microphone right now. Okay. You ready? Okay. So, next thing is Right. Did you undertake a detailed review? Cuz I never see in any of your any of your documents. You never post the detailed
045review. Mark is supposed to be the budget right now. Can Scott meeting. So it's really up to the moderator. Okay. Wally. Wally. I I ever said I I'll I'll unlike Unlike the other people that will sit there and write a yellow flyer and be disrespectful to the rest of the community, I will write one and put my name on it. Okay. All right. If we can get back to this meeting, it's about the budget. It's about your questions so the board of finance can answer them. If you have questions about the budget for the board of finance, raise your hand. I'll give you the microphone. Yes, ma'am. Question. My name is Ben. I live at 151. My question in the board of finance is about the following 300 300 and somehat thousand dollars of excess
046funds as well as $100,000 in capital improvements. If we if this budget went forward with $100,000 in capital improvements and you were good with that and the board was good at that, why are we now taking that $100,000 away but giving them $340,000 and what why do we need extra capital improvement dollars when two weeks ago we didn't? U just to clarify that I think you're confusing last year's budget with this year's budget. When I talked about the changes we didn't the only change that was made to the capital funds from the last town meeting is we added back $25,000 into the town road improvement project. That's it. No other changes. The changes that were done were the changes the differentials you see where I talked about were from last year's budget. That's why this
047year's budget's overall benefit was $100,000 capital fund for the school. That's what happened last year. This year we did everything excess. Is this what you want? Is this what you want to? Yeah. So it appears it says change fun to capital fund the school is to fund 80. We reduced it by $100,000. Now funded by the surplus of 316. So did we have the 316 in the private budget? Yes. A couple weeks ago or last year in the in the 2024 2025 uh fiscal year budget, we had $100,000 to fund the AES capital fund. In this budget, we removed that. We zeroed out that contribution to the ads capital fund and the reason we did that is because we had just funded it significantly with the surplus that the school had last year. So that
048has not changed from the last budget. The $100,000 excuse last Yeah. And I'm sorry for the confusion. It's hard to cover all this, but the only change to the capital budget from the last proposed budget was to restore $25,000 with our phones. Oh, back to So, my followup question then is, do we know how the $361,000 school is? Eric, you want to answer? No. Okay. the request for that money to be spent on the bathrooms in the school. That is the initial request. And I'm not sure if we've gotten the capital plan from the board of education yet to sit there and identify all of the other projects that they potentially would like to sit there and deal with. Yes, I have. Okay. And did you provide it to Eric? Provided it to the board
049of finance. Board of. Okay. We're we're definitely we're definitely good. Um Wally, can I ask one other question? Two questions actually. I'll be quick. Um board of finance members, did you guys get an understanding if the preschool program is totally self-funded? Have you seen a reconciliation on that? Sure. I'll go back. Um, I wanted to Can you hear? I just wanted to address that. Um, we want to let you also know that the AES did voluntarily give them the money, the $100,000 for the capital fund because they knew they were going to. So, with that question, with that question, they volunteered to give the 100,000 back. Um, they came to a couple of our meetings. like Jeff says, when we do have a board of finance, we we do make cuts. Our committee or our
050board has to make the cuts or whatever. So, that that probably is a big question, but they did volunteer to give the $100,000 back knowing they had a surplus, knowing it was going to roll over into the AS capital fund account that was established last year along with a list of a lot of things that needed to be funded. Um, as far as the prepay, there was a lot of questions from the board of finance back and forth with the board of ed and with the superintendent and I don't know a lot of you don't know that I also work in a school and I was a grants accountant. So when or one of my rules so when I did see the documents from the school I understand where the feasible money was coming from
051is that I don't know that well clearly tuition and their grants right there we charge tuition to out of town students that come in they pay tuition rest of this funded by grants did you get a reconciliation on was looking for I don't know. Okay. Okay. And I got to ask the board of finance this question because I did ask this board. How many out of town students are attending out of the 60 students that we have there? How many are out of town students? Word of education. Can you hear me? First of all, I do want to apologize to the town members, especially those members who are here for their very first meeting or who just moved to town because this isn't who we are. I definitely want you to know that definitely not
052who we are in this school. There's been a lot of questions about preschool. There's been a lot of questions about preschool, which I'm actually surprised that the first elect can't answer since he is legally on the school readiness council that oversees preschool. Uh we have a number of places that oversee preschool. The preschool program is overseen first and foremost by the state department of education. It is then overseen by the OEC, which is the office of of the early um childhood management. It'll now be an early start umbrella starting July 1st. After that, it is overseen by NYAK. It is overseen by the school readiness council here. Then it is overseen by myself, the board of education. You do not see a line item in the budget that says preschool because as gross burners said,
053we collect revenue that is separate from that. The revenue that is collected means that preschool is predominantly paid for solely by the tuition and by grants. The grants are school readiness, which is going to change names, but it's school readiness and smart start. We currently receive over $200,000 in that revenue source. We also then receive tuition, and we were almost at that part. Everybody pays tuition who are residents or non-residents unless they fall below a certain threshold or unless they have a student that has special needs. Because by law, those students that are special education, we have to provide those services for as a public school district just like everybody else without charging. Then if you do the math, we currently have 53 people. We have four classrooms and ideally there are 15 in each
054classroom. A couple of them have 16 right now. There are 53 students that are Andover residents or ADS families. 53 of those spots. Yes, we have three and a half rooms full of annover residents and AES families. Why would you run a fourth room half full when you have spots in there? You have to have the room anyways. You have to have the teacher anyways. You have to have the parent anyways. Why would you run a room half full? So, yes, we filled the rest of that room with out of town. We had a waiting room a mile long. They pay $6,000 a year to be those spots. We haven't opened any rooms for out oftowners. We have empty spots. And why would you have an empty spot that's worth $6,000 a year? We filled
055it with out of towners. So, that's been a question. There are people that have kept saying like, you're definitely I mean, where is this money coming from? Do the math. If there are 64 people and those rooms each had the full capacity plus the extra. There's 64 kids paying $6,000 and not everybody pays the full but $6,000 because some of the people receive the grant funding and don't pay the full. Do the math. If I had 75 kids, how how many hundreds of thousands of dollars I would be bringing in? That money is real money. That is what runs those programs. The other question that I'll address and somebody's going to ask it is, well, do you take, because this is what they asked, do you take and charge preschool classrooms part of your overall
056expense, like part of your electricity, part of your garbage? I do not. I do not pull that out. Nor do I charge the town tonight for this meeting with the electric on. Nor do I charge pickle ball when they come and play in here. Nor do I charge basketball. We don't break it up like that. Like I said, that's not who we are. I pay the bill. Thank you. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, the superintendent said that I was on the radio committee. I know my name is on there. I have never attended a readiness on this committee, so I apologize for that, but I did get the details from from the group, right? So, just asking um you stated that your grand revenue is somewhere around $200,000. No, I'm just going to sit there and
057go cuz you you are saying the numbers add up. I am going to account the numbers don't add up for me. So, so I'm sitting there going, currently this year, this year the funding from those two grants is $107,000 state document. thumb document. Here it is. I'm not kidding. I'm not lying. And then people, residents, residents up here are just so I get this. Just so I get this because this the school program, the school program, the the prek program has bothered me because it is stated that the program is self-funded. There there are $500 a month for prek tuition. That's tuition. Yeah, it's $600 a month. Even if it's $6,000 a year, divided by 10 months of school is $600 a month. And according to the school readiness document that you provided, the penny,
058the the grant, people pay less. And the non-grant revenue, the way that it's stated here based upon your numbers, because this is your document, is $477. So, I'm just telling you when I do the math, I go annual tuition is $217,000. The maximum grants that you even documented in your your program for multiple years, the states for those programs is 165. That totals up to $383,000. Correct? I'll just I'll tell you. I did the math. Did the math. Let's say I'm right. How many teachers are in each school in each classroom? One teacher, right? Let's sit there and and your documents that you have here sit there and say one teacher salary was $96,000, right? And the other teachers are different numbers. I am just asking. I didn't even I don't even want to argue.
059Is there a reconciliation for these numbers? Just tell me there's a reconciliation and I'll be okay. The rest of the community can see it. Everybody can get a document. stable as it scores. People are fully aware that the auditor loses all records of this school. Did you provide the auditor with a reconciliation that the prek program has zero cost to the taxpayers of this whole? If you two could stop a minute, please. No, that is not the truth. And you know that I think we're getting off the subject. There you are. This is a bucket here. It's involved. Let's [Music] talk. Um, all these questions brought out by the flyer. We all saw, we all know that's part of a dream. The budget failed. If if you want responses to it, they answer some of
060these questions. Um, ginger cast around. There's one in the back. There's one here. Just go to the website. They document everything. It's got a lot of detail that does not answer that last question Jeff asked, but it's there. Meanwhile, this is a budget hearing. Um, do we have a plan? Do we know any idea very well if this next if this budget fails? Is there a general plan? I'd have to go back and look through the compounded language of the charter. But basically, if what'll happen, they said it's two weeks. We have a referendum. There will be two different votes, one on the town budget, one on the AES budget. If either or both of those fail, the board of finance will then repeat this process. We will have another meeting the week after the
061referendum. We will uh make a decision about we'll make make a decision to present a another recommended budget maybe the same maybe not uh and we'll have another meeting apparently uh forformational alone and then we'll have another vote two weeks later. So this process I believe continues until it doesn't about the process so much as doesn't work yet the underlying what will happen next we're cut no we haven't discuss at all okay thank you that's all we need hi west um I think a lot of the problem that we have is u trying to understand the budget for the uh board of education the it's not even here. We have the town budget, but we don't have board education budget at all. Uh I tried to find it on the website and I couldn't find
062it. Uh there's a 40 or something like that. So anybody All right. So there guys can find it. That's my problem. But the a lot of the board of education meetings are in executive sessions from a lot of things that see and also the budgets you know I have a you guys everybody okay so what I'm saying is it would be nice if we had clear and precise pledges that they could look at and understand board the town budget is here is printed and we can look at it but and elementary school budget is not. So it would be respectful to us if we were able to examine it and see for ourselves how the money is being spent. And frequently when I do look at the budgets, it looks to me like a lot
063of numbers just get transferred year after year after year, you know. And there's so many lines. Supplies, supplies, supplies. $500 in 2021, $500 in 2022, $550 in 2023. it just doesn't look like a real concise um accurate picture of where the money is going. So that's all I'm saying. It's would be nice to hear a little transparency. Shannon program just like an budget. The annover elementary school budget has a line by line budget. It has been on the school's website for months. If you take time to look at it, you will find every single line item from teacher salaries to benefits the classroom expenses to utilities, oil, you name it. We are just as transparent as the town. And I am tired of hearing that we are not. We have this line by line budget.
064We go over it for many things before we improve it. This year and last year we had well excuse me all last year. Last year we had six budget workshops. Then we approved our budget. People come to this meeting who have never been to a board of education meeting throughout the entire year and don't understand our budget. If you want to understand our budget, please come to the budget meeting. Voice your opinion. Ask questions. Tell us what you don't approve of. We will absolutely provide information that is critical to help you make your decision. Please come to a board event meeting and ask us questions before we get to a town meeting. And the board of finance has done all of its work to pass a town budget that includes the board of education budget.
065Thank you. Hi Mike. Where is that budget located? I understand. website has a word that might not be quite accurate, but we know that the school website you can access that budget on the school website and then attend these meetings. What process you go through? You're not you don't have to be invited in postgenda. Is that anywhere? Is it also posted on the school website? Yes, it is posted on the school website. Okay. And then you not specifically in the executive session, but the public can attend that find out what's going on. Thank you so much for answering my question. [Music] language. All we're asking is to have something like a lot of elderly people in this town. We don't have breakfast for that. So all we're asking people to do is something like we
066all understand. Yes. that way that we're going to be showing the road. I just wanted to address the stand budget, but you're right. You brought up the uh issue with the charter that was presented. Um the charter as you know was revised last year by effect chair of this charter commission. We have two other members of the commission sitting up there right now, Jeff and Carol. Um, I spent some time over the last 10 minutes taking a look at what has been put up on the screen there, what is on the town's website as well as the last inter uh draft that I saw which was June 15th. And the sections that were reviewed are all different from these three documents. So we obviously have petitioning gives additional control. This was an ongoing challenge during
067the uh uh chart review because we were there were a lot of moving parts. There were a lot of uh uh things that will reference other other things. So and I unfortunately had to drop out of the process beginning of July due to illness. But I will say for the record here, I'm going to try to reconnect with Carol who is vice chair of of this and uh tomorrow or the next day if we get and see if we can figure out where this process went to run because clearly what was reviewed, what's published as well as what I have in correspondence, none of these agree. So we have a bump. Thank you. Wow. Drive. Um, the board of ed has half of our budget. So, I would say this, I'm not on top of
068budget here. I'm not that computer savvy. If you folks, as you've heard a couple times already, provide us with a document at our first calendar budget meeting, we will be better informed. Okay, that would that would be extremely helpful to me and a lot of other people here. I can read down the town budget and see who we're paying the state and see what we're paying public works. We like to see the same thing from you folks. I appreciate the guy on the on the web, but that doesn't help us here. So, if you provide us a new document, please let me finish. Please let me finish. So if you can provide us with a document that would be very helpful in the beginning of the budget process. Now secondly I think the board of
069finance has done a reasonable job with the vote that took place with the current percentage of spending increase that given to the board. 5% is a a reasonable number 80 whatever it was was a little rough. So I think yeah was a good move. Also since the budget was defeated and we don't get to vote today which is also very upsetting. Okay not you know Carol told me this afternoon we don't get to vote today. I mean why are we going? We can't vote. We have to wait for a referendum. So hopefully Bob maybe we can change that so we don't go through this if the budget gets defeated again. about mortgage finance, public works. If we look at the down budget and this thing goes down again, we have $360,000 in the public works
070average and capital expend over the last several years with 16% spending increase last year. Now, I understand what that was year and truly. I'm very happy that we get a little bit of a tax decrease this year without you. We can we can use the economy is unstable right now and all of us can tighten our belt a little bit would be nice. So, we should look at both budgets down the road in two weeks. And maybe we're back here, maybe we're not. But, uh, either way, I would personally ask Valerie and her staff to get us a pamphlet of, uh, of the budget. It will be very helpful. And I asked the charter revision committee to revisit the section whatever it is. What section we got there? Oh 2 803 803 to review that
071and see if that's appropriate. I don't think that's they already accepted here today. [Music] I got to go out. Anybody that hasn't spoken, use the mic, please. Anyone who hasn't spoken, raise your hand before I go back to people for the second or third time. saying none. I'm sorry. I can't see that. I just had a followup question to Mr. Hamburger since he was on the committee. Um, I'm so glad that was one of my questions before. if I served on a committee and I changed such a big charter, you know, point because truthfully the board of finance had a big problem in this this week as well as far as not giving a voice a vote for the people that come to the meeting. So there have been emails back and forth and as
072was talked about, we even brought it up at our board of finance meeting that we had last Wednesday right after the budget failed and I believe Mr. Magguire and I were on the same page of thinking there was going to be votes today. But again, then it went to the attorney for interpretation and all of those kind of things just because of back and forth. And I think I've sent an email that every time I read it, I come up with a different thought. So I wonder why did terror have to be so amusing and reminds some really weird language. I know that Carol Lee in her formal role as overseen so many things. I just wish it was clear because the question that we brought up from the audience person earlier today with the
073either or I read the same thing that fails here and it's here but anyways and I did want to make it known to the town person out there. I will speak to the board of that in the preschool. I just said that they had voluntarily given us the $100,000 cap because of the surplus and they made that cut voluntarily. We did. I did, as you know, I proposed a few cuts to the town side because the budget did fail overall to public works to a couple things. Um, I really haven't gotten too much there. So, I don't know where we go with that, but I did listen to the people that did both sides. Thank you. Thank you. [Music] I just wanted to colle that I think I benefit and my husband and serious I
074thought clear on my own but the school is one of the easy to few things quite frankly that this time mask of the people and I think as a community we need to step back and work for that. I am working hard on the commission for anyone that wants to join us to you know put some other things out there as well. But let's just keep that in mind that this school is, you know, is serious and one of those few things that this town has to attract people to continue to make sure that we have a continued tax base. And I don't like how this town every season devolves into a debate about those going to school and those hands to school. I think we can do better than that. I am more happy
075to paint my childhood when riding around town with wider signs but it isn't about the children. English shouldn't be like [Music] this. Two quick responses. One to Don Beckley. This is not a Ford event meeting. There is one tomorrow. You can go to that and I'm sure they'll have a budget there for you if you want it. But people want to ask but ask the people who put this meeting on which is select and where why the end of our budget isn't there. They should be able to tell you. Um as um Bob Hamburger um you guys were asking about that um that language the language that we saw there was the 2022 language and it was the same thing that Dennis was talking about. Um the 2024 language has changed that section. Um but
076it is and as it presented on the website anyway it is changed from that but it is the same thing. That is not a um a change from this charter but the one before. So don't blame Bob or Carol. I just wanted to say again that um this is supposed to be question about the budget not about the process. Uh we had a respected attorney who spent a long time looking at whether we should you know vote at his budget or not. So I feel like we should just respect his decision and move forward. There's probably questions we want to ask on the budget and now it's getting late. So, let's stick to the budget. All right. Since I opened up last words, I spent a couple more minutes. Um, what was on the screen
077was not the 2010 version of the revision. The 22 and 24 A3 ECD are identical. At least what's on the website here. What we just saw up there most closely resembles the interim working copy that I mentioned and I saw up on July 15th. So if I had to make a judgment call right now, what we saw up there is probably the final wording that the board selected. They're the ones that have the last go at the chart. And so that's probably there are a few things that were added to what was up on the screen that were not in the July 15th revision that I had in my email record. So if I had to make a guess, I would say that what we saw up on the screen is what we passed. It's
078just not what's on the website right now. So there's your revision control. What we're publishing on the website as old information. It doesn't reflect what was actually worked on last summer. So hopefully the can of worms is a little bit smaller. I said we have a problem. The problem may not be as significant as as some might might want to think, but I still want to go through this with the third time. Second time. Sure. Ask. Yeah. Second. I lose. Tom my second time on. So I would just like to say to the board man and uh parents that she had a well-run school. Our superintendent is committed a great job. This this town has supported the school for a long long time and it certainly is one of our trying places here. I totally
079agree. But we also have to balance it between those of us that are on fixed incomes, seniors, people without children in school anymore. So, it's a bit of a balance. That's that's all that's all we're asking. And all I'm asking as a couple other people as well is just the same document for the education budget, $4 million as we got for the town budget. So, I think it's a reasonable request. Thank thank you for coming out and uh in the town of Angle is is a fine place to live. I love living here. Living here for 29 years supporting support of education. Good education means good citizens. And so uh I've totally done more than that. Thank you. If there are no more questions on the budget, I will entertain a motion to adjourn since
080we cannot vote on anything. Motion second. Celeste Willard. Secondary. All in favor by saying oppose meeting. Thank you, Mr. Chair.