001[Music] you [Music] all right good evening everyone this is Wednesday July 10 2009 I called this regular meeting of the Board of Finance to order their own could join me for the pledge we have any members of the public that would like to give comments usual we move on to communication and correspondence received however none received move on to the approval of minutes from previous meetings I make a motion to approve the June 12 regular meeting minutes as distributed to the team and included in here okay any discussion on meeting out in the minutes okay hearing none all those in favor aye aye motion carries 4-0 okay now we'll move on to the report of the First Selectman sir thank you sir I've got a few things I want to go over with you you
002know we had a conversation with Moody's they asked to have the conversation we had the treasurer CFO myself the Board of Ed chair Colette and a couple other people on in case there were any questions we had a very good discussion with Moody's they came out two days later they have upgraded Brookfield from a - with a negative outlook - just simply a a - that's a good thing because we're gonna be borrowing some money in the future then it what's interesting is when Moody's rated us a a 1 about 7 years ago we had about an 8% on assigned general fund balance now Moody's is saying that to get an AAA one they want to see a 15% balance and they're also saying that the average time with an AAA one in Connecticut has
003a 14% balance we're checking that because I think that number is high I don't think there are that many towns who have 14 15% balances the second thing on this is well before we even had the meeting with Moody's our financial advisor told us listen they are not going to upgrade you to like AAA one unless you purchase their rating service now the last time we did the rating we hired S&P for two reasons one they were less expensive than Moody's and 2sp hadn't traded us in in depth in many years so our financial adviser said don't expect a full upgrade without going through the entire process okay it's the way it works but at least they took the negative outlook which is very important and I think most investors look to Moody's when it
004comes to municipal debt yeah that's a little stronger reading agency and they have more confidence in it you know we have we have a senior housing in town Brookfield quarry it's off of Laurel Hill Road we have the small cities grants where residents can come to us and for zero percent loan they can get their furnace fix their roof fixed leaks things like that we have not found anyone who qualified under the program in about six months there are income requirements you can't be underwater on your house you have to have some equity in it so we've been frustrated by that even though we've been doing a fair bit of advertising so what Lisa Lowe the administrator of the small cities grants did was come to me and say hey you know occasionally we can
005apply to the state and we have about three hundred thousand dollars left and that's available in this fund and get the state to agree that we can use it for Brookes Quarton books bard needs a lot of work it really does they just started a 401 C 3 to try to raise money for it as you know it's income limited for the people who live there so the income generated does not barely cover the costs of operating it and basically has no money to improve update kitchens update the infrastructure last year the town did pitch in no two years ago the town pitched in and we helped them pave their parking lot which was just unbelievable they've been patched like 50 times the state just came back to us two days ago and said no
006and we'll keep on trying but I thought you guys want to be aware of it all on our streetscape those rents inter-island units they're they're rentals you have they're all rentals for phase four we're flying we the cost will be about 2.4 million dollars we're applying for a grant through West cog we've been working on in about six months I think I mentioned to you this to you before it's a competitive grant so we go up against other grants within Wescott and then we go up against other cogs in the state we were the number one choice of Westcott for to this 2.4 million dollar project that will go from the four corners up to Newberry village with the streetscape we we have to have our final application into the state by August 14th it
007is looked on much more favorably if we have the town portion of the funding locked in they say okay they're serious so we are going to be asking the Board of Selectmen approved and sent to you today asking for an appropriation of four hundred and eighty thousand dollars for the town portion of the streetscape it is possible we will not get the full grant and we'll have to look at it then and see where we can get other funding but it's looked out much more favorably if we actually have the Town Committee the town funds committed on Phase two I think is if everybody's been through downtown the town center we're building it right now it's we're about four or five days behind primarily because we are hitting ledge luckily the ledge of sandstone so
008that's pretty easy to jackhammer out so it's holding us up a little bit there is contingency in there we're still on target for budget than spending and we are still on partner for finishing this in September the part of this that I really like is this will be softening our downtown because we're going to be putting in quite a few plants and trees along federal Road as you drive in from the north it's going to really soften it up I think make it a much more attractive downtown legal notices this is gonna be a problem the Pennysaver has gone out of business they stopped publishing that's where we put all our legal notices at incredibly low cost our only option right now is to go out of yours times we're double checking the state statutes
009with our legal counsel but it doesn't look like we're gonna have any choice but to use the news times that could Quinn Quintel quintuple or even higher our costs for land use town-clerk first electron's office so fair warning right now they were going to be over budget on this no matter what we do does it have to be in a recognized publication it does and it has to be one that is available in Brookfield so you know you go to the new town b-but virtually no one in Brookfield gets to the new town B we're you know I've talked to Steve Harding about this only about ten percent of the families in Brookfield get the news times so it's really not a viable buy a doctor to put this information out postcards yeah it would
010be cheaper to send postcards on us but then me with an assignment I'm sorry Rob on the state requirement does that meet the requirement setting postcards no I do not believe it does we'd have to check we'd have to check so what we're gonna do is we're in try to make all our announcements smaller tighter cleaner because it's you know by inch in the news times so we'll keep you up to date and if the if the law if there's any way to get around them does anybody question that requirement I mean it's so old-fashioned that that's every every legislative session they question it and the newspaper lobby is very strong and they fight it tooth and nail because it's one of their biggest stream legislator passionate in some way that's a different company they
011just dump them in your driveway drives everybody crazy I don't working so I get the new signs image yeah works morn different options but most people take that I know I do and it hits the circular file the information distribution can be much the same yeah our job is to find a good distribution it's not to make people read it so we're looking at every option we possibly can where you can yeah and okay so next thing is Jay Purcell has been working on something for a couple months and we're looking to combine our dispatch with new Millford if the primary goal is to save money we know that the state is pushing for regionalization of various services GIS land juice tax collector tax assessor some of them might work some of them might not
012but we do not want to be forced into a marriage with another community that we would not want to be married to in dispatch so it seems to make sense that New Milford and Brookfield form a regional dispatch we have notified the unions involved that this is something we're looking at and I think we can make it happen and it would save some money second thing on the police the lake little-known of patrol they've been keeping their boats up way up in New Milford this year we finally got a dock fueling station fueling tanks and pumps put in it little annona Shores which is right next to the route 133 Bridge to Bridgewater it's directly across from a long trip for individuals you know for the public it's working out really really well it takes
013our officers 1/10 the time to get there we'll have faster reaction times because most of our officers and a Marine Patrol live in Brookfield or the surrounding area and it's working out really well and it also gives us the presence we have had difficulty in the past and it's I can't guarantee this but swans pond last Saturday morning I was up at 6:30 in the morning and I've just listed into local radio Swan spawn was closed at 6:30 a.m. to any new traffic they get an amazing amount of people and we had had some run over from them looking for a place to go swim and take their kids there's no swimming at Lilla Nona Shores so we have had to send our police down there to say hey you can't swim but because of
014the remoteness and the inaccessibility of it we can't send one officer by himself we have to send two officers two cars walk down there so with them already stationed there and we widen the road and put the gravel on the road it's much more visible much more easier to manage that so that's working really well and the Lakeland loan Authority and John Pugliese II who is the captain of the he's chief know he's the chief I'm sorry of the Lakeland ona Patrol he's our major is very very pleased with it our new boat for Candlewood is coming in in the next few weeks I would expect you'll be getting an invite to go out and take a ride in it you know I think it's gonna be really nice we're also gonna be cross training
015both the center company and our police department on operating that boat in case somebody from Candlewood is not available to operate the boat we of other qualified operators so these guys can just go out get on the boat and go out so in the on the town side you know there's a new strip shopping mall across from the BMW dealership they have two rentals that they sign one will be the window Rama that's a forty nine federal now and it looks like a yoga space with a cat they may go in there and we're gonna get another restaurant and it's your favorite it's Italian so you know there has been their husband rumors around town that there is very hard to rent commercial space and nobody wants it it's just not simply not true that
016it is renting it is renting the Brookfield property line goes right through the car wash that's on down on federal Road you know the car washes so everything weren't they that is in Buffalo it's really weird you think it's Stanbury but it's not and then oh just one last update as you know a car went off a federal Road across the Stila River Greenway and into the woods after further investigation found that the individual driving that car is probably going to be charged with driving under the influence we have gone to the state to the local do deed Division five and asked them to put up a guardrail I think that's a reasonable thing to do damn word on doing that but what they are willing to do at this point time they will pull
017up the delineator stakes and also a rumble strip so both people on the Greenway and driving their cars will get an audible warning I personally don't think that's gonna protect us so we're gonna take this step by step we have a very good working relationship with them they do not like it if I go past them to the commissioner but I'm more than willing to do that I've done it before we we have to look at this a little more carefully in my opinion our chief of police believes that the delineator strips and the rumble strip are going to be enough to protect our residents he does that he believes that the accident that occurred was obviously a very 100 off kind of thing because it's not a real steep you know it's not a
018real hard curve it's a slow-moving curve all the way around but still in sections it's 15 feet from the still river Greenland so we can't ask duis not to drive on federal road to protect people so we'll continue to keep you up to date on and that's pretty much it for the first workers report questions comments concerns for the first elect reason that we want to move border than financials got it okay alright then move on to report of the finance director welcome back Marshall thank you very much the revenue and expenditures that read no change from last time that and I have to say that we're a little overwhelmed we haven't been fully staffed since April with vacations and sick time and things but the tax collectors the tax collections will be significantly over
019an excessive budget which is good for revenue all grants that we were expecting have been received the expenditures at this time all departments are in good shape they're all under budget there's nothing that's big that's under budget other than health insurance which we've discussed in the past and right now there looks like small underages in every department how and if they're using purchase orders properly that should be that should hold there's some departments that were worried might be coming in with things that aren't done purchase orders but still we should be we should be in good shape that other information ISA our accounting and payroll clerk has retired that and we have ads out that she has sick time that she's not sick time vacation time and personal time that she's being paid for we
020have a temp in now just because we didn't want to fall behind I've done payroll for the last three months that we didn't want to fall behind because and not the other stuff done so we temp started this week to try and help you some of the burden we are had our first interview today but the the applications don't close until Monday to try and fill that position and as far as filling it that I think our first criteria is how the person will fit into the culture that try to say this politely we don't want somebody that is watching the clock saying oh or saying no that's not my job that we want the culture is more important than any experience and boorda vet hired just hired somebody in a similar position with no
021experience and it's working out very well this because it's easy enough to train somebody is that a union or non-union yes yes we are in the process of closing 2019 so we've asked all invoices be to us for July 31st we talked in advance about what encumbrances will stay open we still have to close the encumbrances that we didn't talk about we are in the process of opening 2020 fiscal year to that end on Friday of next week is Finance Friday that you're welcome to attend if you'd like that that we are some departments are struggled and they've also had their own little separate systems we want to get everything into munis we want them to be using munis as their tool and not something off to the side and munis is just a necessary
022evil so to that end we're preparing to on some of them we're preparing to go through and start with let's take that budget worksheet and let's go through what purchase orders need we need what bids we need what quotes we need and just worked with them in that level of detail we've got some that have told us that they can't do purchase orders because they the people in their department haven't been trained or don't have they don't have rights to munis so I Dan from idea is going to be there with us some of them we've already given them rights as one department we're training separately tomorrow that so that everyone can get on that we're having written instructions for how to do all the different tasks that they would need to do what reports
023to pull to monitor so that is next Friday that you're gonna have to show up and accounting games that I'm sure we'll be counting beans that see who gets the closest but anything to get them their food and non-alcoholic beverages but and and who knows what our turnout will be but I went to all the department heads this morning that we want to work on some some policies that I've started working on but I need to get them out to Steve and then to the board's fund balance being one of the biggest policies that and how we get where we first where do we want to be and how we get there the GFO a has a little worksheet on what percent you you might want to have for fund balance and to be honest
024that it's their worksheet is geared so it's rare that it's going to be under sixteen percent that just from what having former clients use it but I've worked through that a few months ago so I'll go back to that now learn more every month that we want a debt service policy and an encumbrance policy the auditors had asked for the encumbrance policy when they come back and to do this year so I don't think there's a there's currently the debt service we want to tighten it up and get a little more meat to it right we have we do have a rough policy but I don't think it's detailed enough to meet the requirements of either the boards or the town or the rating agencies it would be they look at those long superseded that
025yes that's it and and to pull other things into it loans and leases and compensated absences that that's a way that and it's all part of it's all part of debt that that if you look at the town of Monroe for example they are about the same size that we are compensated absences that's accrued vacation sick time and other time that you would pay out I think that there's is seven eight million dollars that we don't want that to happen that I wait and we have nothing to stop it now to say that you know that somebody and I always pick on the Board of Ed cycle in that but but not this Board of Ed but another Board of Ed might go in and say hey you know we can't give you a raise
026but we can give you an extra four weeks off that or or whatever and that's not controlled in the budget that so we need to control it someplace that that's not happen we don't believe it will happen we have very responsible people working on our boards but it's good to address hi Dean he's talked about that before I even heard of Brookfield so it has nothing to do it for a field the auditors they finished up their preliminary work today that they've been here for the last three days so far so good that they are coming back on August 26th they've got a three week scheduled they're hoping that they won't be here for three weeks last year that and they never came out for preliminary work they did everything in the field work and
027this few months ago and finally we I think that's finally that we're upgrading to munis on August 10th we keep threatening to upgrade we were going to do it in the fall and I wasn't ready because I didn't have a handle on anything then we were going to do it in the spring and I forgot why that slipped again but August 10th is now the date the reason we have to upgrade is w-2s that we need to be able to produce the w2's and this is the last year that that our program will be supported our our version will be supported so we could slip a little bit longer but not much after that Pat me yes yes that's a very good question that we had it scheduled run we were going to do it
028in April we had it scheduled over the weekend but there are a lot of things that need to be done before then to make sure we've had balances make sure we've got things closed down and it's not gonna be too close to where we're hoping that no databases are blown up at all that but but there will be a back up and give me the vapors here yes yes but these are the kind of questions why we didn't do it in the fall but and then Ricky had asked if we would look at the budget transfers and so I'm not particularly thrilled with the form that that I had developed and so I'm gonna try and do one that shows what would Ricky wants what would the buy one and come back to you with
029reporting committee it's not just not just you then but that you're the only one on so that we can fit everything into one form a little more concise a little when we do these mass transfers from one department to another little less time-consuming that any questions there was just one thing right at the beginning when you talked about tax collections being ahead and you said it might affect collectability in 2020 I'm just running why notice oh so because she's collected so much more that several hundred thousand more than the budget that there's not a lot out there to collect and so every time she says she just says oh you know we did really great at collecting but I'm not sure that I've got more that I can collect for next year that because it's
030a so it's kind of number representing back taxes everywhere and we've funded that correct yet we've enhanced our enforcement and collections by hiring a marshal to chase down these debts and it has been much more successful than we originally envisioned let's say we've gotten over $300,000 in back taxes paid so that means the whole list is going down and where we went after the biggest first you know 25 30 40 50 thousand we've collected most of that and now we're going to be going after the two thousand three thousand so there's just not as much to collect so with any residents or businesses both both but mostly businesses okay mostly businesses a lot of personal property tax yeah yeah that has been avoided yeah so we're very happy with that you know no one wants
031to go there it's not fun to have a marshal show up at your place of business but some people have been not paying their taxes for 10 12 15 years and that's not fair to the residents and the other businesses in this town it's just not fair okay and the other questions so for your the meeting in August that we should have much better numbers preliminary numbers for the end of the year and we should by that time be working on pulling them together into statements all right no matters of old business on there new business we have a couple items I move to approve the recommendation of the Board of Selectmen to fund the request of the Board of Education for a special appropriation of eighty four thousand four hundred ninety dollars to fund
032the initial kindergarten teacher from the 2019 2020 school year based on the most recent demographic results and we open the floor for discussion Colette was there anything any color you wanted to add to the request please yeah these numbers are accurate as of this morning so I broke it down a few different ways based on the last five school years and this is really just to show how we predict how many kindergartners we're going to have because it's tough because we don't have a class coming up it's not like first grade or second grade that's we know let's do what we had prior to that so we usually base it on Illumina mcbroom projections their most recent update was June of last year June of 2018 and that was in preparation for the new school
033project and as you can see by the number students starting each year now this isn't our official enrollment number which we get and post from October to every October but this is the actual number of students starting each year we're usually right on target give or take a few with our melanoma crew projections this year they projected 147 and as you can see as of now we have a hundred and sixty registered we have others that have registration packets out eleven of those that we we are absolutely confident that we they will be returning either they have siblings in the district they have made appointments to turn in the paperwork they are going through with the pre-k program one of the other so we're confident about those so that puts us at 171 students now
034since I did this report at the Board of Selectmen meeting by the week and a half ago we have actually had two new inquiries and requests for packets as well so that maybe even another potentially to students in 173 but if there were 171 students in eight classes that would be 21.3 students now of course you can't have a point for students so that would be five classes of 21 students and three classes of 22 students unless we get those other two in which case at full flood with nine classes though we're down to a very reasonable 19 or 20 if we get those extra owns to students students per class which is within our board guidelines which are 17 to 20 students our target is 19 so we came out of the blue so
035we're just asking for the appropriation of 84 490 to fund that additional kindergarten teacher what does that do for first grade next year um we'll need a new we'll need an additional first grade teacher as well but we can we are better able to build it within our budget construction well though if this little bubble class goes up you might need one less kindergarten teacher next year perhaps you don't know no but if we look at the melona McBroom projections they actually predicted above a class for next year they're predicting 181 students next year because of the uptick in births and 2015 so they go bye-bye Good Earth rates this video they go my burglary so within you know within the town now we are requesting or we are looking to see if they do
036a nother deep dive into the development into the demographics into the birth rates because we absolutely need to depend upon this and run these Roman figures for the new school project so that has just been a discussion that's taking place over the next last two weeks really it needs to go now from the MPC with because in addition to that we are requesting we are going to have some additional processes you know if I can just say one thing here you know all I'm not an expert on this but it's clear to me that having 19 kids in a class versus 22 kids in a class is a big difference for teachers especially with kids coming in for the first time it's it that seems an outrageous amount of cast to me the hard research
037is out there that [Music] sizes are directly related just in success but it's especially especially critical in kindergarten first grade that's where the smaller classes make the largest difference where's the 85,000 coming from the appropriation no no we're weird like with what's where's what's gonna find that so for right now it would come from the general fund I think unless we can find it in the budget throughout the year and transfer it or if they can find it in their budget in the Board of Ed budget right just I strongly support having teachers over two weeks into the budget so we know we have more money coming in for the grand who then expected that was previously budgeted and we also have that 130,000 that we have a sign for me right now from the
038teachers pensions so eight to the general fund yeah I feel like candy we would prefer not to dip into the general fund because we don't want to do additional appropriations we just look better if we can stick within our budget so I would say we should transfer from the hundred and thirty that was previously discussed as if you want to do it previously discussed as teachers pension that we no longer have to pay taking the money from there and transfer it to the Board of Ed what about the excess from the grant so that would be revenue and in order to take that we could show that it has no effect on the bottom line but it would still be considered an additional appropriation for the budget which again we want to try not to
039do that because we want to show that we can one of the things that the bonding companies want to see is that we can work within our budget so it would love the the two it really wouldn't make a difference to us it's all this it's to us it's all the same but but to be able to say that we're not we didn't do any additional appropriations we would be better and the way to do that would be to take out the 134th oh yes okay is that something to designate now where that comes from um I think you want to designate guess where it's coming from there's a completely separate budget line item so we probably should state that we're gonna move 84 and change what's the line item teachers pension teachers might join
040us on the board of that side it was there but it wasn't an order that budget per se all right I will amend the motion that I made as follows I moved to approve the recommendation of the Board of Selectmen to fund the request to the Board of Education for a special appropriation of eighty four thousand four hundred ninety dollars to come from the teachers pension fund budget line item to fund an additional kindergarten teacher for the 2019 2020 school year based on the most recent demographic results any further discussion on the matter okay hearing and seeing none call the motion to a note all those in favor and to give a saying aye aye aye motion carries 4-0 you get all that time all right so this next item there's a just a typo
041on the agenda this was for phase 3 that's what I had communicated to Eileen so I apologize for that it's actually a phase 4 this is this is a long but you don't have to read the entire resolution so what was going to have to move into it well first the Board of Selectmen has to approve it we're having a special meeting tomorrow at our board meeting we actually had although we did not have the detail needed to make a formal resolution and our bond Council was on vacation so tomorrow night the Board of Selectmen is gonna meet we're going to forward this to the Board of Finance for action and with a suggested date of I'm not sure the date for Town Meeting so that we can get this in by August 14th notice
042was to discuss and you have to sign a special meeting date right there was no there was no actual business for this okay thank you yeah this threw me off yeah yeah well we got this today and just wanted you guys to have a copy of it so what we'll be doing just so people are aware residents it's a 2.4 million dollar project you have to fund at least 20% the town funds we would appropriate four hundred and eighty thousand dollars for phase 4 and it gives us a much stronger argument when we go up against other cogs because the people who make these recommendations and I've seen this dozens of times where towns put in a project and never fund their portion of it the project is approved and sits there for three four
043five sometimes six years well more if we funded it they know we're ready to go with it and so they looked so does that become a line out of my next year's budget tell me become a borrower yeah the kappa wait we don't turn cast and the 480,000 comes friend barri we would anticipate because it's a capital project and it would last that would be our suggestion three and that's the total of the town's commitment to his face yep at this point in time it is possible that this grant west cog has named us number one but the whole state grants there's a limited amount money they may come to us and say okay we're only gonna give you 1.5 not the one nine twenty that we need so then we'd have to go find
044other grants or other sources but right now we're basing it upon what our application is and the 20 percent all right so the first selectmen had asked us to look for a date in August our board meeting is on the 14th that's too late yeah and then we have to we need five days to post in the newspaper before the town meeting when you want to have the town meeting around but eight we could do the town meeting on the 8th but then we would have to one two three four five you would have to meet oh and I'm looking at you have your next time sorry I was looking at I'm low I was looking at July I apologized as an export that's the 14th so you shall meeting I'm thinking if we could
045we could do it at the board before the Board of Selectmen meeting on the 5th or we could do it between the 5th and the seventh birthday meeting which would give us enough time so any date we pick for the Town Meeting we need at least 5 days before that so let's say we pick the 7th of August so when are you gonna have your Board of Selectmen tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow so you can do it anytime I think the sooner the better is anyone available to fall in like for a five minute meeting anytime in the next two weeks I feel really good okay you mean the week the second week the week on the 15th another week in the 15th yes yeah yeah yeah Wednesday that's what was 14 July 17th oh you told
046me this yeah yeah yeah I know I know I won't be young here the whole week which is that day the whole week and the following week at least second half pretty much less divorce it's back from vacation 31st ok first might work I'm gonna tell you first that give you time 31st should be good for us let me just double-check yes a 30-person work because I'm gonna need one two three four five six boy that's cutting it tight yeah it is that's kind of real tough doesn't this you have to be on a Wednesday well if you do it on Wednesday we get it to them on Thursday they put it in the paper on Friday that is that'll just give us one extra day in case they don't get it in until Saturday
047that's a little tight if we could do it in July come on des the 29 that would work here that would give us a couple extra days that works all right then so be it we will notice that in the next couple days after you have your meeting Emily gonna propose only have language we can put in there we'll get that out right well the time and everything like that and location please does anybody care maybe something that seven is good my location TBD alright other items to come before the board I believe we would like to add an executive session to discuss some real estate matters okay all those in favor of entering into executive session right the first year yeah yeah the agenda item get a second all those in favor of entering
048into an executive session to discuss real estate matters indicate by saying aye okay move into executive session then go to that room as long as it's not locked its storage so it is locked