Board of Finance Meeting 8-8-18

001[Music] we usually have at least one person is rich so with Oh these are wearing different clothes okay every day thank you good evening ladies and gentlemen this is Wednesday August 8th and this is the August regular meeting of the Board of Finance I call this meeting to order if everyone would rise and join me for the [Music] we'll just get the published version of the agenda distributed to everybody that's okay thank you so you can disregard the event that I was in the back Thanks Oh all right the first order of business on our agenda we do have I think some exciting news we do have a new town controller Marcia Marion certified I'm working on that yeah she has enhanced experience unisex patience experience before to working with her eyes we've already leaps

002and balance papasan okay yeah hopefully so welcome worship thank you very much yes thank you you know aside from Steve the board members that got to meet you ahead of time Dan and myself I mean obviously we gave positive recommendations and feedback to Steve so welcome does anyone have any immediate questions that we want to ask of Marsha or you know I'm sure things will come up as we go through we do have a report from Marsha coming up no I do want to state that you know if you're sitting at this table it's for a reason right not just to fill a chair so when we we open up for discussion and I don't have a problem with you participating in the discussion so I think there is something to add please do all

003right well thank you I don't think that'll be a problem I attended to the Board of Ed Finance Committee meeting and I said I would keep my mouth shut and I couldn't do it there any members of the public here that would like to get comments okay seeing and hearing none moving on to communications and correspondence received it was a rather slow month yes and we didn't have any moving on to approval ten minutes from last month's meetings I make a motion to approve the meeting minutes from the July 11th regular meetings any discussion minutes as they were distributed hearing no discussion all those in favor of approving the a July 11th regular meeting minutes as provided indicate by saying hi okay moving on the report of the First Selectman on the agenda we put

004storm-damaged update and many other items that you generally see quite you know primarily what we've been working on since our last meeting is the storm damage and getting things fixed this report that you have now we made some changes to it great name bow skis out this week we we have to stay under budget we have put two things on hold partially that is the land use 70 1980 I believe it is for clearing trails and tree work and also the same on the Parks and Rec side we've done all the emergency work we need to do there's still some cleanup with trails are still closed but we will be doing things like we're clearing the cross-country trail because they're going to start running in a couple weeks we're going to make sure they're completely

005clear some of this work can be held off until we see the hard actual numbers because some of these numbers you know are estimates they're pretty close but we can't be over budget so we've held that up the second thing we noticed in going over this today you guys have seen a previous version of this I sent out my apologize on Monday morning there was a mistake on the last page where we have the Brookfield high school track lights if you look at the bottom box it wasn't boxing to the Excel spreadsheet and the reason was the lights at the Brookfield High School football field or miscoded so now if you look at it we spent a good portion of today reconciling what's on munis to this report we're still off by a little bit

006and we think we know where that is but we're going to go through and get it down to the penny so it's a little bit we have 1 million six hundred thirty eight thousand on the munis and 1 million seven hundred thirty seven thousand on the report if I could jump in then if you look at the Excel spreadsheet at least to an accountant it's not intuitive on how it works that accountants kind of like to have this column and then mutually exclusive what other column it goes into so the best place to look on the columns is there's two columns called insurance one is covered by kurma and one is not covered by kurma that those two are the best representations of what's what's out there that covered by karma the his numbers are

007about $300,000 higher than what's in munis and we've got the the big amounts reconciled that there are some things that he's got in here is estimates and they're not in munis because they're not they're not encumbered there or done yet and then not covered by insurance we're just a little bit off well what the difference is here do not cover column doesn't have the thirty five thousand for it wasn't taken out it was taken out of my version of this but line 39 that we put on hold right and wine eighty nine we put on hold right that's one hundred and six thousand nine fifty so if you subtract that from the 1 million seven thirty-seven 145 I apologize let me just but his numbers are a little higher just because there's things that are

008estimates in there six people's so if we take those two items out the spreadsheet should say 1 million six hundred thirty thousand 195 and we have 1 million 638 I'm Eunice so or if I eat the house right now which we're gonna find what the differences does that make sense any other questions on the storm damage report no no we want to get it right down and you know Greg is using actual expended today that's where he's keeping track for himself we're gonna take that column out because I have them separated into covered and not covered and I think that column is confusing to people but what are you really doing with that cop so we'll take that out for the next report we have to this could you actually leave it in i like

009comparing that's the cost estimate to me that make sense no we're not gonna update it though because everything is going over to covered or not covered okay right and then over in the right you can see if it's expended if we've issued a purchase order if it's been paid for so all the information actual is over here on the right side of the spreadsheet so that detail is there it's duplicated so it's the combined the insurance plus whatever is the right over to the right you can see submitted to karma approved by karma purchase order required requested so and we're also putting in the invoice numbers and stuff if we've gotten an actual invoice number that's the hard dollar number okay so most of that information over there right the one thing we did do

010this week is we are turning the brush art back into a brush art we've got series loose this week we got down to about one hundred and sixty loads on Saturday one hundred and sixty hundred seventy loads that's pretty close to what we normally get in a typical Saturday during the summer so we're gonna cut series loose and we're finished with them so we're not doing any more female counting for brush so that's a good thing we do not have an update from FEMA yet we do want one we're still told it will be towards the end of this month but you could see like yesterday the president declared a county of California as a disaster area they just depends on the level you know they could do whatever they want so we're waiting for

011that and we really hope that will come through we've been told that we have a very good claim on the public assistance side but on the individual assistance side they said it's going to be much more iffy for all the factors we discussed before income levels amount of damage things like that Marsha and I have probably been spending three hours a day with each other for the last week we're working on preparing for the audit doing the bank recs reconciling all of our accounts looking to restructure and Marshall we'll talk more about it perhaps restructure some of our counts so they're more clear and transparent and I'll let her speak today she's the expert otherwise we're just having a pretty good summer and we've missed two concerts so far I missed the concert is there

012a lot of fun so any questions good thank you actually yeah um we see in now in town center number businesses going in and I think doing very well when do we see the benefit almost means immediately the tax assessor goes out and looks at these and puts them on the records and starts to believe in October our grant list is as of October but if we have property now we'll do a partial right from now until October and it's a retroactive kind of so you won't see that money today but you will see it in the next bill in January in that revenue cycle the personal property isn't you you're not going to get a ton of money there but it's actually in talking about the four corners I probably should have mentioned this

013you know 20 station road we did we got the grant to do the remediation study we spent about a hundred and fifty thousand out of a two hundred thousand dollar grant we had a meeting with the state yesterday and we asked them if we could use at fifty thousand dollars to go through the blade committee and knock that building down right we haven't gotten an answer that grant comes from decd so we haven't gotten an answer for them but DEP wants us to go and test surrounding properties to fully determine the extent of volatile gases so you do a test in the ground to see if anything's getting under somebody's basement and also tests the wells that usually is not outrageously expensive and it's probably a good thing to do and they get a lot

014of say they in DCD I've worked very closely together I'd still like to save part of that I think the owners of the property would have no problem with us knocking that down for free for them and we really want to get that not one of the owners on the corner who's trying to sell this commercial property has that three buyers say I really don't want to be on this street with that mess there so this is we're taking them to our polite committee today was a tax sale day they did pay their taxes on those properties so they get some more time and we're trying to come to an arrangement with them we'd really like them to do it but I know that I think the owners have cashflow issues and so knocking down

015that building is not gonna be cheap because there's asbestos in it and you also have to plan for look dry cleaning chemicals and things like that you can't just take it and put it in a landfill so it's not gonna be an inexpensive knock down so that's where we are with that any chance of turning into a parking lot I would love to do that I would love to do that there is at this point time there is no possible way to remediate the chemicals in the ground so you can build on that property and the decd would love to see it capped with a parking lot they'd like to see that so we're gonna continue to pursue that we're talking to the owners it gets really complicated with all these issues but we're still

016pursuing that because we're gonna need that market any questions comments concerns other alright I'm on yours desks and the so you're trying to go through the agenda items that make it a little more exciting than than just listening to me talk and if we look at one thing you had asked about was the status of the fiscal year close that I did watch the board meeting last month on on TV and it seemed to indicate that there would only be one change in the numbers for a tax deferral adjustment and I want to change our expectation on that that we all have different styles of balancing I'm a little anal that I've heard that before and so exhibit a of what you have is kind of gives you the schedule of where you were at

017your last meeting what had been done at that time the first page is processing putting the transactions into the computer and then every other page is there's one page for each trial balance for each fund that you have so green indicates what was done as of last meeting blue indicates what's done as of today and and most of that is Kevin's work thank you Kevin and yellow indicates we still need to do and we know that the expectation is that you'll have numbers at your September meeting and that is our expectation as well that and as far as the columns on the left of what is meant by trial balance cash investments accounts receivable Exhibit B is our checklist of what we're going to go through for each one of those sections on unbalancing that

018so there there will be changes from your numbers so to go over just the first page you take now we have these things that have been done the receipts and disbursements now have things actually things have hit the ledger now you or Kevin want to go through the exercise of actually reviewing everything that's hit I do you're gonna hold me responsible for those numbers I wonder is that what this means though so not everything had hit the ledgers when you were there right now that they're caught up in payables to about July 15th and we think we've got most of the junior ends have stopped coming in now but we do we want to go through each of the ledgers that there's some big journal entries in there I don't know what the journal entries

019are for I want to be able to give an intelligent answer of what that's for I think you're going to hold me responsible for those numbers and I want to make sure they're right yeah so on the the closing checklist obviously it's it's a more higher level review than what we were talking about so for the first couple of months they are just Kevin who's work are you gonna do more than just a simple sample and make sure the things balance are getting going in so what it's gonna happen is one of the things that we've done in the last five days is we have a filing system on the now on the electronic filing system whereas before things were filed by who it was that did the work so if if Dana had done

020the bank reconciliation you might be able to find it under day does file if Savannah had done the bank reconciliation might be able to find it the file it under hers we've changed that and we only have stuff under our names for when we're working on it temporarily we have a filing tree so that and there is a filing tree for January so that you see there's a checklist for B that someone will go through and prepare that checklist and someone will go through and review it and I would be the one that goes through with review with reviewing it and maybe I'll be the one preparing it too because they're all very busy but that would be the expectation when the auditors come in that things have imbalanced things have been reviewed and it's

021documented that it's done so trial balance Exhibit B you'll see what on the second schedule it's not the processing let's see what I have here Schedule B trial balance the debits equal the credits surprisingly enough that the system will let you put in a an entry that doesn't balance that that we've looked at the revenue accounts that the revenue accounts are all credit balances if they're not credit balances it makes sense to us of why they're not it's just it's kind of basic we have a general fund trial balance we have education grants funds so it's it's similar to fund although some funds have multiple trial balances so this the the checklist is this a best practice that you pull it from the state or something from your experience or where did where did where

022did you Cemil this I made it up meet up okay yes I made it up based on what I've made up over the last year 85 years dealing with with clients that I swear every year I say I've seen it all but I think there you'll see in there there's something that says post the actual in the same categories as you passed a budget I can tell you what client that was that that they they passed a budget by by type of revenue and then they posted it by who gave it to them not that doesn't work so so it's it's 35 years of and I'll bet I'll add some more to it so that's where we stand on balancing so there's a lot of balancing that needs to be done so that's gonna be

023our biggest focus until your next meeting is because it affects everything that you want to see numbers for this year well I don't want to I don't don't want to give you any numbers until they're balanced that and I don't know that we're going to always get imbalanced for the selectmen who meet the first Monday of every month and could be the first day but our goal is to get them balanced for you for your first meeting for your meeting so some months it might get a seven if we go let's say to you know next July July 19 or August 19 we would be reviewing July actuals in this meeting that would be great that's a really tough month just because there's so much at June 30th every month but but in March we

024want you to be reviewing February so that is that's that's our goal and I don't see why we can't make it once we get caught up so we're going to I just want to call your attention to some changes that were expecting from the prior year that that I'm expecting to talk to you about in more detail again just so that that I've had them in my mind I don't want there to be surprises that but none of them are done deals they're all open to discussion and we'll have visuals of what exactly it means just to start thinking about that one is our financial statements should be prepared internally that we can prepare them that Kevin and I come from the same firm as Kevin that we've worked together and we've done this for

02520 clients a year that he's done just a few years I've done it 35 years there's no sense for the auditor to prepare the financial statements like that will get a discount this year because the contracts are already signed and they're probably still licking their wounds from last year but the the reason we would want to do that is is quality as I said I'm kind of anal and I don't want to say Oh cause you capitalized I could not capitalize that I don't control that that you can say something we can do it right away inconsistency that you may not have noticed this but as you've changed auditors some of your things have changed for example the library when you look at their actual expenses depends on what auditor it was that did intial

026statement some year it's their actual expenses from their checkbook and some years it's their actual transfers that you made to their checkbook and it should be what comes out of their checkbook every year so no that's just a one thing that has come up so far day five that and so next year we'll see if we can get the audit cheaper and and because of that we'll be doing them internally that and you'll be the only town in Connecticut that doesn't internally that 100% internally that you used to get a certificate of excellence program on your comprehensive annual financial report that doesn't mean that you've you're financially healthy not that you're not but it just means that the financial statements are meet the expectations and are up to even the current things that come out

027you've done appropriate disclosures and so forth you stopped receiving that in 2014 it would be great if we could start receiving that again you may say no because there is a cost associated with it that that you send it off to the government finance Officers Association with a check and they send you back a certificate if you pass but that would again that would show that things are changing that and and I've done this are there any other additional benefits to bragging rights that you would have more information you could have the same information in the file that without a certificate of excellence so you could save the money and say we're still want to have it as if we could earn it that so those two things will also help us with our rating

028agencies it gives them a little bit more confidence that somebody else does look at these and said yeah they're good and it gives you some of the information for your continued disclosures that you have to put on the EMA system okay so so there's no requirement that you do that that but we'd like to have them there and prepared and the other thing that it does is it makes them be done faster that you can only get an extension for it so pressures that order they're a little bit you can only get an extension for a specific new circumstances you can't use the same excuse over so I believe that's why you don't have them in 50 and 60 and 17 change a policy on the period of availability this means nothing to you now

029but but it's funny that right now that you can only record a FEMA money you've spent the FEMA money let's say it's approved you could definitely see verbals that yes there we're going to get that money but under the modified accrual basis we're measuring working capital and right now you can think of fund balances working capital it's the same thing and that's why when debt comes in its revenue because it adds to your working capital and when you build a new school it's an expenditure because it takes your working capital that and your policy in your financial statements right now says that you're not going to record revenue unless you receive it in 60 days because it's it's not that's how soon it has to be received for you to want to record it as

030working capital you actually have an option taxes has to be 60 days or less for everything else you have an option of going up to a year so let's take the FEMA money under the way you have it accounted for now that you're not going to get it by study first hopefully you get it approved by August 31st but you're not going to receive the money so what happens to your fund balance is that here it is and you spend 1.7 million dollars and it drops you can't record the revenue of FEMA because you didn't get it in 60 days next year you get it and it goes back up again and then you've got to sit us in like this that says I just don't understand this and if it's an accounting thing is

031kind of stupid that but if you changed your policy and say what we're going to do it and if as long as we receive it in a year we want to record it as revenue as good enough is working good enough to be working capital for us that well in that case we can estimate when do you think that FEMA money is going to come in of with if it comes in by June 30th this year we have the expenses but we have the revenue so our fund balance doesn't go down and then it just stays pretty consistent we don't have to say well it's just this weird thing that we do and it makes a lot more sense it matches revenue and expenses a lot better the the downside would be that we could

032record revenue we could estimate that we're going to get one point two million dollars whatever it's going to be and it could be a bad debt that we don't ever have bad debts when we do it within 60 days but it could be a bad debt it could be estimated we estimate 1.2 when we get 1.1 that you think about it the schools will probably would never the final payment would never come in in 60 days but you know you could estimate that oh it's all eligible costs and find out some of it's not so that would be the downside of doing this but so that were is one thing we're going to talk more about FEMA if you look at that expenditure the last page of that you did in addition to the budget

033for 1.5 or to separate that added to 1.5 million dollars last year if that's an addition to the general fund budget you're kind of screwed that we're kind of screwed I shouldn't say that because that budget the general fund budget ends at June 30th and you can't keep spending it then we're going to talk about that that's the parks and that's the Public Works issue that the budget ended okay now you have no appropriation to spend it against this year that even though the storm happened last year the expenditures go against when they were committed or for an encumbrance or when they were received for an expenditure so we found a problem that mat with a mismatch there that we had a nice budge in total it's all covered by a budget so so if

034we do if we do go to 365 we could accrue the FEMA money where we estimated is it would be recorded in last year so we have the 1.5 million we appropriated and we would have the FEMA money and so it would smooth out our reporting so people are looking at this and said wow they're out one there general for my down one point what's your backup according the problem somebody's that's the problem we would have backup to record it that we'd have to wait because the we don't have to have final numbers until the audit comes and they've already told us they're not coming after December 31st so hopefully we get a lot more backup to get a much much more precise number by the time we have to have a final number that

035and remember we can hold off on doing that if FEMA and let's say the third week of August says hey yes we're you're declaring you a disaster area then we have the backup and we could do it the problem is if we go over the 60 days right will you still play this by ear right wait until FEMA actually makes a decision either way and then you can back it out I think Marcia's idea is a good one yeah we're not gonna do it unless we have backup because we don't want the auditors to say oh we had to make a material adjustment to your financial statements and that's a black mark on us and they could give us a comment on that so one of the things we want to do is talk about

036possibly a separate fund for the FEMA money that the general fund has the budget issue but if we go back and amend that motion slightly to say the not and I have to look at the motion but have the motion that was passed by the Board of Finance say and have it as a transfer to a special revenue account then that doesn't have the the issues with the cutoff and that's easy enough to do but we'd have to come back to you on that we talked to the attorney about the right wording on that so that's a change that the next slide with respect to the general fund if you look at your 2017 audit you have five trial balances adding up to one general fund the first trial balance is what you use for

037the budget to actual so those expenditures and the other funds don't really hit the budget to actual and someone could say that's not really that transparent there luckily there's not that many transactions in there some that don't have any transactions we're very much wanna work smarter and not harder why do we have five trial balances that we can handle all that in proper accounting without having separate trial balances so everything goes through the one trial balance so that's one thing we're going to talk about that the library has an endowment that they've told me it's an endowment that I have no reason not to trust them that it's a separate account with Wells Fargo but I've asked for the agreement so we can see it that because you know people don't always think the same

038preciseness that for example one of my favorites is Oh their CPA well no they're an accountant that that oh that's an endowment no that's just money that you don't want to spend that so we want to see the the document and the treasurer is going to get that for me she happens to be on vacation this week but right now that is in your general fund it makes up half a million dollars of your fund balance that if it's an endowment the category is wrong in the fund balance it should be moved to non spendable right now it's in committed committed means that the town decided at the highest level of government a town meeting that we're not going to spend it if they said we're that you can only spend it on certain things

039that whoever gave us the endowment said that then it should be moved up to restricted that you can't change that if it's committed you could take it and if it's indeed an endowment it should be non spendable just five different categories of fund balance it makes a difference if it is indeed an endowment we're I'm going to suggest that we don't keep it in the general fund that Moody's is if once it goes to non spendable they're not gonna count it any way that it makes what makes sense to put it in a permanent fund because right now there's interest being earned on that that kind of looks like just regular interest in your general fund it's not regular interest if it's an endowment most likely you could only spend it on library things and

040it should just be set a pocket of money on the financial statements you'll have a heart and hypertension fund trial bounce that's combined into the general fund that usually those are accounted for with an internal service fund that kind of like yourself insurance for health insurance so it would change it from where you would see it on page 72 to 73 the pages 24 and 25 probably doesn't make a big difference to you it'd still be separate it still look pretty much the same one of the things that we've done is we've reached out to kerma to find out some of those are commitments that are already made that we and there's a liability there that's not recorded for in claims that have already been incurred but not reported we need to estimate that liability

041and put it on the financial statements you have a volunteer of wart program that I don't think is on the books at all that and I have to tell you on some of these things especially this one I makes me very very nervous that the firefighters that when they work every year it says that they have to give the finance director a report in January of how many hours every but where how many fires they've gone to and for every year the firefighters work they get a certain dollar amount per year when they when they stop that it's it's called a volunteer award program and I can give you the paperwork if you haven't seen it you've got twenty three thousand in cash for that but we you don't have any liability recorded that it

042does say in there as Steve points out that in a year that you don't have money you don't have to fund it but the other you've already made promises all the other years think of it like a very small pension and we're meeting with the actuaries tomorrow it probably needs an actuarial report I think that's Marsha and I disagree on this if it's something that we don't have to pay every year I don't want to spend ten thousand dollars creating an actuarial report saying what our future liability would be it's a pay-as-you-go we can stop doing it we stop any time when you want just because there's an expectation that these people will receive this every year that is not a guarantee like a pension has a guarantee even if we went bankrupt somebody still

043gets a pension right they still have a claim on the town for their pension if we didn't have our pension fully live fully funded so this is cash award that we're giving to these guys and girls that in my opinion we're gonna talk that after I talk to our legal but it seems to me if I can stop it next year and decide not to pay it I don't have to create an action or a table I don't spend ten thousand dollars creating a pension like reporting for it it doesn't seem necessary but we're going to find out I'm sorry don't we have a line item for this yeah I should think yeah but this money seems to be sitting outside of retirement for some we're shooting the language one we give each fireman $1,500

044if they met all the requirements that's every year this is for long term service if you've worked in the fire department for 20-plus years and you've done this amount of work and you've we have all the requirements to make that after a certain amount of time you can then get up to 250 dollars a month as a stipend funding it through the operating budget if there's a cash allotment on the back side of this now salary 3000 in the account so what it is what you mean by cash flow but I just heard there's 23,000 dollars sitting in an account on the outside of my budget that's what I just heard we do have an account it's called volunteer award program again I've only been here five days just $23,000 sitting in an account we're

045funding it through the operating does not we should be able to move 23,000 into the operating budget and take reduce the operating budget you're thinking there's it's there twice it's not we did make a line item for it and there is in the budget $23,000 okay this so and if there's an account with $23,000 in it sitting on the outside I have 46,000 dollars I can reconcile this for you okay don't let us reconcile it so well I don't know of no $23,000 sitting in another account because every year we have 23,000 every year we spend 23 thousand different we do have bank statements for an account called volunteer work program with Wells Fargo its 23,000 that when it's properly recorded that account will be on our balance sheet as cash that that we would

046still need to put it in an appropriation an annual appropriation to spend it so then when we go what we're spending is to pay-as-you-go so we're spending for firefighters that have already retired and what the liability would be is for the firefighters that are there now an estimate of how much they've already earned for when they retire that we may pay 20 years down the line does that make sense this is just an accounting issue a technical accounting issue or is there two separate funds it's really a treatment issue what are you going to treat this as our you're going to treat it as something like pension or you're going to treat it as an annual stipend that we give out and we obviously we fund it every single year info and we pay it

047out every year info how do you know how much because we get the list the fire department puts together a list the guys who qualify and you qualify for the next year and that's it that's how much we there's money sitting in another account outside I'm unaware that will we're just trying to clarify if it's a technical accounting issue so the technical accounting issue the the biggest issue comes up on what it's meant on number 16 and that agreement is that you don't have to fund it if you don't have the money that the way I read it means that that firefighters we don't have the money this year so there's no ten dollars being added to your your month the way Steve reads it is the firefighter that retired 20 years ago you're not

048getting that payment this year and remember these are all volunteers so they're not town employees that makes a difference too so we're gonna we're having a meeting with an actuary tomorrow what our liability is if there really is some liability that we have to it's like Oh pepper right we find help every year but we pay as we go with open but the regulations require us to do the actuarial understanding of what that total liability is we may have to do that with this I don't think we do Marsha thinks we should look at it I agree whether we should look at it okay so then is the site issue that we have the twenty three thousand well we don't necessarily have to use it for what it was intended any line item in our

049budget we can move around I understand that but I mean the problem is a bunch of volunteers are risking their lives you know very small amount of money it'd be pretty screwed up tonight at least and we did there was some talk I went back to the minutes in 1996 there was some talk in there about fully vested half vested and they talked about it and then something happened over the Christmas holidays and it looks like they never talked about it again that so I don't really know what happened to that we should have that by next meeting and then just the town clerk collects money on every filing that she does for the first page of hey $5 extra under one statute and $30 extra under another statute some of that is money that's

050restricted to her use it's still if it's in the general fund it still goes to the budget process but we've got Kelly she has calculated that for us and we have to allocate that out the small cities grant that you have housing rehabilitation loans the estimate that I've just heard it I haven't talked to the consultant yet that there might be $800,000 that's over the town and it's to $400,000 programs so 800,000 of grants that you got and you could spend 25% on 20% on overhead so maybe we're talking 600,000 but those are loans that are out there and they should be booked as receivables that education programs and pay-to-play on page 83 of year last year's financial statements you have two programs there there miss named that the pay to play or pay to

051participate is gone that that program after talking to the board of it is really money that you charge to the high school students for insurance on their iPads or now Chromebooks and the educational of the miscellaneous educational programs is calf custodian reimbursements neither one is named properly and we could clean that up a little bit in the reporting that and the Board of Ed is on board with that additional changes were I would anticipate and I'm open to suggestions as well but you spend 75% of your budget on the Board of Ed and it's one line in your financial statement because that's the the requirement that it's the budget only be one line but that doesn't mean you can't give more information in the budget that to show what it was spent on so I

052would recommend a supplemental schedule to say here's what it was spent on here's the revenue for example the excess cost current state statute says that it should be net with the expenses but you could show it also it's very clear and transparent what they spent what they have as reimbursements against it and again they're they're very open to doing that let's do that all right let's not make it a all right you haven't just wrote that down there's anything we need to do yeah and it's a great schedule and it it eliminates a lot of questions additional schedules that you've got three programs three funds that have a lot of sub accounting going on underneath it for example your capital non-recurring fund you've got a lot of projects in there do you know what they

053are do you know what happened it doesn't rip or show that in the audit report we could do a supplemental schedule I copied one in that I from Monroe's financial statements that so at the bottom if you look on the bottom the subtotal on the bottom is the income statement and it just allocates out the income statement by program of where they started what was added to it what was spent from it and where it ended program to program and capital non-recurring there's one called town programs because again we should be doing this to make sure to see that they're going to wash themselves out and then education grants funds again so you know what grants are in there so nobody can say oh I think they just have some slush money that went through

054there it would be and I'm not considering that any of this has slush money but it should all be in the financial statements so that's actually a helpful document this is a lot this is something we feel you can commit to in order to properly come out in order to properly balance these accounts we have to do this anyway for example capital non-recurring we have to know I have to know what happened program by program because how do I know that the receivables are all picked up if we spent this out and and we're going to get reimbursed for low stuff but we haven't been reimbursed yet I can't imagine balancing without knowing this so we have to do it we have to do it to calculate the different categories of fund balance we have

055to do it the education grants we have to do it to calculate the deferred revenue so internally we need this and it's on the checklist so it would just be prettying up the schedule and putting it in my do have to say that if if you've had nothing as far as records I might have to say in September well these funds look like they're done but we're still working on getting this to Jive that but it I do have spreadsheets that Steve has given me a lot of people have spreadsheets there's ways to put that into munis Kevin's going to work on that so that we can give you um so we can again work smarter not harder if you remember from last year's audit report they said we did a good job on capital

056projects for the prior two years but the third year before that we did and they gave us a little thing on that this will eliminate that and I think and I don't remember if i put it later but with expectations on the audit report that steve has already said that he expects that there will be no material weaknesses if they're doing it properly they're going to say these were not corrected during the fiscal year and they're going to continue that there is actually it's right in the audit rules that so that's not my expectation my expectation supreme really nice to them and hope that they just say oh that's good now and move on but I have nothing to fight back with if they say oh that's the rule because that is the rule bond

057rating slide five that we spent on busy five days we met with Moody's on Friday and they did not change your bond rating that you have a bond rating of double-a - that has been down in a negative outlook that that has been down for the last few years I did go back to 2007 the high the highest it was was double-a one it was never a triple-a it was a double-a one and the state divides up all the towns by a DRG group which talks about your education and your wealth and and the highest group is a you are be the there's only one B in all those years that I looked at that God a triple-a and that's Greenwich was much bigger than you are but none of the other in the B

058group were ever triple-a that but you were double-a one so there's a few things that they don't like on the next slide that oh I should first put that in context Moody's does bond ratings for about ninety of the town's a year one-third of them twenty nine they looked at last October when the state hadn't passed their budget it was like they were a little pissy that and they said you know what this is pretty scary the state hasn't passed their budget and that you get a lot of funding from that the ones that got the most funding from the state for example summon northeast Connecticut get almost sixty six percent of their budget is funded by the state they were downgraded that that was twenty nine a different 29 this happens to be the

059same number went from a stable outlook to a negative outlook so it's not like you're in a vacuum here that you're in very good company so some of the major issues the dependence on Connecticut revenues what they look like look at as a statewide issue that the funds balance levels we're going to talk about that in a minute that those of there's some changes in the past few years about where it should be they didn't like the number of times it took to pass a budget and the weakness is reported in the financial statements and then there was one other that they noted that happens in Connecticut they didn't like that the WPC a they didn't feel as though they had enough of a question they found a positive fund balance but they want to

060see that the revenue is covering just like any commercial thing the bankers always like to see that the revenue covers the principal and interest and I think they went back three years I didn't test him on it you know their numbers to see but that was another item that they added if you take a look at the next page this is the bond ratings for Moody's all the Moody's towns that are rated as of November 17th so you can see the ones that your goal double-a one and where you are now double-a to which is the biggest amount of the towns are rated double-a - they talk about being based on a fund balance percentage so this is the dark blue line is the fund balance the light blue the dark blue bar the light

061blue bar is your total revenue and what we do is we make that into a percentage and you have about 8 percent of your total of unassigned fund balance available fund balance of your annual budget so that would be when you think of it in working capital that would be you of that one month's working capital that when I first started this 35 years ago the rule of thumb was you should have 5 to 8% as working capital about 10 years ago the state the first time was the first time the state cut the earth the town's budgets mid-year and that scared Moody's and they said Oh in Connecticut they'd like to see it at 10% as a minimum of fund balance to handle situations like that and then the government finance officers are the

062ones that are really the drivers of best practices it's the biggest membership organization for municipal governments and they're talking now that the rule of thumb should be about two months working capital which is sixteen point six percent yeah that they don't they don't have to get reelected that they don't have to try and pass a budget sixteen point six percent that's two months 2/12 that but one of the things that Steve has had charged me with is setting up a policy for you to look at on where our fund balance should be and how we're going to get there and the easiest way on the how we're going to get there because you're not going to pass a budget that's got a profit in it that I'm pretty sure that but but if you don't

063spend everything or if you have a budget surplus if you had a policy that said we're going to keep it all or we're going to keep 50% of it that that would be a way to start because the the fund balance is just very similar from the point of view of if you come from industry fund balances like retained earnings so so if you just retain the earnings that that's how you would get there so the fact that's what we've been doing for the last three years and that's how we grow the general fund balance Marsh is something to note and keep in mind the Board of Finance did make a commitment to the Board of Education to I guess go on one of the state statutes that says I'm gonna get it wrong precisely

064but I not percent so that is some 10-2 for taa I say that just a prove I'm honored that and that is that's a pretty funny statute because it is my three sentences long and so they the Board of Ed I have to tell you I've been so pleasantly surprised how inclusive they've been that because as a CEO and signing these things and signing the audit report they're just a line in the budget and even though state statutes kind of they all go by that general business practices the CFO is the CFO of everything that I tried to say that nicely that I would like to just come to their meetings sit be quiet but know what's going on and I lied on the be quiet part but this was one of the things that

065we talked about is they had talked about this and they have to come to you for a policy and I gave them a sample of a policy that I said that it like to continue the discussion that just because I would expect that if they bring you a policy you're going to say what do you think about that and I hate to you know say I hate it that but there's different rules with that so the legislators are not accountants and they said that if if they don't spend all of their budget they can spend it now or spend it later it was the legislators love education that so and it can grow up to 1% it never says that yet to spend it on education but I assume that's what they meant but that's

066great but then the concern is that the citizens and some boards of Finance a concern is oh they're going to have this huge amount of money and so when they come to you is really your only chance to look at that and to control it so you should have a policy of what you want and you want it to come to you do you want it to go to the Board of Ed you want it to just be the business manager this I will use some of that money did anyone tell you that there's a draft that'd be great they didn't they didn't say that that but one of the problems from the accounting end is the same year the legislators passed that this rule gatsby 54 was passed that said here are the rules

067for a separate fund they said I let's put it in a separate fund the accounting government accounting board said oh you can't just put anything in a separate fund this is what happened and so trying to balance that it wouldn't qualify as a special revenue fund on its own so you couldn't just put it in an account by itself and use it on whatever you want because the majority of the money has to be restricted or committed so there's some different rules that we're trying to balance the two together and one is that you could put in a capital projects fund to be used for future capital projects you could put it because they don't really specify you could your market and the general fund but then you've got the budget problems with it how

068do you what if you don't pass it for a budget or you could put it into the educational grants fund just rename that slightly assuming that most of the money is still from education grants and then they could spend it on you know other special should cost that they have so that there's a lot of rules though we're just traveling I just wanted to make sure that I was on your radar it is on my radar and they brought me they talked about it at that meeting that they invited me do the Finance Committee of the Board of Ed they said don't come to the Board of Ed movies we don't talk finances there that so this is the where you stand your kind of low compared to these because we I'm sorry we face

069a lot of stuff on this dirt be a lot of are and we always hear Derby Derby can we get the bond rating for each dirt B and the general fund balance for each third feet so we could stay in here so it's not in here for all of us at like labeled dirt B there's a few people on the dirt bid their bond rating correct I can put the bond rating in the cavity writing at them and the the bond rating and the general fund balances we always compare ourselves on everything we do to dirt be dirty dirt be where do we spend are we low on our general fund balance compared to the rest of because if you look at the bond ratings it looks like the triple A's are mostly dirt beasts

070there are two steps ahead of us and binary yeah I think what you really need to look at is how much what percentage they have in general fund versus their spending doesn't matter what the dark is it does matter because we compare all of our Board of Education funded yeah Harrison to the third we're trying to be in dirt be we're trying to compete with dirt be but what level finances are we compared to the dirty syllables as far as fund balance as far as bond ratings if we go back Monroe is double eight to New Fairfield is double a two and up until last week I was the auditor of New Fairfield and I know that they have an Aston Barry I think is negative okay correct okay all right so okay I can

071do all this scientistic all the time I would say we're not competing that reward event says we're 13th in the dirt where last night spending doubts about are we the word is in the dirt if I can just finish what's more important to the rating agencies they don't get to demonize karencc you're missing my point we are competing every statistic that gets thrown at us for when we're doing bored of it budgets is we are the lowest spending dirt be where the lowest I'm trying what does that have to do with bond ratings where do we stand financially compared to the other towns you have against other towns not against the dirt and you look at the moon why radiate more than it compares us against dirt they want when we want to get it

072doubly one rating we are gonna compare ourselves against what our rating agencies I got your point Greg and we can do that and I just picked the ones from Fairfield County do you want me to do it to all of them would like to see the third me I'd like to see cuz we're always like I say we're always saying we're the lowest spending and third beyond education per student I want to see where we are in the bond rating in the dirt B are we the lowest in the bond ratings are we in the middle because that'll say we should be able to spend more on education or and where is our fund balance compared do they have more money in the bank are they more financially secure where they can expend more on

073board on education and we have to maybe be a little conservative until we get to that point it's fun to me it's a direct correlation to the Board of Ed Derk statistics to the finance sounds like a very appropriate benchmark yep this is all I'm trying to say it to me it's a benchmark that's not a problem and I've got a spreadsheet that has all the town's so I'll just take off the the filter for just Fairfield County I'll do all the dirt B's and every comparison every comparison we have will do against all of them we can do that the next one is just a comparison of against 169 towns this is the orange line is their fund balance that little black spot over there they're alphabetical is Brookfield so you can see in

074total even though that you were kind of the same as the others that we just looked at in total you're a little bit low compared to everybody else so so that's what they're talking about it Moody's so I've got a listing that I've been doing we I get about one page a day of things that we should be doing policies we should be thinking about stuff we want to look into I've got it in four different categories accounting that we talked a lot about the accounting things today controls and compliance that making sure we have a segregation of duties efficiencies and savings and then organizational the do we talk so just you know the biggest of the categories of that for accounting that we you see it there the the worksheet in the checklist for

075how we're going to balance the months and everything we talked about earlier for the controls not tightening the tightening segregation of duties between functions authorization record-keeping custody those are the big things that should be separate our offices record-keeping we shouldn't have any authorization rights we shouldn't have any custody rights that is not the case now so we'll be making some changes you'll probably be hearing some complaints but that's what our goal is that right now we get money just dropped off on on the desks that that we're record-keeping we don't want custody it's pretty it's pretty easy but not not so easy to change but we did meet with a banker and we're able to do evidence bags for the money going to the bank so that because we don't have those locking bags anymore

076at banks but evidence bags they they'll make sure that everything comes in one if it's open they'll call us if it doesn't come in an evidence bag they'll call us so that is where we're going with that but there's a lot of different areas there without anything you were suspicious of or you're just implementing best practices that's just best practices that that that it's just it's just kind of a glaring thing that well we shouldn't have cache that because what if we have cache we can say look at that I put that in my even checks the biggest Dixon Illinois was the biggest investment in municipal history about town the same size and it was all checks so it's not just cash that I could put it in my pocket and just say oh it's

077a deposit in transit er oh it just should throw a credit into somebody's account and it's gone that but absolutely they don't suspect anybody I don't it's just it's it shouldn't be done that and it's most cargo myself because I don't want anyone accuse I make that so we're we've but it's covers everybody that right now we're working a lot with vendor payments that it's a hugely inefficient system where people are putting scanning stuff in and then the finance office prints it out puts a sticker on it scans it back in that we've got everyone gets a bill from frontier we have 17 bills some of them that Mark have credit sauna but because they're separate accounts they can apply the credit from that account to this account so jerry has been working on that

078eve me as a plan set up and i just didn't have time to talk to him today it is a whole report written up of how we're going to do that just ordering things that the Charter says that we will the order centrally we're not ordering centrally people are paying different prices for the same thing things like and this is really Lorraine and Kevin that have been really on this that we're using the state bidding thing well we're thinking maybe an Amazon account as well the stapler that we got yesterday for $36 on the state bidding list is six dollars on Amazon that so just trying to free up some of that so that's just some of the efficiencies and savings then that's the big one that we're working on now and then organizational oh

079my gosh that I can't even focus I had to clean my office that that we've set up the filing tree that so it's by topic instead of by the preparer we have a master calendar now so that we know in April that we have to pay the rent payment once a year to missus over that we have a centralized context for contacts of we need to know call the banker that we all know the bankers number and we have the notes underneath about what accounts this banker handles what accounts this one handles and we're just populating that we've got three people in it right now we had an intern in her last day was today but we have got financial stuff in four different places in the Town Hall none of it is organized and

080my desk was the the latest thing I could find when I opened the drawers was a vendor letter from 2006 I'm like you know as I said Lisa calls me number eight that I mean that's a lot of finance directors it never threw that thing away that so we are trying to get everything organized and so every year is going to have a different color insert into the folder so that you can look now there's blue folders over there they're there 18 there's yellow folders over there there's 17 I think 19 is going to be pink but just to try and organize it so again we can just know where things are get them to them quickly we found duplicate files and bank reconciliations they balance it twice or what what's going on we found

081some files that we didn't have any but that's that's in process we did here at a staff meeting this morning that students at the high school need to have 200 hours of volunteer time starting with freshman class so I reached out to dr. burrow who I'd worked with once before in Bethany and I was the auditor he was a superintendent and see if you could put me in touch with the accounting teacher at the high school and we will take an accounting student to help organize these files if it's free it's for me that quote Kevin's line and then just establishing weekly staff meetings with the staff you have out projects follow up the next week how are they doing on the projects so we can just start crossing some of these offering before you

082too far they go back one more time I'm sort of blown away with the stapler thing what is the state has I know that and I've heard this before actually I've heard it from teachers I've heard it from other people but where is our purchasing agent in this battle I'm some where how is he authorizing a 3060 - not that but who authorized they have an authorization I think it's a staple in a paper punch I'm not regardless how does this process work because I'm sort of blown away if you have some let's say you have grant you can use the state bid but but that's a process to though of where is our purchasing agent because to me I would have staples in WB Mason here and the WB Mason rep is actually going

083to go to the schools and and work with the teachers and give out things for the teachers why aren't we working closely with these reps so this is this is what we taught it but we were paid it doesn't sound like we are I guess so this is I got a bad feeling right now Kevin there we go case closed Steve tastes closed you speak and you don't listen okay no Steve so so this is what the plan is Steve this is what I'm saying where is our purchasing agent wear pants so I'm the money for this guy and where are our say it is because the only savings he brought to our table if this thing was he negotiated oil he negotiate like tryst you don't negotiate oil and electricity they are set price

084he's not negotiating where is the value in this position so they the purchasing agent was on vacation last 36 the purchasing agent was on vacation last week that on Monday we had a staff meeting we talked about centralizing this we need a plan to centralize it we were going to meet this afternoon and then we had some other things that came up but he's got a plan he's got a written plan he showed it to Kevin that of what we're going to do to get this centralized Steve and I talked about it that we're going to try and get all the low-hanging fruit that we can and then we're going to recommend to you that we get there's different vendors that do this I happen to know of one that that our firm used called

085expensive reduction analysts and they'll come in and they'll look and say you're getting everything at the cheapest prices it's free oh it's it's not a fee but they get for the first two years I think it is they get a percentage of the savings so if we can get it down as low as we can and then see if they can get it down lower that's what the goal is going to be I think the frustration here correct me if I'm wrong is that we thought that we had a head count that was doing this or striving to do this over the past X years and if it turns out that we need outside vendor to do this it is frustrating it is very very frustrating that's where a lot of that comes from the

086procedure of getting the best price we need to know that we're checking that and that is just laziness having a purchasing agent check every $20 purchase is really difficult to do we do hundreds of purchases why are we doing 100 purchases a week again because the amount of money that we spend outside of salaries doesn't equal a hundred purchases a week if we're not consolidating and we're not if we're making a hundred purchases a week we're not running our town properly I can tell you that right now it doesn't add up to the 12 million dollars in expenditures and we're spending three million dollars on health insurance that the numbers of transactions don't add up that we should be doing this many purchase orders it doesn't make sense to me that you do a hundred

087purchases a week of stuff what could we be buying a hundred things of a week I'm glad we're on the same page because it doesn't that those numbers don't add to me they don't make common sense to me to sit there and tell me we make a hundred perc then he's not doing his job because he should be making one pay per purchase for a year one purchase with WB Mason for most of the school items because they should know there's school items pretty much one purchase orders should go out to beat we're not managing this at all I gotta be honest with you this is in disarray but we're paying someone $90,000 to manage this I'm sure we share what the Board of Ed and the Board of Ed he's done a lot of

088contracts with them that so I can't tell you because it's been five days but but I can tell you that that he did this before we talked about it he did this before when he was in Richfield they had centralized purchasing and so his charge on Monday was to come back and tell us how he's going to accomplish that here and so I will get either him or was written plans for next month okay thank you I think and that we are gonna team Kevin Martin all together or seeing sadder than there we have ISA who does payroll she's been been in over 10 years and he give us a lot of background we have Lorraine who has been in there for about two months doing payables she is setting up the system trying at

089the remedy for what is best practice and we're going to wait and talk to the department at all some of what we want them to don't want them to do Jerry this and then we're just hard time helping us get it up [Music] [Applause] but but he's worth it you know we have a lot of work to do we know that we've made some progress over the last half years we have a lot more dough and we're willing together and that [Music] and we [Music] so ternal communion this and not not the correct and when we do go through they've got a PowerPoint that I usually compare it to the different to the Dirk that and I give you some history of where you've been where you are now just so it's probably six pages

090of the financial statements and twelve pages of comparisons and graphs and things good any other questions thank you all right we don't have any reports of committees did we miss anything not put not all business to report I move that we take both police requests before the Brookfield volunteer firefighters so I move that we move those two business items first okay we had two requests for police outside service fund utilizations from the First Selectman I did at that chief Purcell here not only to present them but also filled any questions chief yourself like shot a couple of comments I want to thank you on for inviting me on Marcia's first night I'm not sure she's chatty and secondly I want to acknowledge Glen Murray for following through on his commitment at the Board of Finance

091meeting when we did accede to your request for moving some of these funds to come from the outside services fund he did say he was going to buy me a cup of coffee and in fact I went into Dunkin Donuts and Rosana said Glen watching this coffee at any rate are our two requests tonight the first one is is the capital technology that we moved out of the capital budget with the understanding that it would be appropriate as a capital item to come from the outside services fund we ask that you do that the number is unchanged it's the same that was in the budget did you look at and that we talked about at the board of finance movement meeting and so we asked that that be approved from the outside services on the

092second item is the pickup truck that was discussed at the First Selectman and Board of Selectmen level we mentioned it at the Board of Finance hearing that it was something requested the Board of Selectmen moved it out of the budget with the understanding that it would come back through the outside services fund the amount was different okay what happened originally our proposal was to to go with an f-150 a brand-new police interceptor pickup outfit it and so forth it was about 46,000 and change over time the proposal now is that we purchased the former fire marshal's vehicle which is an f-350 it's a used vehicle there was some discussion with the volunteer fire department that they were gonna purchase it for $25,000 it's my understanding that that money was included in the revenue side of

093our budget and so the town needs to capture that 25,000 so the proposal that you see before you tonight includes a purchase price of $25,000 for the truck it includes all the up fitting the computers the cameras and everything that goes along with it we also have to paint the vehicle because it's red police don't like red so the whole vehicle has to be painted that's a significant expense and the $60,000 number that's there is is a is a high number it's not 260 thousand as what I'm looking for it will not be sixty thousand or at least somewhere in the neighborhood of 54 I believe but we had had different discussions at the department level where we're going to put a camera in it where we're not going to put a camera in it

094we decided not to so the number will probably come in about 54 but it's the request is for up to sixty we won't use that much searching for something what is the purpose of it what is what is the expected future well there's several perfect purposes that we're gonna use it for one week we find ourselves in a quandary all the time every time we have to set up a roadblock a detour which is quite often we can't transport the cones the barricades the a-frames and so forth and the patrol cars is there sticking out the window it's dangerous and so forth so we need a pickup truck type vehicle and within the agency we also we just we've been using it because it's town vehicle it already exists you charging in for mileage and

095we took it down to the incinerator in Bridgeport with our one of two drug burn shipments last week it's going to be used for that kind of thing the car seats they had a trailer they need to tow around at their different events this will be capable of towing you the new Police Interceptor utilities aren't tow capable so we need a vehicle it'll tow the scuba boat we need a vehicle it'll tow the utility trailer we need the vehicle that'll tow the UTV trailer if we had to get it to another town to be used or we had to get it to a remote part of our town to be used we need something with towing capacity this will give it to us right there it's not going to be used as a routine police

096vehicle to 350 so it's a truck and it drives like a truck so nobody's going to be using it for patrol but it can be used in snowstorms and and more difficult terrain it could get up into Hershey Park with no problem at all is the fire department to be shorter vehicle now no no there was a commitment on the part of the fire department and I think they changed their minds now remember they had asked for incident command vehicles so when the police rolled off their vehicles will transfer those overs incident command vehicles so we thought that was a good compromise that's spending fifty five thousand dollars on each of those but they had the vehicles they need right now there was kind of trade off to that that was the fire marshals truck

097he was the town employee at the fire departments yes never as a client where those the fire marshal strung the current fire marshal didn't want that big 350 truck yeah so he got a used police car repainted it and it works for him took off the decals and and now they use that we have we all help each other oh yeah can we do we work it out between us we are about to hire a new fire marshal a permanent fire marshal and will come out in the next couple of days I mean it's the four-year old cars the truck is a bi-election condition is for the meta money that needs to be spent to outfit it is it worth the investment he was a youth vehicle first yeah we never would have agreed to

098it if we didn't first have deburr the town mechanic check it out and give it a good clean bill of health the body's in good shape there's no rot or anything like that it's only been used around town doesn't have a long again it's not going to be a patrol vehicle so it's not a vehicle we're using every day as especially useful some I'm just confused about the flow of money's coming from the house a service is fun too so they so we had funded one of the vehicles in land juice pending the sale at a Fire Marshall's truck and they originally was gonna go to the fire department for 25,000 plus the 12,000 would get us a 37,000 that we need for a new vehicle in land juice so our capital budget shows set

099$12,000 in land use it anticipated the sale of this truck to the fire department now they decided that they don't need it so the police department J has agreed yet that it would work for us we'll give the town of 25,000 right so it's just rather the game so yes that makes sense yeah okay thank you all right I know that the Board of Finance who the board of selectins request for appropriation not to exceed $60,000 from the police outside service fund the purchase of a 2014 model f-350 Super Duty Ford utility pickup and associated and sent up here a second further discussion all those in favor I'm on the board finance approved Boris lectins request for appropriation not to exceed sixty one thousand seven hundred thirty-seven dollars through the police department outside services fund

100to purchase the capital technology items at first from the town capital budget as listed on the attached worksheet second discussion indicate by saying hi Oh [Music] make sense next order have new business physicals or the Brookfield volunteer firefighter with a request from Anna five-carbon soup for the appropriation to have physicals completed for volunteer and firefighters in town you know so for the past 35 years bookful family medicine has brought us agreed to donate to the town the physicals for all of the firemen they no longer can do that being part of wch and Western Connecticut Health Network they decided they want to charge for it so the fire department went out and got bids from three different medical facilities as to what it would cost to have these three types of physical stun and the

101lowest bidder was about thirty-five thousand dollars in total you've got all the detail there the types of physicals and the number of people these these physicals are required by OSHA for our fire men to be certified so they have to be done I don't think it is fair for our firemen to pay for for firefighters to pay for it themselves I think we get their volunteers we get a lot of work from them they do an amazing job and so this is an appropriation if I'd known it they this was gonna happen it would have been in our budget proposal it's not there it's something that we we have to do so we're requesting that you guys approve this spending of $35,000 and there is one option that's that's opened that one Steve and I

102talked about it that do you want to make it an additional appropriation which would add to the the bottom line which I think given Moody's feedback we should do as little as possible and just it just keeps you using more and more money or do we want to do a transfer this early in the budget he didn't know where there would be a place that's under there's going to be something that a thunder but we just don't know it yet so instead of an additional appropriation the other option that I like is taking it out a contingency and moving it over and when there is something that says Auto ability that much money in some other account we can transfer to contingency as well and I agree with Marsha on this we don't have a

103large contingency but we do usually at the end of the year end up the low budget is it fifty fifty thousand in the contingency [Music] that you have to take it out of general fund what are the mechanics of this so that the unassigned general fund is if you're going to add to the budget so that wouldn't that would be an additional appropriation you're going to increase the bottom line of the budget that comes out of unassigned general fund fund balance that if you're going to just transfer it between categories you don't deal with the unassigned general fund fund balance at all you either deal with contingency or you deal with some other account let's say you thought that you were going to come in under health insurance and you're just moving the budget from

104one to the other but not increasing the bottom correct the contingency fund is a line item in the budget that that you passed it looked like it had been about was it three hundred thousand last year and it cut way back to fifty thousand this year that so it is a line that it's just there to transfer back and forth so you don't have to do an additional appropriation the rating agencies who look really askance at appropriating general fund for thirty five thousand dollars just clarifying all right I move that the Board of Finance improve the Board of Selectmen is request for co-creation from the contingency fund from the amount not to exceed thirty five thousand dollars they have physicals completed for all Brookfield volunteer firefighters for fiscal year 2018 19 further discussion hearing none

105all in favor net get by saying aye aye [Music] next Department of Public Works operating budget yeah Dan divorce it's and did a good thing and asked for more detail and exactly what we would be spending money on so Ralph today I asked them to put together exactly what he would spend money on you know our public works spent approximately a month and a half really just working on storm damage clearing rights away and things like that so a lot of this work road maintenance tree cutting equipment maintenance just wasn't done and so we'll be under by this amount in his budget at year-end fiscal 2018 so we would like to appropriate these funds for this year so he can continue to do the work that we need to do [Music] and for this proposal

106yes but this is something that if we talk to the rating agencies we say listen we had a massive storm this is what happened we weren't able to spend it in this year we couldn't encumber it because we didn't have actual bills you don't get a bill for god working on the side it wrote cutting a tree down right you just don't you have to have an actual physical if they wanted to put it in last year's budget as a by June 30th they would have had to do have a firm commitment either with a purchase order to somebody or they would have to have a contract signed and and that didn't happen because they're doing it through their own payroll and on some of this stuff so what you have to do it now

107before we get into why do we have to appropriate money now for this I'm looking at road maintenance tree cutting equipment maintenance why can't this be absorbed into the budget right now pay the bills as they come and we talk about this Jim Joe April May why are we talking to this now why are we going to the bank why don't we manage the expense why don't we take a proactive approach to say all right we had an unexpected $31,000 a $40,000 come in whatever the heck it is 41,000 why don't we take that and proactively manage it within the budget this year the operating budget why do we have to go to the general fund with that and it's 41 thousand dollars that wasn't spent mm-hmm and it's not like it's earmarked for because

108we didn't pave that road and we didn't do this project it's here's 41 thousand dollars that we could use for other stuff that is just kind of in my mind as either paddock patting the budget or just just using it because it's there as opposed to having specific uses for it it was not like there was a project that didn't happen that we're now going to use it's not like they're there that this road should have been paved it because of the storm now we have this it's not that specific is from what I can tell well there are many little projects when within these categories and I see Glen's point entirely I do that we tell what elf to continue to do the work he's doing try to manage within the budget he's in

109right now and if we need more money we can come back right or find it elsewhere in the budget it's gonna drop to general fund yeah the 41,000 would drop directly to general fund at year-end increase it by 41,000 is great yeah but if we appropriate the money now that means it still drops at the general fund I mean why would we try to manage it within the process and that's what we were talking about earlier if I'm missing at the 65 60 days of 365 days we're trying to eliminate removing money from the general fund and putting it back in the general fund if I miss that or if we have a debit where you have a crescent watch that say we're trying to limit the moves out of our general fund right so

110this would allow us mm I miss your presentation or my listen we know he's in a hole we know we had expenses no one's saying there was an extra expenses to the storm but we can manage it within the budget and operating why would we go through this process Wednesday at 1,000 we don't know I think that's a perfectly reasonable way to approach it that we go through the year and if we come in the spring and you say listen guys we have these things we need to do and we don't have enough budget for us then we'll come back to you yeah [Music] so bad it's so table you want table you make a motion to table yeah you know you move the motion then you're gonna vote no removing say Oh table yeah

111you should vote on that though it's a table just a second a second discussion [Music] favorite give us a night alright alright if anyone have anything else to come before the board that finish let me get to origin [Music] like a public comment I move that theater one second [Music] we are adjourned that so if everybody could correct gather your stuff up and help me stick it in there [Music]