o' on Wednesday March 5th and I'll call the finance committee meeting to order um this meeting is being recorded it is a hybrid meeting um I have wh me in the room from the finance committee Tom
Parkins Peter Twining myy kraton um Dean nadus Andy Olden and myself Sarah melich I expect that GAR Morris will be joining us shortly um the first
item we're going to alter the the items on the agenda um because Dan Sherman has another a commitment for another meeting so we're going to do um Dan Sherman the auditor on the OPB first and then we'll do the town
audit Dan can you hear us I can hear you just fine thank you good to be with you it's all yours okay I assume everybody has my 2024 report and yes I will go through that um
starting on page three um and the long-term assumption that we're using um for the Investments is 7 and a half perc and in the fiscal year ending in 24 um you beat That by a significant
amount you'll see at the bottom of the table investment income of 47 ,000 um that is $106,000 greater than what was expected so you had a very good year on on the
asset side on the following page at the top of page four you'll see the liability Trace from the beginning of the year to the end of the year and you'll notice that we dropped from
7165 million down to 6.6 and the reason for that is the experience gain in the middle of that table you'll see a reduction of $754,000 you had a very good year on experience um for example if I look at
the expected claims cost for the year at age 64 it only went up um 4.3% over the two-year period between 22 and 24 and we're expecting an increase of closer to
9% so that was a help at age 65 it only went up 4.9% versus a 9% increase um but the big nut was on Medicare the post 65 cost for all active employees and most of the
retirees the Medicare cost so the claims cost actually went down about 2% from 22 to 24 so those the major factors that generated a $754 million gain when we're
expecting significant increases in your costs and essentially it was flat or went down so uh the $754 million um is a big plus and you'll see in the middle of that page um in the paragraph at the end
it says you're 69% funded two years ago or a year ago you were about 54% funded so the combination of having an excellent investment return and having lower health care cost increases um
moved you from just like 54% up to 69% 69% funded is probably the highest um in the state with the exception I think of Welsley which went for a post um a pens or not a pension obligation
Bond but a opep bond and they fully funded their obligation but now they have a big Bond debt so from my way of thinking Manchester I think is probably at the top of the Heap in terms of being uh funded toward their OPB liability at
69% so kudos to you and the town for um doing so well on this front the following page just shows at the top um one of the things they asked for in the gby uh statements is a
trend um changes and you'll see that um both on the one point higher one point lower you still are in a great um funded position in the middle of page five notice that the opab expense is actually
a negative number which means income so as far as your financials are concerned you get to record an income of $133,000 um a little bit unusual U it goes back to the experience for example you'll see that there's an amortization
of the experience gain of 500,000 your earnings has gains of 300,000 you have amortization for that um so um it's really been um a great positive story at the bottom of that
page you'll see the before and after assets and liabilities your liability is down to $2 million 69% funded and your liability as a percentage of payroll is dropped all the way down to 32% again that is probably leads the
state in terms of as a lowest percentage your lowest liabilities a percentage your payroll um again an outstanding uh figure um following page just goes through the amortizations a
Reconciliation and at the bottom of page six you'll see an actual World determined contribution of roughly $376,000 so your and and that by the way includes just the contribution um and includes your pay go
but um I had discussions with Andrea we talked about different funding and hopefully um before I jump to that funding does anybody have any questions um on the U the gasby
7475 um portion of the report any questions no just a big smile yeah yeah pack pack yourselves on the back excellent very good um so on the
funding side I was asked to take a look at a couple different options as to how you might fund this obligation and so what I did was came up with a schedule that hopefully um you have in front of you or shared with you
that um I worked with Andrea to put together and so so for f fiscal year 25 your plan is to put in about $300,000 above and beyond the payo and I figured out that if you if
you made it 500,000 26 and almost 600,000 27 you're all done with the unfunded liability you would be a fully funded system um 100% funded and from that point forward you would just have to
worry about the normal cost which you can see in the leftand column which is roughly $178,000 at that point um you'd also want to be in a position where if you're only putting in 178 and your pay go is like
500,000 what it means is that you'll have to set yourself up like the pension program where the trust receives all the money and it makes all the payments so the trust would make payments to you know the insurance carriers Blue Cross with Shield Harvard or wherever whoever
is covering a retirees and you would operate this as if it's a pension program where all the money flows into and out of the trust and then you can put 178 in uh the trust would pay about 478 out and the
investment earnings would cover the difference um and then the assets would continue to grow so this is one of the schedules she asked me for a couple of others um we settled on this one at the last iteration um obviously lots of
other schedules are available uh but right now if you follow this schedule you'll be fully funded at the end of 27 I I think we were settling on for this year the the first option you gave us which is we fund we've budgeted 330
to go in this year right so if you do the 330 all that means is at the 27 amount it'll be closer to maybe 550,000 instead of 590 so you just shift to 30,000 to the end of the schedule but
between now and then we'll probably certainly we'll do another um evaluation for 26 you know a year in a few months from now and then you can chew up um the 27 appropriation to um to handle any gains or losses or
any other events that U modify um the situation now Dan when you say um we put all the premiums into this are you including both both active employees and retirees or only retirees only
retirees okay that's what I thought yep only retirees your active you just keep doing the actives as you have been this would only be retirees okay and so I'm looking at this option number one
which we would have paid off in fiscal 28 which obviously can change based Bas on earnings um so you're saying we we pay all the insurance prems for retirees
into this trust and then how do we figure out how much we take out so what you take out is whatever you get for bills from your insurance carrier so you just yeah you just direct the uh those
payments the insurance carriers would have to give you an itemized invoice item in sense they'd have to separate actives from retirees and those those invoices for retirees would be sent to your trust for
payment um and if you have difficulty in terms of that what you'd end up doing was asking the trust to reimburse whatever the town paid um back to the town so you you didn't have to be like a
a flow through if you will but the the payment should come from the Trust In some fashion and do we have to put in more to the trust than just the item the amount of the invoice correct so the pays you
go that that yeah the pays you go column that you see from me is just my estimate of what those invoices will equal okay so I'm just I'm ballparking it um obviously it's going to be different than that because we don't know about
you know uh retiree deaths election of coverage and so forth so that'll be a variable in terms of you know that column um that's my best guess and it's only no more than that so we have no more contributions to
make at that point in time other than just the Prem going no the normal cost okay we do have to pay the normal cost too okay y you pay the normal cost so for example it's $179,000 in fiscal year
28 so that money goes in okay and so remind me with this payment schedule Are We Now synced to the multi-year design for debt and so in other words we I
don't know how to describe that as schedule do we looked at with the select at the end of the meeting does this sync with our adjust we've been doing some adjustments to it I think as we move some project de I think further
out I'm not sure whether articulate yeah I know what you're saying did Greg include opep in that spreadsheet being paid out at some point yes he did he he shows it as being off the books in a few years and actually so it is in there so
it isn't exactly it's showing 6:30 but it's it's a line that includes the pension too right so I'm not exactly sure what he's included from Opel yeah you would you yeah what you might want to do is segregate uh pension
from OPB at this Point going forward so you can you can keep those straight yeah so Dan's referring to a payment schedule I don't have that I don't know if others do it was sent a couple of weeks ago here you
go but was it sent by Andrea or who was it who was in sent by SEC because I printed it off quite a while AG I just saved it I don't have it was sent by I had the impression it was sent by Andrea but I'm not sure yeah what's the what's the subject
line the date I don't know more I take a look at this I have a hard time voting on we don't have information sorry it's on uh it looks like maybe we're not voting right this second February listening to February 18
February 18 I don't yeah cuz I H something on the agenda last week and then we decided you wer going to do it what's the factor you use to increase the normal cost uh the normal cost is tied to um
with the expected acral from each of the active employees right so as an as each employee uh ages it's based on the service um you know if he's got 10 years in now and expect to have 30 then next
year be you know 11 years out of 30 so there's a 13th acral for that particular employee so that then each employee has their own Factor it gets accumulates um the underlying increase is probably
close to I'd say four and a half percent per year um but it's it's not exactly that but each employee has of course their own acral right each employee has their own ACR every single employee gets and retiree gets valued individually in the
system and then just add up each individual yeah so we're on we're tracking option one at this point yes we had hoped to we had hoped to put more in this year yeah but because we lost that CMZ Grant yeah of a
million we needed an increased Paving costs yes so was the recommendation for this year 300 no 33 well this year 26 I'm sorry that's what's in the budget yeah I was going to ask the question um my gut is that next
year is not going to be a good year for the stock market and because of the Rotunda expense I'm concerned about draining the CPC budget all the way because we have minut 50 Grand hold on yeah we have Dan Sherman on the on the
phone discussing opep yes okay do you have any more questions on opep no other than the investment amount but we can discuss that later we're that we're doing after we've heard from the town accountant Al I guess one of the questions would be how do you look at
next year the Outlook is that in the report he's using 7 and a half% discount interest rate for every year right okay and that's what he's been using I think Dan is that what you've used from day one or did you decrease it at some point
no I think for at day one um we had to use a 20-year uh Municipal bond rate for high quality bonds under gby uh because you weren't funded but as soon as you started becoming funded we searched for seven and a half percent and been at
seven and a half percent ever since okay was question I don't quite understand the answer and most years we exceed that we have but in there was a couple of years with you yeah but this is off of a long term
and we don't want to change what's in the no I'm not Chang I wouldn't be optimistic about the return right yeah I agree well if it's less our numbers will go up a little bit exactly right yeah yeah yeah if if you want to look at page
six for second it actually shows you how you've been doing over the last five years so you just eyeballing it looks like you've been matching seven and a half percent because you had a couple good
years of 564 and 106 gain then you had three bad years at 65 408 to 138 and I bet if you add up that column it's pretty close to zero so you've been covering the seven and a half percent pretty tight a nice return and it is a nice
investment which is why we're doing it but right I just see money is tight although it is every year starting okay so you have any questions to Dan no I do not I'm good
thank you Dan you're you're very very welcome and and thank you for the accommodation on these meetings no problem I was unaware that I was also supposed to talk to the folks in Franklin until yesterday so there's a bit of a scramble and I appreciate the
flexibility no problem all right take care thanks thank bye bye okay so now we're going to do the town Auditors review of fiscal year
24 so the year that ended on June 30th 24 audit of the Town BS ready yes so where should I sit can they see me you can sit in at that chair yeah you can sit in that chair at the table I don't think I don't think anyone's there but Rebecca and Rebecca's
with me so and the camera is Shi around several I didn't want them looking at the back of mic um good evening so I think they do have a PowerPoint presentation if they don't have it up you have a hard copy in front of you that you can follow through
and throw it out I'm sorry you again yes I will I'll I'll start with that Renee Davis thank you Rene so Renee DAV with cbis CPAs and on camera with me is Rebecca gamsby she also worked in the audit so I was the partner on the audit um Rebecca Rebecca was I'm gonna say the
manager on the audit although the names are changing around a little bit I'm going to go through that in just a minute um so again we're here to talk about the 20 the results of the 2024 audit unfortunately Andrew is not not able to be here tonight but um but I think I think we'll have you covered what we're going to talk about a little
bit as the introduction um most of you have seen me here before I've been here for several years under powers and Sullivan I was going to say the name change the name the name change so we're going to the name changed twice so we're g to talk about that a little bit um we'll talk
about the audit process the results of the audit and of course you have the um act for the annual comprehensive financial report in front of you so we'll walk through a few highlights of that I can go into as much detail on that as you want but we'll start definitely with the name change so um
for the past you I was with powers and Sol for almost 30 years I've been doing this for a long time and have been your auditor for a long time last February 1st powers and Sullivan merged with a larger National CPA firm um named
marham Markham on November 1st merged with cbiz CPAs um so your financial statements your 24 financial statements are actually issued under Markham um you won't see that name again that name is now gone completely and we're and we're
see is so same team Rebecca has been doing this audit with me for a number of years we had the same people out in the field there's always a new person like the the new staff people but other than that same team came out in the field um basically the same process the processes do change a little bit over time and
we'll we'll talk a little bit about that but definitely going forward it's would be under CIS CPA so I explain a little bit in here but CP cbis CPA is associated ated with cbiz Inc cbiz Inc
is a publicly traded company so there's it's an alternative practice structure so there that's why it takes a little bit of sort of understanding how it all works large firm it says in here 11th I believe now we're seventh in the country
so big National CPA firm but our little corner of the pie is that we still do local government local government work um we're now just much larger in New England doing bigger also specialize in in municipalities all over the country
or so not all over the country we have a pretty big so New England so little powers in Sullivan really just focused in Massachusetts what happened was two years ago um Markham actually merged with a company called malanson they did a lot in New Hampshire Vermont um so now
what was Markham what was molans what was powers and Sullivan we're all together the world of CPA firms either you get private Equity or you merge with larger companies it's been Happ quite a bit um so now we have a much larger government practice not all over the country though
um no there's some in New York we've got a bunch of stuff in Florida but big the biggest piece of it is here in New England and so our group is still doing the same government audit work but I will say you know a bigger firm has you
know part of the reason for doing this there are other services that they can provide so the larger firm we have our own it risk assessment people um we have our own actuaries we have um a lot of Consultants that can come in and do
projects a lot of our governments wanted additional services and our little 30 person firm couldn't do that and there was just the risk becomes becomes too large now with a larger firm we do have a National Review process so your reports went through a national quality control review process we historically
have just done that in house we shifted reports from partner to partner and they reviewed them now it goes up to a national office and they review the audit to make sure it's going to pass the aicpa guidelines can you hold on oh just a moment um I've got gar Morris from the fincom on
Zoom um gar do you have the town audit he's not responding maybe he's a phantom I believe he should have gotten it electronically okay um if he doesn't
Rebecca is online she can she could send it if we I don't see any we have a number of people online okay well two okay I'm sorry keep you okay yeah okay review process though done at a
higher level and the same concept of of review yes yep and we'll talk about that a little bit because it's really set by we're all following the aicpa standards of what we have to do we have to do in an audit so um then I'm going to go right into the objectives of the audit
and really what we do we as a non- audit service help to put your act for together we help to put this report together but this report is all Andrea right Andrea gives us all the information that goes into this report your Finance team gives us you know so
Jen's office Andrew's office all the information comes out of soft Right comes out of your ledgers we do help to put the information together but to actually audit and give our opinion on it we have to do a risk assessment so the whole point in the audit is for us be able to app on your financial
statements and have a clean audit opinion which you did again you know so app on the information that we give that you give so you own the statements we help to put them together we give a draft to management Andrea reviews them she knows all of the groupings all we're doing is really grouping your
information and putting it in this format um the trans mittle letter comes from them the OPB information comes from Dan Sherman the pension information comes from Essex Regional retirement system and um you know you were somebody was asking earlier when Dan was on I
like that Dan kind of went before us it kind of good segue but how does everybody have their own little OPB liability and that's called the Census Data so Dan gets information from the town of all of your employees and what health insurance plans they're in and
their age and their role because you know depending on their um date of hire and their role the liabilities can change what we do to audit that is we test the census information so we test the information that you was the town gave to Dan that he used to come up with
those numbers accuracy for accuracy and same with the retirement system you give them it's a little bit different with p because it's all pay it's more payroll based but you give them all of your all of your people all of their payroll information we test to make sure you're deducting the right amount don't we
don't test all of them we test a sample to make sure that information is accurate because bad information going over to Essex retirement would mean bad liability um so we're following government auditing standards um really auditing standards generally accepted in
the United States and government auditing standards which we call Yellow Book standards and our responsibility is to plan and perform the audit to obtain reasonable but not absolute Assurance um on the fair presentation of your financial statements again we're testing we're doing a pretty detailed risk
assessment of what could go wrong with your numbers and then we test based on that risk assessment and management is responsible for the information in the financial statement so um Andrew's group has to get the draft reports re view it they ask questions we make edits and go
back and forth until everyone's comfortable with the numbers and page eight will talk about the timing of it so this year we merged twice right so the reports did go up by the end of January so they went to the gfoa on time um but it was a little bit of a different process just because we
were going through an we were going through a lot but what we have to do is come in and document your internal control so management is responsible for making sure you have a good system of internal control um over the information in your Ledger is Cash being reconciled between the
treasurer's office and Andrea's office um is the cash supported by real numbers that are in the Investments you know for oped we're making sure that that PR number is ver is verified um that you have strong controls over departmental collections
now we're not looking so much at the small stuff it's the big stuff what is the risk that something of significance could go wrong in your financial statements so we do doent your controls who does what here and then we test based on that risk and does your
engagement include some comment to us about our internal controls being adequate and so forth so there's not a g there's not an assurance on internal controls but we have to report to you is any significant deficiency or material weakness in controls and there were
none um so we're also looking for compliance with Grant requirements this year you did not need a single audit so you didn't reach the $750,000 threshold for federal spending so there was no last year we had had an alternative procedures report because of
the arpa money we didn't reach that threshold this year so there was no no separate um single audit report and of course the it says in here but the liability related to pension opep we do that all as part of our interim work leading up to the year end audit um the
yearend audit work is when we're actually putting together the financial statements and we're checking cut off is Cash adequate have you recorded your payables so like what could go wrong in a government is timing of payables if someone's under a very tight budget and they hold invoices and don't pay them
that could be a problem and misstate your financial statements so we test your cutoff procedures um some of the things that you only do once a year like Capital assets sick and vacation acral things like that are really what we look at at year end to make sure those big
liabilities are fairly stated and year end is a June 30th year end is June 30th so we want to make sure those closing numbers um like your budgetary controls we're looking at the budget at the end of the year to say how did Revenue come in and then did you have
controls did Andrea have controls to make sure nobody was able to overspend their budget and if you are making transfers within budget lines they were properly approved so when we're doing the risk assessment the um the AIC CA actually tells us what
some common risks should be that you almost can override right so management override of internal controls is always a risk there is a risk that somebody could go in and make adjustments after the revenues reported or after the warrants have been issued and make adjustments to change something in the
financial statement so we always have to design procedures to test for management override of controls which really means testing journal entries having um tests of unpredictability so we're not looking at the same things over and over we're not asking for the same things we have
to go in and randomly select things that they wouldn't expect us to um so there was there were no we're looking at the adjusting journal entries um any significant estimates so you know you talk to some of your significant estimates include opep you had a
conversation earlier about your discount rate it is a long-term rate I agree we might not make 7.5% this year we I'll maybe agree on that we'll see what happens but it's not we're not just looking at one year you don't want to you're not here to try to
time that it's overall the long term you have that money invested you're not planning on using that for anything else and you've done pretty well over the long term related to that so we're looking at those for reasonableness um Dan had also mentioned the first year in you couldn't use a
7.5% rate because you didn't have a good good enough track record of funding it once you started putting money aside and you had a plan in your budget process to start funding what we call the arc back then on a regular basis you could go up if I went to a community and they were
trying to use 7.5% and they weren't funding their Arc then we might have a problem with giving a clean opinion on it so improper Revenue recognition is always considered a risk um what we do
to sort of overcome that risk is make sure that we are looking you know you are real estate you're collecting 99% of your real estate taxes in the first year not a big not a big risk here um certainly water sewer we're looking at those for your controls to make sure you
are billing accurately and that you have a good process to collect that money that it's real money that's collectible at the end of the year um another issue that's high risk for local governments and has been a problem um in a lot of places is cyber security it what cyber
security so um you know we're looking at what could go wrong with your financial statements you use soft right as your vendor so you know we do some work to make sure that it's a reputable vendor none of us are totally protected from cyber security um many of our clients
have had issues with cyber attacks ransomware attacks um most recently it's um wire transfers going out to fictitious vendors so somebody emailing um with a change of banking information
and payments going out to a bad vendor and the way to prevent that really is having good systems in place good internal controls in place but also making sure that you are training your people um making sure that people know if somebody changes their bank for their direct deposit of their payroll check
that there's a verification process um same thing with large vendor payments if you have any big capital projects going on very commonly um vendors try to get in to tell people to change banking information and those payments can be really large one payment going to a bad
vendor and you're out that money so cyber Insurance um so we actually do we have a series of checklists we're not cyber experts we're g um we do have a series of checklist that we have to go through and verify you use a third party
vendor for your cyber security here in the town um you do do TR testing again there's not a guarantee that something can't go wrong but you have the processes in place to try to prevent that and as I mentioned up front really um what we own is the opinion and it's
an unmodified audit opinion which is historically what you've always had it's a clean audit opinion there was nothing that we found in all of our audit work that led us to um give anything but a clean opinion on your financial statements there were no instances of
non-compliance that we had to report to you um no other matters that had to be reported to you and last year the 2023 um financial statements the aord did receive a certificate from the government Finance Officers Association um the certificate
for achievement for excellence and financial reporting this report was also submitted to the gfoa for that award program and I'll talk a little bit about the financial so you have um you know I assume that the people people online
maybe would have access to this if it's not on your website yet and it probably is at this point it always gets posted to your website I'm going to assume that that it's up there but we have 126 page financial statement in front of us so
the town chooses to do an annual comprehensive financial report It's a larger more detailed report than just your basic financial statements the basic financial statements are embedded within this report so the differen is between what I'm going to call an act
for the comprehensive report is um management gives a transmitt so management writes the transmitt letters are transmittal to the town to talk about U Manchester by the Sea your economy things that are going on some large projects that you have and that's
the first part of the report it's not part of the audit we do lead it for consistency but we don't give an opinion on it on the introductory section it also has your org chart um your um Ed officials or listed in that and so forth then the next part the
financial section is your um the audit opinion that's Pages 13 through 15 again that's a clean opinion it's so Markham letter head this year so he went from powers and Sullivan to Markham um next year will be under CA CPAs and then the actual financial
statements don't start until page 27 so the real financial statements are a smaller part of this and the financial statements with the notes and the notes are pretty substantial go from Pages 27 to 78 and then we have RSI or other
required supplementary information and that's where in the back we have um and I'll show you that in a second the general fund budget to actual that's the closest to what you're used to looking at for your um budgeted numbers that'll look very familiar to you and 10 years
worth of retirement Trend schedules and we're getting up to 10 years in opep so when the gazb first came out they let you start from year one and build up to 10e schedules this is the first year pension we're at 10 years um opab I think we're probably at seven or eight
years at this point but we're getting we're getting close and what that does is it will show you over time how you putting money into that trust fund has really helped to bring bring down your opad liability um also because you're doing a
comprehensive report there's combining schedules in the back so for your non- major government Ral funds all of your um like your grants and your revolving funds and so forth there's more detailed schedules in here to show you if you have interest know how you're doing in
any of those funds and then the whole back of the report is all statistical so you have 10 years worth of financial information in the back of the report um that's all the statistical tables it will give you your tax rates your debt service um some other key indicators for
10 years and that's after the last tab in the report so I'll walk through a few of the um the high the financial highlights this year your general fund budget was $ 41.1 million you do have some Financial
policies in place the last I see that they are still draft I'm not sure I've seen those come out of draft but we're going with your draft Financial policies um if those have not been finalized it's probably a good idea to get them finalized it's but they've been draft for a while and we're still going we're sort of going with the draft before
draft policies for now but your general fund budget was um is on page 81 to 84 you had 41.4 million you budgeted this year to you so you have policies your kind of your balance was above the policies so you intentionally brought
that down a little bit you used a little bit of stabilization and a little bit of your general fund um to be able to bring that balance down in to be in more in compliance with your budget and to help P go to um to fund some of your Capital
some of your Capital needs you had very good budgetary results your revenues came in over your budget by $1.3 million um that is typical for you it's conser you're conservative in your Revenue budget we um we think you should be as far as that goes um expenditures
and encumbrances the on3 tend to be consistently is there is there does it come from different places is there anyone that stands out no so I will say talking about how to estimate well forward we can go back we can go
back to the original conversation $400,000 of it is investment income so that this year same story anywhere you go you want to budget conservatively for investment income because we really don't know how that's
going to is so you had 233 was departmental Revenue that can fluctuate from year to year um that could be permits and things and things of that nature you budget so for example you budget investment income almost at nothing so I'm I'm on page the
top of page 81 what page you want 81 so your final Revenue budget was 34.7 Million all of the categories came in over budget except for intergovernmental is slightly under and you don't have much control over that
but it was it's pretty steady across investment income is the biggest chunk of that would would you be able to oh is it okay question um would you be able to like um is that like the amount 1.3
million over I mean it's at first it sounds good but that's you know we could have probably only had a $40 million budget if we had accurately assessed that so it is important get it accurate and I'm wondering are we accurate how do
we compare inaccuracy with other toal so I will say you're pretty you're pretty close you you know out of $35 million you within 1.2 million and you don't know with when you're coming up with this budget right now you're coming up with your 26 budget you don't know what
investment earnings are going to be for that right so you want to stick to the conservative you if things go great the next year you can vote to use that free cash to offset next year's um next year's Capital needs you don't want to get in the habit of using free cash certainly to balance your budget because then when it's not
there you run into trouble but to help offset um some of your Capital needs so that you're not borrowing and your spending money that you have it's it's not a bad plan but what I will show you if you want to look at how close you are um under expenditures right there's not a lot of turn back so that rightand
column if you go under Revenue all of the others like these are pretty close your your budgets are tight people are spending the money that you have appropriated to them they don't have a ton even encumbered at the end of the year there's not big turn backs so you
need to provide the services that you're providing people need the money that you're doing them they're not they're not huge and overall so overall your expenditures out of a $39 million budget they only turned back
$233,000 it's pretty close so your general fund on a budgetary basis this is without stabilization actually went down by $580,000 that's a combination of you voted to use your free cash for some capital and you had a successful budget
year your Revenue coming in so if you net all of that together it's a net loss of 580 which is sort of in line a you wanted to draw down a little bit more but you had a good Revenue year so that's not a bad way is the $200,000
number draun from page 84 yeah okay that's the the right place y That's the total expenditure what we call a turn back so overall general fund you had $580,000 I'm going to say budgetary loss there not a bad thing that's what you
planned on doing and then you drew down a little bit on your um stabilization fund so net the stabilization and the um basic general fund go together in one column your total general fund if you combine those two went down by $953,000
we've been targeting 8% total and you're still over yeah I know it said in the report 12% but that's the 12% numbers when you just look at the town of Manchester's budget doesn't include School nope they all include School Does
it include the uh excess Revenue yeah so what are you looking at the 12 well saw here 12% and no you did there was a 12% and I figured that was probably without the
school in there which would drop it to probably eight no we keep the school the school is included in with your general fund so your appropriation to the school the good thing about having the Regional School is you don't have their opab liability in your financial statements right so that's sort of the that keeps
your opab liability low but your assessment to the school is included in that so the 12% then so we're IM we're trying to figure out what's the what's the Delta that much higher above the % because we didn't get down in the fiscal
year 25 budget this is 24 oh this is 24 we didn't get down to the 8% we weren't 12 yeah we were because of money that had gone in in 23 our Revenue
were high by as and our expenses were a little higher but not enough to offset so we ended up putting more Revenue in than we had budgeted so the free cash went up because because this this
budget we that 24 budget we created in 22 right 20 end of 22 beginning of 23 so that was before we made the change from 10% to 8% polic was between 10 to 12
yeah all right and so that was that was like when we just started really looking at it and really taking it out I believe for the fiscal year 206 budget we're going down to 8% and if you looked at page 16 of the slides it
actually gets to that 12% so I saw the 12% in here too that is a combination of your free your free cash and your stabilization funds okay all right so that's the 1.6 I'm six this is now we're on the I bounced to the
slides aren't numbered but it's very light very small very small and very light they number I I didn't bring my microscope Sor well that's how we're paying for the Rotunda sorry
so and that so I I went forward a little bit I'm going to back up just to talk about some of the other so that's your gen that's your general fund it's the good thing about this and what the rating a you're AAA rated what they look at is are you being intentional about it do you have a policy are you following
your policy they're fine with you bringing as long as you're not going too low that you keep yourself um flexible enough financially they're fine with you bringing it down as long as it's intentional and if you have a bad year if you know budgeted investment income
it's not there or something happened unexpected that you have a plan to get back on track with your budget so even what we found during covid if a community had to use their reserves for you know things weren't open they wanted to keep the senior center open or you know they wanted to be able to fund
things um they were okay with that as long as you had a plan to get back on track and everything you're doing here is pretty intentional so is uh is there because we've been talking a lot about opep we had a plan to is Sarah mentioned maybe they a little bit more than the
330 uh uh added this year but I got used up in other places um happened last year too right and so I'm wondering you know given our you know the fact that we still as much as we try we still come in with this excess Revenue that goes down
to the general fund and I'm wondering if we sort of understanding that predictable pattern whether we take some from our gentle fund dive down below the 8% pay off opap and recoup the
revenue we can discuss that later okay okay decision interested in her so the only what I will say you um agree completely with Dan you're much better off than most places with opab because because one you don't have the school to
deal with they have their own opep they have their own opep issue like you're going to fund that indirectly but they have their own opep to fund you have been putting in what we call the required contribution Dan comes up with a schedule you say yes we're going to fund it and you've been doing really
good on your Investments so you're in a good position most places are not over 80% most places are saying when pensions funded will deal with opep more and they're putting in some but they're not quite there the only um the only other thing I will add to that because we see
it even with the pension systems once you get to 100% on OPB then you're going to pay your normal costs in every year right they're going to take the whole payment out you're going to pay your normal cost in I think he was 175,000 what happens when suddenly you
have a bad year or so the trust can go you cannot be fully funded so you they say so we you know we've talked a lot about this with pension because your there's a legal requirement to fully fund the pension is the right number
100% is the right number 101% or 102% you don't want to take that completely out of your budget and now you're spending it on something else and all of a sudden you're not fully funded and you have to come up with that so just something to think about something to consider maybe a 100 isn't the right
number this may be a question I should have asked Dan but he said Welsley took out an opep Bond one would presume that there's an Arbitrage that they're playing with that yeah so there's a different treatment of it you have to make sure the interest rates offset so
they're paying less in The Debt Service on the op Bond that they would have paid to get to be 100% And then the followup to that is being 100% funded when you get as close as we are we can have a setback because of investment income you can so so was
they were 100% funded on their pension for a while and then now they're not so would that also be a reason when you're this close for grabbing for the brass ring and doing the opad bond to get there sooner than not now with rates
so it was um we had a few communities issue pension bonds a couple years ago but now it's not the it doesn't work we talked about it a couple years ago we decided we didn't and you're close in just the way you're doing it right now
not just just questions but I just think when you something to think about is instead of going down to we're just going to fund the 175 normal you may want to have it doesn't have to be the whole amount but maybe be a little bit more till you say what's our financial
policy going to be with OPB is it overfunded overfunded slightly um just so that we don't all of a sudden have a budget problem if the mar if we have a bad Market here that's the 101 102% gives you a little bit of a cushion
but you still you still have the the fund and there's nothing wrong with paying out more than you put in you just have to make it up in a different year so if you have a really bad year you can be unfunded you're unfunded now right so
right with pension is different um with opab you can go back to being not fully funded for a couple of years until you make it up right so and that doesn't affect some larger sense in terms of triaa or I mean there other aspect You' be back to the worst You' be is back to
where you are now right so it's there's no law right now that says you have to fund opab pensions this is probably not a c answer this question but the town's anticipating borrowing yeah more than typically in
the next few years um we're already at AAA we kind of check that box Y is there anything on the opep front that we would benefit from um on rates you think by staying the current course I think you're better
than most say the current course they're looking Moody S&P they're saying do you have a fund is the fund invested are you funding it predictable and you're better off the most you're practically there I do not think that oh if we just get to
100% it's going to make a difference year insane so stabilization fund you had um you know went down a little bit that was totally we talked about that that was totally predicted and then um p you're part of Essex Regional I am I'll talk about the numbers but I do want you
to look just because it makes sense with what you were talking about earlier if you look at the pension schedule page 86 you now have your share of Essex Regional Retirement Systems unfunded
pension liabilities $15 million it again they had a good year too um there that was measured as of 1223 so they measure everything as of December 31st so um your portion of Essex Regional is
3.44% you're 15 million so that liability has gone went down from the year before but certainly keeps going up it's a pension liabilities are not doing as well as your opab liabilities but that's your share they do the same thing that you do
but on a much larger level that they have an actuary come in measure everything and then allocate it out based on your payroll which B B on your payroll numbers and your contributions to Essex Regional there's 10 years worth on page 87 so back in 2015 you were paying
$821,000 a year you're up to 1.6 million a year 10 years yes and that you know again they um they have a responsibility to be fully funded they're on a funding schedule to do
that and if you look on flip it we look on page 89 n this is the O so these are the numbers Dan was talking about I did have it open we agree with his numbers what he say 68.9 6% funded um but this goes from 2017 to 2024 and you'll see
your liability your net op have liability is that 2,053 233 the top part of this is the liability the total liability the middle part is your fiduciary net position that's the real money that you have
invested in prit so you went from 2017 you had 1.4 million in prit you are now up to 4.6 million dollar in prit and that directly offsets that liability
oh it's a good situation and it's remeasured every two years like you said you'll have next year they'll look it's all based on how many people you hire right so if you if you add a new Department start hiring a bunch of people yourope have liability is going to go up Manchester tends to
that you don't have too many employees you stay the you pretty much stay the course with that and taking the school out of the equation helps you didn't um you didn't have any new debt this year so you were just paying down debt your total debt was7 million um Debt Service
was relatively low less than 2% of your budget I you know there's T there's talk about you're going to have to borrow and coming up was this FY 25 this is fy21 and is there is there a maximum amount of debt
that we're supposed to have yeah I've heard a 10% number but I don't know if that's the the amount of the the debt or the or the debt repayment so they say right so there's sort of this General you should have a policy and you should know what you're borrowing for but they
say if you start going over like 10% of your operating budget is that going to um take so much of your operating budget that it's eating away right so we have restrictions with prop two and a half on how much you can spend on other things now if the debts exempt from prop two
and a half then it doesn't that really doesn't come into play The Debt Service it's the debt Services measured against the budget I'm I'm Debt Service against the budget but you know it depends on if it's exempt debt right so the whole problem there is if it's not exempt debt
and you have start creeping up on how much of your operating budget is going towards Debt Service you're taking away from the police department fire department DPW question what's exemp um it's if you vote to exclude it from proposition two and a half which is what we do like capit that
exclusion commonly do so what's an example of the alternative if you didn't exclude it then it goes against your proposition two and a half limit your Levy limit so you can only raise your taxes 2 and a half% plus your new growth unless you've Exempted that debt is that
a different Municipal process no you you typically exempt all of your debt okay that's why you don't know the difference but if you had you could have projects that the town decides to do within the um within the limits so if if
we we do the cash exclusion right right um but that's excl also y if it wasn't excluded then yeah so for example we go and build a new water plant and The Debt Service is part of our annual budget two and a half that's what we're
talking about here so is that is that it creeps up it's an ongoing till that's paid off right but I don't think we've ever that's not exclusive give me the other side keep taxes down keep taxes down because all
of the debt exclusion we do for the Bond repayment increased the tax rate over the 2 and a half% for the life of the project right whereas if you include it in the 2 and a half your tax rate increas is only two and a half yes yeah
yeah so somebody unless you do an override which is not limit an override that an override that increases the increase permanently an operating override you can do an operating override operating override yeah
but that's so typically that's what you're not it's not eating into anything else so if the town needs to build a new water treatment plant they vote to exempt it from proposition two and a half you go borrow the money you need you're just raising more in taxes to to fund that right
right um but that's the math that's the math of it um other other funds other than the general fund you had some other major funds um obviously we talked a little bit about the CPA fund you had um $540,000 in Revenue you're taking in
Revenue both from the state trust fund and extra um that you're voting to add to the taxes to be able to spend on those specific projects you spent um $568,000 of the CPA money federal state and other grants
that major fund um again arpa so we're drawing down the end of arpa we're H we'll be happy when arpa goes away arpa has been a big conversation for a long long time but we're getting to the end of we're getting to the end of ARA everything had to be committed by December
um last December has to be spent money out the door by 12312 so you still have a little bit of money left to spend in arit 317,000 and then your water and sewer Enterprise funds so in your financial statements the Enterprise funds are always full of
cruel so when you're looking at that this is not budgetary based for the Enterprise funds it always is including any debt that they are rep paying and all of the capital assets so your water and sewer funds we expect stay somewhat other than big changes maybe an opep
penion we expect them to stay relatively the same right you're budgeting to charge rates to recover 100% of the cost um what happened this year is they went up but it was because you had a contribution in from the general fund for I I think I think it was some water
infrastruct um and we talked about stabilization we've talked about free cost and your general fund balance um there we did not issue a management letter this year I will say we haven't had many we haven't had new comments for the past several years the
only two comments that were in there last year that we looked into and considered there's two things one of them is the fuel card so if we've talked about the fuel card for years since 2018 we've told you you know um there's been no sign there's been no significant
change but it doesn't look like there's going to be a significant change it's not Material we have to look at the you know the financial statements as a whole it's not material to the financial statements really the big things with that is people are s they're not keeping track of the cards very well um and then
Water and Sewer receivables we've been reporting that one since 2022 and not big numbers they're not Material numbers but you do have some old receivables underwater and Sewer that um could be cleaned up not material to the financial statements but water sewer receivables
are an easy easy cleanup for communities um there's easy ways to get away from them you can either lean them lean them on the tax bill or you can shut water off to force Collection on those um we were just reporting to you that there's some older balances out there Andrea is well aware of them they know about them
they're working on them um and so there was nothing that we needed to put in writing there were no material weaknesses no significant defici down those payables I mean thosea the receivables they were not Material I don't know if they actually the numbers went down or not wonder if there was any Improvement I think that there was a big
one outstanding from the antique table no okay that the landlord had to pay and I believe that there was an issue at cargo unlimited and that had to be cleaned up to close to sell the
building and usually right so that's if a property is going to transfer usually would get your your because someone's motivated Le on the yes what could put a lean on the property or something collect that bill right can well technically we done it by
the closing you get paid yeah I don't know what what went on at ant table but it was land was stuck holding the bag um and again we talked about this but Management's
responsibilities the report is all is all the Town's responsibility our responsibility is to give our opinion at the beginning of it um but to do that we have to make sure that we are assessing your risks looking at your internal controls there was nothing um that we noted that we had to report to you the
town is also responsible for making all financial information available to us um we come in and sort of viig through your ledgers we get a detailed copy of The Ledger we make sure we're looking at adjustments that are being made really assessing any um
any unusual adjustments that are being made so anything outside the normal course of how you're recording your revenue and your receipts and how you're paying your warrants and paying your bills and there was nothing that we had that we found during that process
um talk about our responsibilities and the emphasis the emphasis is to make sure that these reports are accurate um to make sure that you're implementing new accounting standards we've had um gasby 100 didn't impact you one new standard that came into play this year
and a couple of new ones coming up in in the future nothing that we think will be of significance to changing it all good stuff so if I was to build on Mor's
comment about looking forward you like to look forward per second inste of backwards um about the borrowing because I think it's fair to say we see a significant amount of capital activity going forward my question is one of opinion which is as we go that's a bit of a transition in
terms of substantial borrowings quite a bit over the next fairly lengthy period any observations that we should be thinking of in terms of no and you're talking about water sewer plants is that b buildings building
project School infrastructure school so all that's so right now your debt is pretty low um your debt services is pretty low there is a chart in here that will show you when all your debt service is going to get paid off
um um in the big book yes page 62 62 and 63 so your annual Debt Service um there's General obligation bonds and some direct borrowing but really 2033 the general obligation bonds are paid off
2037 and you can see your total payments go down from now now till then but all that's going to happen when you borrow if it's exempt debt is you going to raise more every year in property taxes um and you're going to make those
Debt Service payments so because it's you're exempting it from prop two and a half that's all that's going to happen it's not going to impact anything it's not going to impact anything else and it's um if you're looking at the Town overall it's a good thing because then you're going to have some new pretty buildings and some new infrastructure
and you don't want to delay that right there's sort of a theory that you don't want to delay um all of your infrastructure and have because then eventually it has to happen um and it's better to have it happen on your schedule and when you plan for it then by
surprise but if you're exempting it it won't impact your operations your Finance it's really you need to you need to worry about that if you're not exempting it and then all of your debt Services impacting right other departments again looking forward a
little bit um obviously some changes going on in Washington do you anticipate any of that affecting 25 26 these years coming up and and how you would be presenting to us maybe in a year from
now or it's very hard to know yeah but here's what I can tell you um really in Manchester what you're relying on like I don't think motor vehicle is going to well we'll see right we'll see unless car car prices are so
crazy that people aren't buying cars and then your motor vehicle Revenue goes down dur didn't no one did right everyone thought they were going to and nobody did people still got their excise bills still people still paid their excise bills but your real estate Revenue guaranteed pretty much
guaranteed um I don't see the value of your homes going down I think that that's you're not relying like some communities do on that much federal and state funding so I don't think it will have as big an impact on you as it could
with some um some larger some larger cities that really kind of rely on that and need that money to oper it's our grants for capital projects so we just have to issue more debt that's excluded because
the school Works around in here too do do you have any thoughts on that is indirectly that affects us indirectly that affects you I mean there could right so the Department of Education problems could impact could impact the schools again it would it would be two
things could happen well one is the grants would go away if the grants Go away You're still responsible for um special education costs whether they're funded through grants or not you have to pay for um special education costs so that would impact the school's budget um
but a lot could happen like there's just so many things that are being thrown out about Department of Education that it's hard to I wish I had a custy ball hard to know but yeah there some things with the schools if they're not funded they're just not going to happen like that program would go away but not special ed you are responsible for
special special go away if they get rid of Education because that's a federal law special ed would you not have to fund special education I think you do still I think you do take it
away I think you're I think you're still to responible it's um it and those costs I mean we audit a lot of schools those costs can fluctuate like sometimes there's just sort of a Lut of kids that move in that have a lot of special needs that are High Cost needs that are sort of out of District tuition type things
and then there are some years that you just it doesn't they go up and down right y you know we thought with covid maybe that there would be because kids were at home kids were having problems it hasn't like all happened at once that that there have been a big increase in
special incomes yeah you are you are directly impacted but what happens to the school you do have to fund them any more questions I can yes um another forward looking this year I've noticed
um some of the training budgets um are listed as training but they include overtime salaries of the people and I'm not sure if that has to be accounted for as salaries or you know so we used to have a big overtime budget and a smaller
training budget and then this year they reduced the overtime budget no but it's it's no it's still paid as overtime it's just recording it's still a salary though it's done on the books of salaries yes
it's just for Budget purposes it's called training right but on the actual Ledger if somebody's doing training they're being paid overtime it's paid is over time over time the Bud where you're
no yeah it's just to better reflect okay I just want to where over time's required some of the Departments are doing it and so others aren't so there's a little inconsistency that's not how they're being pay that's how your budgeting yes yeah y so that was one the other one um was have you looked at how
to keep track of har ready um right now there's like this big Dock and some they char people who show up and like sometimes the har Master will let a resident just hang out there for an hour and other times it's charge
so you know how do we monitor that income how do we control I will say have I looked at it here have we gotten into it we haven't gotten into that in that in that much detail because it's not that significant to your financial statements it I will say we do it is tricky there are you know if the Harbor
Master lets someone come in for a couple of hours any audit is not it's going to be really tough to find that and an audit what happens in because we do a lot of coastal communities that have pretty big harbors and definitely moing revenue or the slip revenue is e is
because there's so many spots and there and it's easier to audit there's a list of boats there's the length of the boat there's the rate and you can kind of see if all the revenue is there but if someone's coming in and not being charged unless I sat there all day like it would be really difficult to look up this is a transient voting so it's not a
fixed number and the yeah I mean they'll have logs of them they should be treating everybody equally um but unless you really scoured through those logs it would be it's just coming but from a revenue side I mean I think we're using DACA so it's being
recorded by a third party who's taking a bit of that and then it's coming to the town as a as a revenue item that could be audited so I don't think it's cash taking you know happening down St but are they not recording are they not
recording some people so you trans boat coming in or some people not going through the system that would be the that would be the what could go wrong is you didn't charge somebody that you should have anything else for me anything else for an thank you no thank you very much
apprciate thank you guys with your budget discussion have a good night thank you this person that was not here me leave these yeah he likes so we have some budget issues to
do the first issue is okay which is on page two of today's handout printed double-sided so it's on the back of the first page
yep so last year in 2025 we budgeted 300,000 this year there's 330,000 and based on this schedule that Dan Sherman
gave is he showed the 2025 of 300 the 2026 of 330 2027 of 360 and then 2028 at 144 321 which would fully funded if we
earned the 7 half% interest um and and so do we want to approve 330,000 yes I'll make a motion to approve 330,000 for opep trust funding second
second any discussion take a vote Dean yes um Andy yes Mor yes Peter yes Tom yes there yes scar are you on
yes you vote Yes for the opep I do did you you have your hand raised do you have anything else no I hope you didn't have a question for the auditor because she's gone no no I don't I didn't have a question I was I was raising my hand to vote Yes okay
thank you okay then the other thing we did not vote on was Emergency Management is page
23 I think kind a little numbers um so we talked about this y um and this was the dispatch is going to start paying for
the reverse 911 and so they asked to increase the budget by 6,000 anybody remember why I'm a little confusion something's going down by six and something's going up by six right we
discussed it with the fire chief yes we did um oh it looks like I have the thing from the fire let's see if I have that's the deputy uh3 you want me to jump
in Jake uh so this is actually Chief F Gerald's the emergency manager it still falls under the fire department budget historically uh as a separate account the thought process is Emergency Management um
we're starting to work cohesively with a lot of our capn neighbors in trying to um bring on our volunteers create a volunteer core uh and get that back up and running so that money is just being
reallocated from reverse 911 in order to help us fund the training sessions uh and outfit the volunteers help people help out if and falls under the title of em expenses right emergency man yes
yeah zero change just right yeah motion motion to approve the 7500 emergency oh well then I'm looking at the wrong thing I total expenses of 7500 so I'll second it I'm sorry but I'm
looking at 6,000 that's a Delta from the year move over one column oh I'm look the WR call sorry sorry y 7500 yep 75 any discussion take a vote Dean yes Andy yes
Mory yes Peter yes Tom yes bar yes great thanks Sarah says Andy yes I have a comment on the fire report that we just got on how um one of the firefighter is leaving
this month so I mean we're GNA have this vacant position all year would that enable the deputy to be hired a little earlier because he's leaving so soon I it's just the thought posting to replace that firefighter okay they're trying to
hire somebody so I know but in the meantime in the meantime we'll save on the salary line but we'll pay in the overtime right line but we are going to try to run a threers shift with the as opposed to calling overtime for the
fourth right yeah that's that's what he's been doing all year yes yes okay all right well I was just thinking that you know okay that salary not paying earlier sort of budget for slots full-time equivalents as opposed to
individual names yeah so it's basically it just seemed like what him leaving and then us hiring admin is kind of like what we were thinking of doing what I was thinking of doing initi other thing I wanted to set Circle
back around on was the capital budget we approved and the reason I wanted to Circle back around is because when I looked at it I realized that one of the line items that
we've had a lot of discussion about but was included in the final capital budget we approved was the boat storage structure oh about that oh you are for the harbor thank
you um yes yes for 50,000 yes and so I just want to know is do we want to fund that or not or do we want to revise our vote it's being paid out of Harbor
funds but remind me was it was a structure that was going to be potentially temporary those hoop structures with the plastic covering and then what was it going to be used for once the boat was stored elsewhere DPW right no I don't
think they had a good answer I think it would get crashed probably I thought we'd sort of said that given the DPW building discussion we would pass on this a year or two more in the snow and wind is not going to kill us that's what I thought we discussed too yeah we were
a little H suspect of thean didn't want to shrink wrap it or something right I think he was trying to get away from shrink wrapping for some reason the annual cost just but I think it was more an environmental thing I don't know oh they recycle us put a tarp over it too a
reusable tarp it isn't $50,000 I mean if if push came to shove you could probably rent space up on at waterer Avenue or someplace like that and put the boats in there I mean it would be a little odd but do you have thoughts on this
car I'm my feeling is um there are lots of as B said there are a lot of of alternative options here and um just using a creative approach uh I you know it doesn't seem to me that it's a uh
Earth moving excuse me a a a continent moving experience so I would I would hope that we could find a a reasonable solution to this yeah I don't I don't disagree with the idea of getting away from you know
like having to throw away all that plastic every year I I guess I kind of get that but there are storage facilities me I think if we think the DPW thing through you know wherever that ends up
in the next five seven eight years yeah there could be a center block extension for yeah current boats and and room for 30% more we thought that through yep I would I think one of the
challenges is that it would be good to get the whole Harbor Revenue expenditure thing it seems to be lots of comings and goings and you know we sort of vote on one thing and have expectations about one thing and then the next year it's
kind of like well this is this is great this is great well where's the money well you know our intent that that fund should build up to support dredging and other things yeah I don't feel as we keep expending it yeah exactly I would like not to approve
50,000 okay so we need to revote the capital budget one other um it might affect um the CPC I talked with Jack he said that they could probably go up to
200,000 for the tux I know we were looking at 250 and then it was 140 what Jack said to Greg is 140 and so that's what we supposed to be on the meeting for tomorrow night right and I just I was talking with him today thought with
some accounting Jack's hands up there good evening everybody Jack Burke CPC uh I spent some time going over the existing projects with Andrea and we
never recredit it our funds uh about $70,000 from the abandoned project at the Memorial School the uhu The Sawmill Brook so it's still on the books if Andrea pulls that back in addition to the
140,000 that's that's there we uh I should be able to do another 60 and come up with an additional 200,000 making the CPC budget for the Rotunda 500,000 rather than
300,000 and we're meeting tomorrow night and we're meeting tomorrow night to vote that okay great yeah that's what I think we were looking for now not to overco complicate this this kind of comes back to the meeting the other night our last
meeting um on rotunda right I don't know what you're referring to AR we pulling more money from um reserves 800,000 now yeah but that was assuming we got the 500 from CPC or 550 but now it's five yeah 800
plus 500 1.3 1.3 which is 2.3 we lost a million 2.25 I'm just wondering if we have more funds available than we thought we had with the c I'm saying with the cost though funds available
where so we were originally budgeting for CPC on the Rotunda for an amount of 140 right and what other no we had 200 we originally no we had 300,000 300,000,000
CPC and now we can add we adding 200 to five got it okay and we were so that additional 200 from CPC and then 800,000 from reserves yeah right which is in
the budget this this capital budget so does that Dynamic affect our any vote that we've already taken or no we voted on that 800,000 we're going to have to revote
CPC once they do their once they do their thing so we'll do that on the 19th Y and Dean will let us know if they approve it okay okay and then if we can I'll do the report assuming we're going to approve it
approve it okay does that make sense yep okay great thanks Jack welcome okay are there other CH I'm just going down the capital budget here are there
other changes I'm trying to be sure I understand any other changes besides the ones you just discussed I'm not so we voted on the budget and made lots
of changes yes and those are all in they're all in here this spreadsheet through 227 yeah in red which is very helpful thank you Andrea so we've already
approved everything else this one we have which was the the 4215 875 so we're talking about amending this to make it 4165 875 right
yeah and to delete the V storage structure right 50,000 from the total capital and 50,000 from Harbor funds so Harbor funds would be only 15,000
so I'll make a motion I'll second that you're free to move whatever you want we revising our vote on the capital budget by reducing ing it by 50,000 for
the boat storage structure which will bring total Capital down to 4,165 1875 the amount from taxation fund balance
reappropriation and Sewer will remain unchanged but the harbor funds will decrease from 65,000 to 15,000 second second any discussion yes because my memory can't remember what's happening to the
boat the boat purchase the grant the $400,000 boats that we're thinking of here it's in there it's in there and it's in here for is that what that is find that small okay it should have been landscaped for
a yes I this much you call seed money another discussion there another word I would like to use but okay okay thank you I've got it and we're okay with that expenditure I'm okay with it I think
it's I think it raises our standard really incredibly but I just miss the orange boat and we're okay with the shellfish study yes okay um anyone
discussion take a vote Dean yes Andy yes La yes Peter yes Tom yes G yes and Sarah votes yes okay and I will let Andrea know Andrea
can't couldn't make this meeting because she's the summer stomach bug for her kids came to her okay so the the other thing look here oh I'm sorry I thought you were looking at my printed copy no
no I never would um this [Music] wasn't so the other thing we have not voted on is the
school but I think we can vote on the NorthShore Agricultural and Technical School yes which was oh page 26 it was originally the the original
budget we received it was 250,000 in this budget as at 176 418 the reduction is due to a decrease in enrollment from 13 to 8 176
418 and do we know if is eight the minimum we which we paid for for many years I'm surprised decreased so much I know well it may be competition from other other districts talking about changing to do
it don't I have a motion to approve $176,400 for the NorthShore Agricultural and Technical School SCH moved second yes Peter second uh any discussion
vote Dean yes Andy yes myy yes Peter yes Tom yes G yes sh vot yes okay and the school will wait till the
19th because the school is approving their budget on the 18th I don't know what happened at last night's meeting I didn't I didn't know I didn't attend it um so I think that is all
of that everything accept the schools [Music] yes um and I did talk to Andrea
about Revenue projections okay and what we kind of decided on by the people agree is to make the revenue assumptions at the discretion of
the finance director but not less than 95% of the prior completed fiscal unless there's a documented reason to have it
otherwise does that sounds like add to our so-called Financial policies I'm a little trouble we still have that and not in finance yeah okay I know but I think our challenge has always been we we understate revenues
and they come in high 95% is that too low no I think that's reasonable I mean I would say it should be a little higher but that's just but she can do it higher and right when we went through it um we went through all
of the revenue Pro ctions and um you know she had reasons for why they were off um you know like the the payments in Le of
[Music] taxes y she had to decrease it by 500 because there was a change in the max that could be right charged and there's two payments in L of taxes um you know the investment income
we've talked about we've talked about um and so her her estimates were higher than the 95% um well what I like about your policy is that you give it a relief Val
there's a reason it could be expressed right yes it gives flexibility so do I have a vote to support that yes I make the motion I need a second second Peter
second vot yes Dean yes Andy yes Peters Tom yes G yes and Sarah yes okay now Dean did you have something else that you wanted to bring up that I wouldn't let you discuss
earlier um no get kind of flushed out with CPC okay so I think we're good on the budget I will work on a streamlined report
streamlined I like it warant articles we we don't have to talk about till later on down the road do s like there's too much Financial related warrant articles will have to do 319 yep I'm going to be
away okay so hopefully you can help us again with SharePoint oh sure yeah on the report so then at least if that's completed before the 19th you'll have
been able to give your input yeah um I think we can actually wait till the next week but the main question or comment I had about last year's was the use of uh specialized terms okay and and the fact whether people understand what they mean okay um maybe I'm over sensitive to that
but there are quite a few terms we throw around here that I don't think the general population so the book does have a glossery right more explicit about pending you to it because right it's awfully easy to read it and then not be sure what it
truly is saying to you okay yeah you're right Mor it does um and that's needs to be referenced yep okay and I love the word streamline because I think it gets it's it's too much it's too repetitive I think what
I'd like to do is a lot more bullets yes yes always have append yeah I read very enthusiastic about that yeah you know we've kind of carried it forward a lot from you year I think it makes sense to have a lot less
about the school budget yep we play a much different role with respector right um and we don't really have much control over the budget let them explain their budget exctly I vote
up or down the big thing operating in debt period is the the discussion about adding the government you know all the increases in the government and outline why we did that talking about increases in government in the government
Department the salary increases we made a lot of well there also were a lot of increases to existing employees you know and I think the long-term capital plan maybe it doesn't need to get into
the specifics of Greg's whole spreadsheet but the fact that there is a longer year I was wondering about including it yeah as such yeah well just have to be careful the numbers that we're reporting
okay yeah see social media blow up I think there's there's a fine line though I do think that we need to when we start talking about long-term multi-year planning I think we need to put revision numbers on things because we we all sit here in 23 and go that sounds good 24
the long-term plan is different get the version 4.1 yeah your document um I mean maybe just say something generic about we've done it out to fiscal year 50 and
the increase in the tax range tax rate ranges from 0% to x% for any given year I think noting we have it yeah we're looking at it that it's subject to quite a bit of change it makes a couple of assumption being you know capital that
we're spending kind of projects were spending it on and the people can expect there will be in a range of x to Y the kinds of increases we're going to be faced with from year to year I I'm very fearful of including that schedule it's
a communication issue yeah you can really be hard to reel it back well plus I think the just noting there's the strategy that Greg was talking about I think is a good one yes I do to present y
I mean it it would be important to remind everyone that this is a a sample of what we know and there's often a lot of stuff that comes up that we don't know don't think we want to go into no I know but I mean just saying that that's something
that might need to build in as well well I I just think if we say looked at potential projects through fiscal year 15 right right there determine that the impact I think a more controlled
communication the impact on the tax rate in any any given year doesn't exceed x% and many years it zero% yeah yeah I think the communication on particular projects and all that needs to be handled by a team that's dedicated to that I go through Tiffany and ready to
field that you Tiffany do stuff like that yeah and with respect respect the Sherman report OPB and the auditor you just have a sentence or so in there I mean because that's all worth I think a a little comment that that you mean no
the the select board oh is charged with putting the OPB in there in the financial report and who comments on the auditor's review and conclusion doesn't go in there it doesn't we don't say that the town
is I don't know I don't know what we've said before um I just think that what we've heard tonight is very useful matter of building confidence about including Mor's question as we look forward to years where we're going to be drawing heavily on capital B yeah she
she referenc that our debt is relatively low I do think referencing the Auditors and that we have sat down and talked with them is encouraging okay and reinforcing to the taxpayers because I'm not sure anybody else in this well any other volunteer boards are doing that I
think it is kind of our job and probably also opep too there might be people say why spend this or why not spend why not clear it all off in one year and and I think we've all thought about that just leave off the fuel on leave off the what
fuel cards yeah yeah okay anything else okay we have minutes three right we all of February to adopt we have the fifth the 12 yep now the fifth was approved in second and but
we never took our R to call vote does that mean it's not approv I mean Gail was saying it that there we have to do something special no she's saying we voted on it yeah well we didn't take the roll call but did we amend them well that's what happened Sarah mentioned it
and he moved to approve them someone seconded him and then before I could even say I had comments I think we dropped it then and didn't do a roll call so it wasn't wasn't sure right but I would so I mean they need to be Ved
yeah I think I'm fine with all three the way I modif them so make a motion to approve all minutes as currently rised and stated second any discussion
not the overwhelming discussion take a vote de yes Andy yes Mory yes Peter yes Tom yes car yes fantastic that's almost we don't have
the ones from no his motion was all of them we just did three we just did all three were you at all three meetings we have some for the first no we had another meeting we don't have the7 the the 12th and the
19 yeah yeah thank you Gail for your work on this and your um yes flexibility in dealing with changes she does a lot of work on this stuff it's crazy so our next meeting is Wednesday
March 19th right that would we will vote on the school budget we will discuss the warrant articles vot on the warrant articles and
we will is there any chance we can see the draft warrant before the meeting or is that that's drived by Greg and everything just because it's you know read it through no who knows
the at the select board meeting they were wondering how late they could go to approve it and they wanted to wait and approve it sometime in April and I said well doesn't have to go in the financial report heard heard your comment so I think struggling to get it for our
meeting I think that they have not yet made the determination on a warrant article for a bond for the senior center that was kind of the gist I got from that meeting yeah that's the gist
I and their next meeting is 16 17 yeah so okay anything else want to raise and we're fine with funding the school use ly capacity yes okay
okay okay I'll take a motion to a jurn so second all in favor are you in favor car I'm in favor thank you good night car car good night night good night good night good
night sorry you need me here on the 19th or can I zoom