001eighteen hundred hours so i meet my silence my mobile device and welcome to us all for the finance subcommittee meeting i believe we have a quorum in attendance and john and eddie are going to give us an update where we stand financially as at the end of april and we can also have a few other little discussions mr spang please thank you okay thank you i think we'd like to talk about the monthly report first so i think i'll turn dead for that part okay thank you john thank you al thank you everyone i'm going to share my screen here basically it's basically the packet we uh emailed everyone you folks mind if i eat my dinner while i'm watching did you bring some for everybody of course michelle is that you that's the zoom
002user i just want to verify it is kate thank you so much thank you thank you ed you're muted still can you hear me now yes do you see my screen on the share screen yes thank good um so we're we have come to the end of april so this is our monthly end of april report we've completed eight of our ten school months which brings about 73 percent of our year-to-date budget has been expended um our little monthly little box in here basically breaks down our original budget as of july 1 of 2021 of 139 585 uh what we've expended 101 million 397 what's encumbrant and our reserve of 2.443 which is included in that 139 585 also i left the sr3 carry forward which we've discussed the last few months after all of
003that we have an unencumbered balance as of april thirtieth of a hundred and fifty six thousand seven hundred dollars here quick on the narrative um we continue to forecast throughout the year we have six weeks left throughout the school year the major budget line items we're looking at are our health insurance claims transportation utilities and substitute lines very similar to uh last month when we kind of or the last two months when we went in and we looked at those line items budget line items that some of them were in the negative some of them in the positive um the team and i we did a great job we cleaned those up on the general fund on the grand side it's a little different because grants you can't just move uh budget lines from one
004grand to the next there are a few uh for example priority grant uh priority district grant you can move into alliance which we did and remove some individuals in there um there are some there are two grants that are in a negative right now which i want to point out which is the the medicaid which is showing a negative of 170 172 580 and 52 cents um that's basically we receive quarterly payments but we booked them in the bills once the bills come in or the payments come in we apply it to what we've booked in our books so um once the state gives us our money that 172 clearly goes down we just get it every quarter um so by the end of june 30th we should see that zero out the second one
005is the magnet school grant is that a grant 130 and i'll scroll down after i finish my narrative just so you guys can see what i'm talking about um right now it's a negative 256 thousand six hundred thirty two dollars and seventy cents um but the magnet school tuition grant uh grant 131 is showing a positive of 253 so once those two offset it'll leave a little balance of about thirty three hundred dollars which usually uh in the past the general fund covers and also throughout the grants we've been identifying any staff members that might have been in the general fund that should have been in the grants and vice versa so we've moved some staff members in there i'm going to go scroll down to the next page which is our our general fund
006and our grant summary breakdown page very similar up top is our general fund summary report which i just broke down it breaks it into our 5100 line which is our salaries 52 is our uh our health insurance benefit line um 5300 is the purchase professional services 5400 is purchased property services 55 is other purchase services 56 is supplies 57 is program improvements and then 5700 lines are dues fees and staff development so as you see this is what was budgeted 139 585 that's what our budget was for this fiscal year 22 what we've expended what's encumbered and what is left as of april 30th that 156 700 but that's unencumbered that's anything throughout the you know if we have to um if there's any facilities things that pop up or any last-minute things you know
007there's graduations there's certain things throughout the next six weeks as we come to an end for the school years that you know that money will um clearly that 156 will be used the next tab is your grant fund summary report that a budget amount of 78 million dollars in grants includes our big esser grants and those are the ones that are two years in three years what we've expended year to date what's encumbered and what's uh the balance is is 33 million but remember some of those grants are more than two or three years so we'll be using it if not this year the following year and then the next four five or six pages are basically a breakdown of each line item as i mentioned in the top summaries um as you can see
008here and i'll go slowly so if there's any questions please stop me um [Music] sorry about that so the first page is really our salary lines you'll see some areas where there's positive amounts those are vacancies we haven't covered um so that's why you'll see for example you know the supervisor director line 69 000 you know teach regular teachers you know there's uh we have vacancies in certain areas safety advocate very similar 27 000. and as you can see now uh in the past in the prior months we had some negative numbers we've had some big positive numbers so we've kind of cleaned that up in the general fund um in the last two months as you can see [Music] and i'll jump into the grants real quick and then i'll turn it over to
009see if there's any questions and here here are our grants um page seven as you can see and you'll see some big amounts some of those are either for example your s or two six million dollars but that's for uh two years our s or three the 18 million dollars that's left that's for three years um we have initiatives that we have we have uh staff in there for the next few years um and i'm trying to get one of the negatives so you guys could see uh the medicaid uh grant 74 that's the 172 uh 172 000 those are the ones we receive from the state quarterly once we receive those payments we apply it to this grant and then the last but not least is our magnet school tuition grant and our magnet
010school grants those two will offset each other 256 and the 253 and then whatever is left over the general fund will pay for it which is about 3 300 and that's my monthly update are there any questions teresa um how do we look coming towards the end in your estimation uh we we're going to be closing the books at zero um that's why we keep monitoring those line items whether it's transportation health insurance utilities the sub line you we do see a balance of 156 000 but as i mentioned before um there will be things throughout the next six weeks that we'll be using that money for so [Music] i don't have a question so much i just want to say that these numbers look uh tremendously better i'm really impressed actually how clean they
011are so thank you guys uh for your work doing that yes thank you kate i think the finance team in general and everything i imagine working with a new software system and updating the the ledger entries have been a challenge over this past year and i commend you you both for for all your efforts and doing this absolutely thank you ladies and gentlemen any further questions on the budget no just worried about what the city still needs i'm going to turn that over to john yeah uh ale if uh this would be a good time uh can you take the document down yes thank you john uh we we thought we'd give you an update on the audit i think is what um teresa's referring to so al would be would this be a good
012time to start or would you talk about the report right if committee members don't have any further questions on on this on the the numbers for the end of april uh yeah let's i'd like to have a little discussion on that and clear that up on your okay um so i made uh uh my last report was at the board meeting um described it where we were then and at the time i mentioned that their auditors had asked at an open items list as they called it with individual tasks on it and i also mentioned that we had engaged a former auditor to help us make sure everything was in uh the correct form and um you know the exactly what our auditors were looking for um so we've been busy uh the last week
013and what i can report is that um 20 of the 21 items uh were sent to the uh consultant uh there was some back and forth some of the things uh were camera ready others he thought needed some different headings or maybe explanations in different places really to make them um i i'd say more user friendly so when the uh city auditors received them um it would be clear to them uh what um exactly we were trying to say and how we were answering their questions um and i think um maybe that's um that will be something we'll do better on uh this year is um being a little more descriptive but nevertheless um 20 of the 21 items uh he finally um passed uh approval and uh they have since been sent uh to
014the city auditors uh you you do that they have a portal and it's pretty easy you just drag your document over to their portal and release your mouse and it it's dropped in so they've uh they've started looking them over i imagine they'll be they'll there still will be some questions and those will um continue the next uh day or two the um the la the other item though uh has changed so uh last week um the item that we had not um complied with was uh it's called a payroll test that they do where they come in uh they take some random paychecks and they trace it back to the hr files to the union contracts the deductibles and um they had sampled a couple people in the summer and uh felt we had
015not answered that and make a long story short we asked them could you send it again they couldn't do that they couldn't find it one thing led to another and they've told us that they're now satisfied with the payroll testing that they had done and that they had looked at some things otherwise however um there is uh an item that they um they wanted more information on and what in in simple terms it was they wanted a listing of every transaction uh that occurred during the year uh and it's it's quite a few um we until um yet until early today uh you just couldn't get that out of the system um part of the problem was half of the year was spent on the old system and uh half of the year was spent
016on both systems so you couldn't go one place and get the detail that would would match um and you really couldn't go into two places either um one of the systems you had to do individual line items meaning if if we had a line called um i don't know insurance pay insurance expense we'd have to go one way and and print out some things it just it couldn't be done i'll leave it at that but um today uh we did find a way uh to get that information and we pulled it up we've been speaking with our consultant and uh i have to tell you it is uh one 000 pages long and uh each page could have up to 40 line items on it and they're probably 13 or 14 columns across it's it's
017a lot um it's so big that we cannot um we cannot usually when you you call a report from the system you can save it on the server it's actually in a cloud that the tyler has it's too big for the tyler server it's too big to put on a thumb drive it's too big to put on our desktop um we can't email it or any can't certainly can't drag it anywhere so we're gonna have a conversation with them uh thursday morning we'd like not to have to print a thousand pages and one of the things we're going to talk to them about is we think we can go in and probably do um maybe 18 or 19 a month at a time and and send them that however may june and july are are
018so busy um we need to do probably one for each month uh we'd end up sending them um uh pdfs we think they want that we're hoping they could do something else uh but that's a discussion we're gonna have they can always certainly come in and look at the information uh whatever they'd like but um that's that's where we are with the thanks but john we're having take a long time to process this digitally to send them a digital copy of this um i it would probably take um half a day i think at least um okay i i don't think it'd be more than a day of somebody doing that but um it's a lot of time for one report absolutely it would make more sense to do a quarterly report as opposed to
019every single monthly transaction oh my god yeah well the the quarter we can do is july august and september because july and august we don't have to the payroll you know most of people come back in the end of august so um that one probably yes wow those are basically the two items on our agenda to any of our subcommittee members having additional questions for john already can you keep a surprise to how you make out thursday oh sure yep all right absolutely thank you you know we're looking for the you know the most efficient way to do that um there's certainly the way i described if nothing else that's the way the information will go printed and mailed so it it will go but you know i'd like to make things modern so you
020were so you were able to between the two systems get that information right so so what what happened was um you know the software that we've used here for many years the company that supported it said they weren't going to do that anymore so uh ourselves and you know probably close to 20 or 30 districts in connecticut had to find new software and we did but i think perhaps because we were remote or some of the changes they started the year out on the old system even though it could not be supported and for about six months uh things went the way they they always went for years uh but in january of that year they had a recommendation to switch the payroll over to the new system so for the remaining six months of
021the year or half the payroll was paid out of the new system now they get to the end of june and they they have to report these kind of things like i just described out of one system trial balance and stuff so what they had started to do was they would take batches of information so if they ran a check run for 400 000 and maybe it was 80 checks and things like that instead of putting those in the new system check by check they put the whole batch in there it was the right amount but they did that for months so for a number of months they were working two systems now the auditors come around and say hey i from your new system give me all the detail that ties in it's not
022there it never was there so that really was the problem i think you know hindsight's 2020 and you know there was a the pandemic people were home and working remotely but i think the decision to to put the payroll onto the new system in january was a poor one i would not have recommended that i know why they did it they were afraid that when they got to the end of the calendar year the w-2s wouldn't come out right or would be hard to do because they were coming from two parts of software but i think what they they didn't know is the software today especially what we have is very very intelligent it it had no problem uh combining the two systems in other places and would not have here but um i i
023guess they probably didn't know that and and i know that i know the person advising him is he's very good um but it just wasn't the right recommendation to make looking back so john would it be your considered an expert opinion that we will not have these difficulties next year um well uh we're doing a we're looking inward um i have some ideas eddie has put some good ones together we're gonna sit down with the auditors um and go over those um it's i don't want to belabor it but um auditors can do things two ways they can um you know when they're doing the city financial statements there's a lot of schedules and notes and things like that either they can create those themselves or most of them um or they can ask you
024to do it and they'll come check your work it's a lot less expensive if your own staff creates all the materials so that the city of danbury has selected uh the second approach where everything's put together and then it gets examined and i i think that works fine when your auditors are coming on site they're coming on location but when you try and do that remotely um it's it's very very difficult i i think almost impossible because as i let off with there's so many um places you look at a piece of paper or a schedule unless someone's telling you um here's this and here's that you're you're trying to figure it out you may get confused by the heading and when you when you're not talking to people and you're only emailing back and
025forth buses really really slows down and that takes us time out from us trying to get school started you know the end of august being a september that's our busiest time to have to do additional work so um what i'm one of the suggestions i'm gonna make has to do with the banking and um most cities and towns uh the town or the city treasurer controls the bank accounts the bank reconciliations things of that nature um here we do that and um i'm not sure we really need to do that it's um it goes back but i want to sit down with david st hilaire and say you know what are the advantages to that um and i i also think uh with eddie and i being here uh in the summer this year all
026those those 21 things they'll get done before they ask for we know what they are and we'll do them we'll get going um you have time in july to do some of those things not in september so uh some moves like that um our our staff here is um familiar now with the system it's one system um we'll be able to get those it's the the struggle has been trying to explain things that happened uh well before eddie and i got here and then to demonstrate those from the system and um those those won't happen again understood because you came on board in october correct uh last end of september end of september yep and once again i commend you for your efforts well thank you uh eddie told me we're a team eddie [Music]
027yankees win theresa question uh two things uh one with all the to be sure no more than we're not using the old system anymore we're done we wrote our last check i it might have been january or december uh we use it to look things up okay yeah but i mean we're not posting to that system and this year was all one system okay and then the second question is so all the things questions that the city wants we're assuming they're going to ask for the same next fiscal year is that correct so we will be prepared uh and let yes every year not every year but some years there are new requirements you know they get their requirements either from the aicpa or gasby sometimes the state of connecticut says we'd like you to
028do something different for example uh they have some new requirements this year to look carefully at the esser funds and the cares act money that came in uh so they've done some more checking done some more and you know it every year there might be something new uh that comes up but um it's hard to say this early i know of nothing yet so it's not going to be a completely different setup next fiscal i mean so you you're guaranteed pretty much you know eight out of ten are going to be the same yeah they they change um the accounting rulemaking body you i know you maybe all have heard of fazbee for corporate accounting and financial accounting standard boards there's one for government accounting too called gasby and it's the same thing every uh
029year or two they put out some new uh rules that say you need to report this in the back yearbook or report it a certain way but there are there are none that um i know of that are new for the current year or a couple knew the audit they're doing but um nothing new that i'm aware of so that was the 21 extra questions that we did not anticipate that no the um i i thought that well the questions that came in i'll be honest um we had we thought we'd gotten those before some of them we're pretty sure we answered before um there was nothing um you know there might have been no there was nothing even on esser with that uh they were all things that um have been around for a
030few years you know they want to see um trial balances for each of the funds we maintain they want to see our bank statements they want to see that they've been reconciled different listings um you know our year ends june 30th they want to make sure that things are in the right year not the new year not the old year or vice versa so they'll say uh give me a listing of all the checks that you wrote after july first for the old year so we do that but that's that's been around for a long time so are you able to uh give us a number how many things generally you have to submit every year just an idea you know i've been looking for the original list i actually called frank conley uh he
031showed it to me uh my first day he wasn't able uh to come up with um i i'd like to do that because that's that's what i want to talk with david st hilaire about and say say look at all these things um is there a a good way to do those um it's lengthy um you know we're we're big operation so and and they're they're thorough i thank you thank you very much welcome chair members or sub-committee members any any additional questions committee members any additional questions last cooper how are you on board yes uh just a quick question i don't know how simple the answer is uh and maybe i missed it along the way all um could you sort of explain to me how do you zero out all these accounts uh
032the objects accounts and at any point will there be a number attached to those object accounts that are all zero [Music] ms uh miss cooper you mean the general fund zero accounts yes all the objects accounts were there's complete zero i can't remember that the first or second page if you start with teaching the top of that so i'm looking at it right now so for example uh assistant principal right there was a budget i guess my question is how do you how did you zero the number that was supposed to be there or was that number supposed to be there to zero so if you remember some of the other lines had huge positive lines um so they weren't budgeted correctly on one line versus the other line a lot of that had to
033do as john mentioned due to the two systems being merged we weren't here at the time so uh we don't know if for example if they budgeted one million dollar on one line and then two million on another line it was one might have been less one might have been more and that's what took us a while to go through it and make sure that it was budgeted correctly and also that it was encumbered correctly for the remainder of the year so what you're saying or this zero is going to stay completely like this correct all right you'll see some some lines may change for example if we you know we hire a teacher in the next six weeks for whatever reason right then it'll hit that teacher line that's showing a positive of fifty
034one thousand dollars because that's a vacancy they're recovering okay and the last and i think that'll go right back to uh the health insurance uh object i can't remember what page it is i didn't have full of the time to completely go through this but that's what caught my eye uh the health insurance it's going to zero itself out so i'm looking at it right now the health insurance is page two that's the 5200 line um right now you know we budgeted 22 million dollars we've expected uh we've expended uh 17 million dollars and then there's a 4.9 million encumbered for the remainder of this month in may and the remainder of in in june so that should cover that if there's any surplus for whatever reason based on um if there's a surplus or
035the other way too it depends on claims then we'll be we've worked very closely with our claims um uh person or consultant so they're keep we talk probably every other week or so just to make sure there's no surprises okay thank you thank you madam chairs came out i apologize i should have recognized you first ma'am do you have any questions for john already you're fine you're fine i think mr wallston has something mr wallston sir good evening everybody hi mr rousseau um so i just i just wanted to make the committee aware and the and the members of the board who are also attending aware at our last board meeting um i had suggested that this would be the meeting in which we would discuss next year's budget so that this subcommittee can make
036a recommendation to the board um i want to share with the board um there is a need to schedule one more finance committee meeting uh before our board meeting next week i am spencer to that circle okay okay thank you mr russo and i just wanted to make the committee um aware that we are the cabinet and i we have had a number of discussions now um trying to reconcile the decision by city council uh regarding the budget for 141 million um and so given our enrollment increases um and the challenges that we've been talking about really for the last couple of years particularly on the heel of the pandemic with the challenges trying to support social emotional as well um we are we are we are in a position where we have to make
037some really tough decisions um and so i know i'm going into the pandemic when we started to uh when we when we first started to receive the monies from the relief grant uh we knew um this year next year and the year after uh we would be faced with some very tough decisions because it's quite frankly it's very difficult to provide relief without without hiring staff to provide that support for kids we have hired because we have hired people to provide support um but the reality is we've also hired people to address enrollment um and that and and and those that that staff has come from grants um that will be expiring soon um and so it's it's a combination of a number a number of things um and and frankly some things that we
038will be presenting back to the board um prior to our next meeting and so i'm hoping we can get a date um either next monday and tuesday and make sure we can have in the packet on friday for the committee to review um our recommendations for the 20 22 23 school year budget but the the team and i still needs a couple more days we're faced with a lot of tough decisions and frankly some decisions about how we're going to address this financial cliff that's in front of us all right i am taking a look at a schedule possibly for next tuesday [Music] committee uh members i prefer it not to be on on monday on a monday and i i actually cannot do tuesday i have the teacher of the year yeah um uh
039unless we do it at six o'clock well the teacher of the year program starts at 5 30. okay four so monday isn't going to work yeah and i think i'm just assuming you'd prefer um at least a day before the board meeting but i don't know if it's like we're struggling with time now can we do like seven o'clock in the morning tuesday [Music] eight o'clock i'm retired i'm not even up at eight o'clock oh get over it no way i worked way too hard to get up in the middle of the night for a volunteer job i said yeah stop complaining i'm not complaining i i am exercising my freedom to well then 7 30. you'll be alone lunch would be good well that certainly works for me i'm assuming that would be fine
040also with that's right for me eddie and john okay i can do noon on tuesday the 24 is correct that's correct [Music] um i i think we can accomplish this in an hour maybe maybe maybe a little less okay i mean it won't take us long to present i think it's really going to depend on the feedback and the questions and and i could say we will have the packet available for you on friday wonderful all right negotiate out of fear but let us never fear to negotiate i have kennedy so we're going next tuesday at noon or next monday at noon tuesday works for me if that works for the team tuesday works for me tuesday okay i can do tuesday at noon uh luisa thank you tuesday 12 noon and you and i
041totally screwed up my calendar of because i had to schedule an appointment for 2024 in [Music] oh yeah okay tuesday and what day is that fall on terry may 24th okay 24 okay 9 24 at noon nasty laugh terry oh my god i can't believe it you're groaning about an earlier meeting about 12 minutes well you better believe it girl 12 noon is good okay i will speak with cara pompano to send out a invite to the committee because i'm sure like possibly rachel has children to get ready for school and he said uh kate i'm sure kate's a busy person and 7 30 i mean eddie and john and you're they're already at work they're already at work out all right go ahead oh what a nasty i'll pass noon on the 24th teresa
042i'll entertain a motion to adjourn this meeting i'm moved second second all in favor you