Town Council - Regular Meeting

I'd like to call the order of the Board of Finance meeting for Monday, June 15th. Everybody please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

We have a motion to adopt the agenda.

I move that we adopt the agenda as written.

I'll second. All in favor? Aye.

Moving on to item 4 approval of the minutes for the regular meeting May 18th make a move make a motion that we approve the minutes as written. May 18th regularly scheduled meeting.

All in favor. I. Even minutes are approval now open for public remarks. Go ahead, you're here. Up over here, there's a microphone. No problem. Yeah, of course. Just a reminder, comments are limited to three minutes.

Good evening. My name is Haley guy, 16 curry lane. I'm an East Hampton resident taxpayer and parent tonight. I want to talk about return on investment as taxpayers. We all want responsible spending and smart financial decisions. That's why these cuts are so difficult to understand. Smart start is not funded entirely by local taxpayers. The district's own projection show approximately 97000 in state grant funding for 20262027 school year up roughly from 75 K in previous years. At a time when we're looking for ways to support education without increasing burden on taxpayers, it's difficult to understand eliminating a program that brings outside funding directly into our schools. If Smart Start is eliminated, we are not just losing a program, we are risking funding that may take years to recover. reapplying for state grants is not an overnight process. There is no guarantee East Hampton would be able to receive these funds again. Bell ringers is another example of a strong return on investment. It provides high school students who are looking at a career in early education or education in general with hands on experience working with young children in a professional setting. Future teachers we can hire from within. More importantly, Bell Ringers and Smart Start work together. My own son participated in Bell Ringers this year and received an acceptance letter for Smart Start this fall. For our family, these programs are not separate budget items. They are a part of the same educational journey. Bell Ringers introduced him to a classroom environment and positive student mentors. Smart Start was supposed to be the next step for him. When we eliminate both these programs at once, we are not making a single cut. We are dismantling an educational pipeline that benefits students at multiple levels. We also need to consider the future of East Hampton. New homes continue to be built throughout the town, many of them designed for families. When families decide where to live, they look at school quality, educational opportunities, and a community's commitment to its children. East Hampton is often recognized as a B-rated school district. If our goal is to improve standing and remain competitive with surrounding towns, programs like Smart Start and Bellringer should be viewed as part of the solution, not the problem. Strong schools attract families, support property values, strengthen communities, and contribute to long-term economic growth. I'm not speaking tonight as an educator or a member of any board. I'm speaking as a parent and a taxpayer who wants to see East Hampton succeed. I'm raising three children here at all different ages and I care deeply about the future of this town. The decisions made today will not only affect the children currently in our schools, but also families considering whether East Hampton is a community they want to call home. As a Board of Finance, I ask you to consider whether eliminating programs that bring outside funding, support student achievement, attract families, and strengthen our schools truly represents the best return on investment for East Hampton taxpayers. Education is not just an expense. It is one of the most important economic development tools a town has. The question is not whether East Hampton can afford Smart Start and bell ringers. The question is whether East Hampton can afford to lose them. Thank you. Thank you.

HAB-Terry Palmos- Anybody else for comment. HAB-Terry Palmos- Come on up do in the room first.

HAB-Terry Palmos- And

Crystal Chan, 34 Walnut Avenue. I again do not have anything prepared, but I am taking this opportunity to learn and be better educated about the process and hope that you have patience with me as I ask my questions. I think that the tri-board meeting the other week was very educational and I think it was a great conversation between the Board of Education, the Board of Finance, and the town council. I think everyone was participating, giving input. What was lacking in representation was Mr. Fugle and Mr. Hintz. I don't know how Mr. Fugle had voted during the referendum, but I know Mr. Hintz was very vocal about voting no. And I wanted to know what his position was on in terms of what we as a town can afford to cut I think the was very clear about what we could stand to lose if we needed to reduce the budget. I think that the police department was very clear about their position on what we needed for our town. I think also the seniors were very vocal about what was important for them. So, I wanted to better understand as a town council member on what he represented and why he thought it was important for us to reduce the budget and how that would not be a detriment to our town. And I think that's the information that you as a board of finance would find very helpful as well. So thank you all for your time and continue to want to educate myself. And if perhaps there was a position that he provided and where that information can be found, I think that would be very helpful for us as a community to understand. So thank you.

Uh, good evening. Kim crab 27 skyline drive. I'm not prepared either for public comments. I didn't know that we could do that, but I think you all received my email that I sent on Friday afternoon about the support of the full time position at the senior center. And while I don't have notes in front of me, I did spend with some of my colleagues on the commission on aging and the senior center and services task force about 2 and a half years. Looking into the importance of why we must support our senior center, because our senior center is the place in town that supports older adults, you know, you know, for yourself, your families, your neighbors, we're growing older and we need. A place to be, we need a place to socialize. We need a place to have support. We need a place where someone knows our name. I volunteer at the senior center and I watch people come in and many of them are alone. They don't have anyone that they live with, but they walk in and they, they're welcomed by their name. They have. Activities for them, they have a lunch to sit down to they have trips that they go to, but I'm going to tell you that this cannot continue in the support that they currently have. They are at their maximum. I think the percentage of growth was about 115% this past year alone, and we're only getting older and. My point seeing this was that if that senior center position, it's a half position that we want to turn into a full time position. So it's not just coming out of the blue. They're going to lose a half time position in order to get a full time position. But with that full time position, they will be able to have evening programs, expand their programs, allow for fit people who are 55 years and older. opportunities to come at night after they work because they're new members to our center and so the place is small it's old it's limited but with that full-time position they can do so much more at least within the next couple of years but if this position is cut this year I'm just not sure what's going to happen. We're looking way ahead 10 years from now. Can we expand the building? Can we find another another place to build a community center and a senior center? But if we don't have that position this year, we're going to lose our momentum and lose the opportunity to support older adults in town. Thank you.

Cindy Craig, 3 candlewood drive like him. I also did not know that public speaking was allowed this evening. I'd like to build on what Kim said. 1 of the problems at the senior center, and 1 of the needs for expanding the hours is the fact that the parking is untenable with the. library and senior center having classes at the same time. Sometimes you can drive into that parking lot and the auxiliary parking lot next door and there's not a space to be had and people leave. because they can't find a spot. So today I was at the senior center and I met a new member. You would not think she was a senior. She looked young, but she had just retired and was floundering. She didn't know how to handle retirement because it was a shock. So I also sent you an email and I mentioned my experience with the Senior Center and the fact that I attribute the Senior Center for my involvement, my civic involvement. If I had not started going to the Senior Center, I would have not volunteered there, I wouldn't have joined the Commission on Aging, I wouldn't have gotten involved in the Senior Center and Services Task Force, and I'm on the POCD. So the Senior Center is far reaching. It is not just the people who might feel isolated or. But it is for them as well. So there are many, many ways that the senior center affects our community. So please keep that in mind. And hopefully you can take care of that position that we've waited 9, 8 years, 8 years for don't make it. No, thank you.

Two online. Alana, can you hear us?

Yes, I can. You're up. All right. I'd like to suggest that you pay attention to the town manager's caution about the fiscal cliff that he mentioned at the tri board meeting. It seemed that Mr. Finn seemed to say, let's just get through this budget and then we can worry about next year. Well, that's a frightening attitude, especially with the money that you're planning on or hoping to take out of the fund balance and the bonding you're planning on doing and the surplus. The bonding and the education money won't be there. Not the bonding. but the surplus and the education cost share may not be there next year. So in order to, that would create the fiscal cliff that the town manager was talking about. So I urge you to think to the future and not just to the present. Thank you. Thank you. Brian?

Hello, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Hi, this is Brian Turner, Spice Hill Drive East Hampton. Just a couple quick thoughts. I think we all agree that education and seniors and all the various services provided by the town are things we'd all love to support. I know everybody is there. They want to advocate for the things that are most important to them and to the people they know. And I respect that. I really do. But I also want people to realize that we also want to support our own families. And it's hard to make ends meet. So while we want to support everyone else, we also want to keep our kids fed and housed and our own senior family members taking care of them as well. So while people like to ask what those of us who voted no think should be cut from the various budgets, I'd like to ask those who voted yes, what they think we should cut from our own household budgets, what we don't need at our houses. It goes both ways. I also like to say the tri-board meeting seemed like a pretty good meeting if it took place months ago before the referendum, but it didn't. It took place after the referendum. I'm sure there were meetings where things were discussed, but there were some comments made in the River East by certain town council majority members who said they basically knew the referendum wasn't going to pass. And I'd just like to know why we push things referendum if we know they're not going to pass. And hard decisions do need to be made. And I don't envy any of you for doing them. I really don't. I really do respect you for the things you have to do. But they do need to be made. And they really should be made before budgets get pushed to referendum. I appreciate what you're trying to do. And I wish you the best. And I know it's hard. And just give it your best. Thank you.

Thank you. Last call for public comment. Okay, moving on to agenda item six. Do you have any special presentations?

No, I do not.

Any correspondence?

No correspondence.

Okay. And we'll get into status reports.

I will keep this brief since I've been talking about logins. Residues. The last the last month, my revenue forecast revenue forecast was close to maybe 295,000 dollars. 2 changes that we had on that is tax budget tax collections are coming in stronger than forecast. We're estimating positive variance in 3 or 75,000 dollars. positive variance and last month they forecasted $50,000 for license permits and fees and we're looking at $70,000 so we're doing $40,000 better than our last forecast. Lastly, federal state grants, our final ECS payment came in and that was about 24,000 ballots, less than what we had anticipated. The state does the, every year they make an adjustment Moving on to expenditures. In large totals, last month I had about $160,000 of valid deposit variance. We're about $165,000 now. Really nothing new. Their full-time is going to be a lot higher, but their overtime, they have a significant deficit in overtime. But because they've had unfilled positions, we're still looking at about $75,000 positive variance in that department. Human services as well, senior center has vacancies, partner recreation, and in the library. So really nothing. Questions, comments?

I got a question about the revenue side of things here. So I'm looking at our number for the increase in property taxes collected versus what we sort of planned on. I know in the budget we plan on, I think it's 98 and a half percent. Of taxes is this number that we're at 100.7 is that kind of effectively mean that we that's that's over top of that 98.5 that we planned on. Right?

So, within that number, we've got supplemental motor vehicle, back tax collections, interest on back taxes. And Kirk taxes, and I think we're going to probably hit 99% on current taxes.

Okay.

Does that answer your question?

I think so, because I just want to make sure that, so the, just to make sure I understand this correctly, so the actual percentage we're collecting on the grand list bill this year is essentially about 99%, but between all that supplemental and interest and stuff coming in there, that's what's getting us up over 100% of what we would have built on that grand list.

Yeah, we're collecting about 99% on regular current taxes. And then what's pushing us over 100 is we're doing much better on supplemental back tax interest and back tax.

Is that a fairly typical amount every year? Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, we've had years where we've been 98.8, 98.9. I think anytime you get 99, and so this is doing it all the time. Yeah, so 99.1.

And then with the, with the supplemental, everything like that, it seems like the last few years, at least it's come in over 100% 100% of the of the target target revenue there. We're building out our budget. We're still building it on 98.5.

Building up current tasks.

Yeah.

There's within that one line item that you're seeing, there's five or six other.

Yeah, I guess my question is when we're planning ahead for next year, are those five or six other line items also in the revenue estimates? Yes, they are. Okay. So that's in there as well as the 98.5 on the current collection. Okay. That's actually what I wanted to know more clearly.

It's on the bottom of the second page of the revenue estimates budget. So this all rolls up the fund balance. So we started with roughly $67 million in fund balance. Forecasted revenues and forecasted expenditures are looking at just north of $600,000 net income, which would give us a fund balance of about $7.3 million.

Do you have the number for last year, how much we had in net income or loss?

Yeah.

It looks like it's about $357,000 to $38,000. Is it what date? Let's ask them.

Any further questions on fund balance before we move on? Moving on to item 9, new business, grant match.

So, I just want to bring this to your attention. I applied for a grant most of the year ago for cybersecurity and more specifically penetration testing. And the award in the grant is a $40,000 grant with a $10,000 match. We had not identified where those 10,000 dollars were coming from, but we'll have to take 10,000 dollars from our operating budget. And move it over to our special revenue fund. They combined it with 40,000 dollars, so I just want to put. And we'll take care of that when we do any of your transfers.

That would affect this current budget and not correct. Okay. 40K with a 10K match. So no action for tonight, just awareness item for us for today.

Okay.

With that, we will be moving on to item 10, discussion and possible recommendation to town council for 26-27 budget. Let me just finish a note here. I can't think and talk. All right. So coming out of the tri-board meeting that we had last week, there was a couple of items that were requested from Mr. Cox on things we wanted to look at in the town budget. Were you able to provide an update on those items today?

I can talk a little bit about the costs related to sidewalks. I can talk a little bit about the transfer station conversation. for both of those items uh matt walsh the public works director is in the room so perhaps he can fill in some of that um we then really were planning to sort of talk about um how you wanted to handle capital infrastructure and funding of that and whether there was any desire to to use perhaps some of the unanticipated revenue from this year to offset that. And then I think you'll want to have a conversation with the superintendent and others related to the Board of Ed about what you want to do there, if anything. So with respect to the transfer station, the idea was floated for opening the transfer station basically once a month as opposed to four times a month or whatever the number of Saturdays would be. And. We talked a little bit about that, and I could tell you, I could sit here right now and tell you that sure, if we close the center 75% of the days that we do now, we might save 40 or so thousand dollars. That's just a straight labor calculation, right? Where I think the concern will be, and this is the concern that the works director referenced, very often when we have a day at the transfer station, we fill those bins. so even if we were to stay open later or people came everybody came on that one day it was very possible that we would run out of space and have to close and not be able to accommodate people so um obviously it's possible people will be well the service will likely be diminished uh somewhat But that's, of course, a decision we have to make. Also, it has been discussed whether there is a neighboring municipality that would be willing to take us and create some sort of a relationship. I've had conversations in the past, very high level sort of, you know, would you do that? Would you think about that? Yeah, sure, we'd think about that in the conversation. with the first select person in Portland. So I think that's a possibility to go that way. I'm sure we would get a similar response from East Haddam if we were to ask them. There are possibilities for them to come out in a better position if we partner with them. Depending on how that partnership works, whether it's 1 of them, or both of them in some way, perhaps there's. Grant funds that could be achieved, but we can't figure that out in the next day or so. That's something that I think we could work on for the future. We've had those conversations in the past. They've never come to fruition, but everything is negotiable, I suppose. So I put that on the table as an answer at this point, a concern about service at the location, but there is definitely a possibility of a straight line cut there in the $40,000 range.

I don't think the cut would be worth the chance of having refrigerators left on the side of the road or mattresses at the back of the parking lot here, and then the anger caused by long lines getting into the transfer station.

I think that's a real concern. What about on the other side? I know the transfer station charges a fee to get a sticker. Do you have any discussion around how much it costs to participate in the transfer station?

There's a small fee, of course, to get a sticker. And then two years ago, the council raised the rates at the transfer station. One of the challenges we face at our transfer station is that we have no ability to weigh the material that's coming in. We have to sort of thumbnail it and say, okay, you're driving a double axle trailer. That's $80, I think. You know, you're driving a short bed pickup truck. That's $70 or whatever the number is. um and if we need to revisit those to begin to mitigate further the the deficit that we run um we can do that but we did not do that this year because there has been a consistent resistance to those changes right can you remind me how big that deficit there is that we're running right now how much they cost us the last audited deficit was 211 000.

It's not insignificant. A question for David Cox. Is my understanding that municipalities are not required to have a transfer station? Is that correct?

Very likely true, yes.

So we're doing this at a choice. This is not a state requirement.

We've done, you know, obviously, as many of you know, we had a dump in the past. When that dump was closed in CAPS, I assume we started into this business pretty quickly right there at it. At this location, we do not take municipal solid waste. So the stuff that we all have to put curbside, we don't take that. But our station does take metal, bulky waste, electronics, which is a service, mattresses, which is a service, tires, et cetera, et cetera.

So when we have this larger discussion about the budget and cutting and taxpayers and what they're willing to pay, the transfer station, the town has no obligation. So that's a choice.

would say that's probably true as compared to when we go on to like snow plowing the sidewalks there are two just there is no ordinance or state requirement that the town paid for that correct there is an ordinance um created out of history law so to speak related to to the town clearing of sidewalks there however is not as you pointed out a state requirement that we do that because we don't do it for every site

And that's also my understanding that most municipalities do not plow sidewalks. It's the homeowner's responsibility. Would that be a fair statement?

It has been my experience.

So then again, too, we have to ask, why is East Hampton paying for the benefit of a select few?

To that question, what is that? So that was one of the items that you said you got those numbers for.

So Public Works Director Walsh did spend some time kind of looking at how we would estimate the cost for undertaking that work. And it's a little bit, it's a little bit more difficult to determine that. Right now the number is estimated at around $30,000 a year we spend on that activity. But that's a not quite Some of that figure is basically the effort that people spend straight time, so to speak, during their regular workday, as that is their assigned task. The real issue for us is when that work gets done on a weekend, because that's, of course, straight overtime, and it's a little bit harder to calculate that, or was a little bit harder to calculate that in the couple of days that we had. If we're talking about weekend activities, it's about five hours to do all of that clearing. And on the weekend, that would probably be close to $1,500. So if we do that six times in a year, we're talking about nine grand for weekend clearing of sidewalks. The bigger issue for us is when the piece of equipment that we use for that needs to be replaced because we have nine miles or so of sidewalk. When the piece of equipment needs to get replaced, we're talking a piece of equipment that today is about $250,000 to handle those nine miles of sidewalk. If in the future we were going to be doing something else, something less, just where we are the property owner, We're not buying the $250,000 piece, but we're scaling that considerably.

So that begs the question, how much life do we have left on the particular piece of equipment that we're using right now?

The newer piece of equipment has about 15 years, Matt. It's in 2040-ish, 2040s, somewhere.

The one that we're using right now, the one if we replace it?

It's the new one that we have now, which is relatively new. relatively new, is the one that has another 10 or 15 years of life on it. The older piece we have that only goes out when we really, really need to is probably past its service life and would need to be replaced in relative short order if it were to become primary.

Okay. How much of this last year was operating on just one? I know we had some issues with the older one. Or was it the newer one?

So bad. And one of the old one actually broke down by the library. It was stuck there. I don't know. So that's why I'm trying not to take the old one out.

It must be really bad.

So was the majority of the year done with just one?

The majority of the years, just one. We have a question. Go for it.

If we went to once a month, how does that compare to other towns? we as a small town don't pay for or provide a lot of things you get in the city, like garbage pickup and maybe the sidewalks clean and so on. That center is only open once a month. And right now it's once a week, but you're talking about once a month. How does that compare to other towns? We don't provide that much for the taxpayer, and we take that away. I think we're going to get a lot of blowback on it. I think I've heard that Marlboro is open a couple times a week, and I don't know about Portland or East Adam. If we go to once a month, I think we're going to be in trouble.

So to answer your question, as far as I know, I know Portland off the top of my head is five days a week. And I do not know about East Haddam. I don't know about others. The one directly to our west is five days a week. I'm aware that based on what Jeff has told me from their financial statements, they probably run the same type of deficit that we do, but do much, much more work than we think.

move through much more material than if the five hours on saturday were removed to move to five hours on a friday eliminating the overtime would that displace work that the public works people would have to do and cause a backlog of things that need to get accomplished there's always an opportunity box um well i can't sit here right now and tell you we wouldn't be able to do x y and z uh frankly neither could matt but there's always an opportunity cost

A couple of years ago, the staff undertook a major project work on Edgewater to, or Edgerton rather, to change out the drainage system there. We did that in-house and that took quite a bit of time. Our staff learned a lot and did great work and it didn't cost us a lot, but there were opportunities that we all . I know that's kind of a longer answer to when we miss something, but I think, yes, we would always have to tuffle something away in order to do that particular thing. Just send the three staff to the transfer stage. Three staff that go to the transfer. But you're right, it's straight time as opposed to overtime. So those that's some commentary on the two items that were public works related, a sidewalk and transfer station. Um, the other item is really the conversation around, uh, how you want to handle, uh, how you may want to handle, um, capital. Yeah. That was the other weakness.

There was also some discussion around various positions in the, in the budget that were. uh that have been unfilled um and which ones can we deal without deal without or which ones do we need to keep in um I think that general consensus was we need to keep the space for police officers because that's critical um and we need you know we need someone in planning and zoning can't just be nobody um but um was there any sense from you in terms of looking around at that staffing Chart to say, okay, here's some space where we're not, we haven't filled these spots yet and maybe we can take them back out to be honest with you.

We don't have a lot of holes right now. The major ones you're. You're talking about are, um. In the general fund are in the police department and land. Maybe there's some possibilities in land use with with, um. Because, as you'll recall, there is a, there are funds for a new transition there. Um. basically using third-party inspection funds and other outside resource funds that we've got available that we would use out of the budget to use to fund that position to a small increase to their expenses. The more significant is the health insurance package, which we budget, and that's in excess of $30,000. I'm not knowing the person who would fill that spot. But perhaps there's a possibility because we now have a vacant administrative assistant role in that department, perhaps there's an opportunity to revise that, eliminate effectively the costs associated with one health insurance package and eliminate the The extra person and use change the classification of the vacant administrative assistant position, use that to fill the role. That would be more of. Uh, in an assistant planner zoning and plan use enforcement. Which was the added position that we were hoping to achieve. Do you follow that?

I think so. So there's an admin position essentially. That's open.

Also, this became open in the last week.

Okay, um, I'll come back to that, but. So the idea would be to sort of combine roles essentially in that what you're talking about there?

We would reclassify that position into a different, to a professional position as opposed to an administrative assistant position. And basically that position would become the full-time land use enforcement and assistant planner position we were hoping to add to the department. We would have to we would change some of those categories and we would have just those, the planner and an assistant planner, land use person, land use enforcement person working in the defined to the land use portion, to the land use activity.

And what's the potential savings there?

I think the savings is really in the insurance piece. So that's very wonderful. 37,000, I think, is a good number to know for what that position probably was budgeted for, that added full-time slot that we were going to put in there. 31,705. 31,000. 32,000.

Mr. Cox, is there a chance that combining services between the town and Board of Ed is possible? For example, they had an HR position open up

earlier this year and you have an hr position that's still open is it possible to combine that those two jobs into one no to combine those two positions into one no there's there's that would be too much of a workload there you have a person in the the role that you're talking about in the um in The board of education has, you know, all of the board of education staff to deal with. And so I think there, I think there can be some relationship there. The, the superintendent and I. can see how there can be some efficiencies there, but I don't think we can lose right now an entire position. I think we can maybe change the way those positions function and perhaps in the future we can identify where we might be able to shave some more off. Right now we have The town side, we have an HR coordinator position, and then we have staff that has assignments, full-time staff that have other jobs in finance, but that have the payroll and insurance activity functions. Downstairs in the Board of Ed and the superintendents here, you can talk more details if you want them. But you have there then someone who's handling the payroll function for everyone in the In that department as well, the. The insurance activities and then assisting the superintendent with HR. As well, so I think we're, I think the short answer is. Not yet the longer answer is, I think, as I said, I think that perhaps as we redefine those 2 roles. Begin to get them working more closely together. We can probably find some ways in the future.

And what about it is that possible?

IT, we do a lot together now. Jeff can talk to this more specifically than I. But IT, we do a lot together already. We share infrastructure at the high level. We share resources back and forth. So when our IT person is out, we have the access to the folks at the schools already. So that's another scenario where our coordination level is pretty high right now. And it's not likely that we see the significant change in the number of humans assigned.

Thank you.

Matt, a few years ago, maybe it was last budget season, privatized the cemetery care for cutting lawns. Is there anything more that could be done to privatize that you feel we could look at?

We, I think, do a lot of that already. But yes, we did. We do cutting of all of the facilities except the schools is now done by private contractors. So any of our facilities that is not a school facility, and that's really because of the athletic fields and the security clearance and all those kinds of issues. But really, it's the athletic fields that are very costly to be done by an outside resource because of the markings and everything else that goes with them. Matt is always looking at whether it makes more sense for our staff to do it or outside staff to do it because maybe paving is probably the best example of that. For the cost that it is for us to buy a ton of asphalt with, I think it's a dollar more, maybe it's up to $2 more per ton, we can get that laid down, but we have to buy 2,500 tons or something like that. And so we're always evaluating those possibilities. I'll talk to Matt more, of course, and if we come up with other things, we'll bring them to the table. But I think we do a pretty good job there.

So there's been a lot of discussion about roads. I know that's one of them that kind of came up in conversation. And obviously, there's been some discussion, and I don't think I quite followed it, about sort of the quality of roads that we're at right now and what we're trying to get to. I don't have a good sense of, like, the timeframe and our current pace that's going to take us to get there or what the potential costs would be to do that and get us kind of up to snuff as it were.

Matt, do you have some sense of where we're at on that?

I wasn't really prepared for a big presentation.

I meant to call you earlier today to ask you that question. I apologize. I didn't get to it.

So just a little history on that. I guess about six years ago, we did this whole pavement preservation program where we did an audit of all our roads. And then we did a second audit of all our roads. So basically every three years, we go and look at them all. we're actually due this year coming up. So this next fiscal year, we're due for an audit. So that will give us a better idea of where we're at. But in general, I think the consensus was that from a zero to a 100, I think everyone was comfortable if we could keep our road network as an overall 70, like an average, few cracks, occasional pothole. But rideable, so I think if you look back at the, the increase in the capital plan. That was kind of where that's going and I do have a whole presentation that was from about 3 years ago that shows curves and an engineering analysis on where we'll end up if we put this much money. you know towards roads and then spread it out for maintenance preservation and restoration for the different types of roads so the idea is that you want to balance the money that you spend on roads on all the different you know categories of roads whether they're you know a maintenance chip seal like you know roads that are like in the 70s and you want to keep them good and then you know mill and overlays or like kind of like your 60s and 50s roads and then your complete redos like abbey road or child's road So I kind of bounce it all out to maintain that average rating. So basically after they go through and do their AI analysis of all the roads, they dump it all into this algorithm that goes through and says, okay, your entire network based on all these different factors is this. Our last rating, I think we were at a 68 or a 69. Oh, that's not bad for 3 years ago. So we do have it. I don't know if you can put that up quick. It's a good graph that shows. How much money you spend where we'll be down the road? I think it was at a 5 year projection.

29 to 34. yeah.

So, so the goal was just to kind of keep it flat line with what we're spending. And not keep continuing to fall off. Does that answer your question? Sometimes I ramble.

He's working on that. Don't be alarmed by the question, but what is a year of entirely deferred maintenance? Is that a, hey, everything moves a year. We drop our score by, you know.

Oh, it's huge. Yeah. So the bonus thing, you know, where you're going to see those roads that are in that 60 category that are like, they're okay. And you'll see all of a sudden they crash out in the winter. We had that with like Laurel Glen one winter back a few years ago where going into fall, it was fine. And then the winter just, hammered it so i had to shuffle everything around and go pave it because literally it was almost impassable it was so bad um so that's what you'll see when you totally don't do anything um you'll see those roads really fall off quick you know I hope that answers your question.

It is more than a 1 year impact. I'll say.

Oh, definitely. Because what it does is that it takes those roads that wouldn't be so expensive to fix and it makes them super expensive to fix. Because when you go from, like, a shin and chip seal to now you a mill and pave, it's 10 times more expensive. And then if you go from just a mill and pave to a complete reconstruction, it's like, 20 times more expensive. So the idea is to keep them all in that 60 to 70 range. So it's just, you can do routine maintenance, do a little heavier things, but they're still drivable, tons of potholes and falling apart.

So, a simple miss of a year, hundreds of thousands can lead to the more expensive option.

And we saw it when went out right? When we lost that bridge, that was my entire paving budget went toward replacing that bridge and we really couldn't do much. So, like, for instance, Daniel street is a perfect example. Daniel street was scheduled to get a shim and chip seal and we didn't do it that year. And now it's beyond that. it was just paving, you know, like we would normally do. It would kind of be a waste of money there because the road is in such bad condition. You know, so that's a good example of a one-year miss that really put that road in the next category.

So you would still recommend keep the budget as is for the capital on the roads?

You know, I don't want to sound like selfish, but hey, you know, deal with structure is very expensive. It's expensive to maintain and deferred maintenance just makes it even more expensive to fix. And, you know, it's like, I use the analogy, like, if you don't paint your house every 10 years or do something to it, the stuff starts to rot, you know, your wood rods, everything starts falling apart and the roads are the same. If you don't keep the water from underneath the pavement and the subgrade, it just starts falling apart. Ted had a question over here.

As I remember it, Our roads were rated at somewhere in 66, 67 range, and our goal was 70.

Yeah, that's just thank you.

So that was presented to this board, and we, if you look at the capital and you go across the spreadsheet, you'll see that we voted for more money. so we could catch up, not just maintain 67, but to get to 70. And that is going up, I think, substantially with good reason over the last four or five years. And it's right on the spreadsheet. So I hope we continue to do that.

May I just add something in that? Correct me if I'm wrong. So while many folks would look at this and say, okay, if today you're at 68.7 and your goal is 70, what's the big deal? I think part of that is to bring those roads that are at the bottom up. I don't remember what our lowest road was probably in the forties or fifties. So yeah, there's some in the forties or fifties to bring those bottom roads up while those top roads, which are brand new roads or recently rehabilitated fully roads as those begin to age and go from being a 90 to an 85. we're bringing up those roads that are in the worst condition so that our roads are grouping around plus or minus 70 and are not you know running 40 to 95. i think that was part of the goal as well matt can talk about this a little bit but the chart that's in front of everybody up on the screens and for those of you at home on your screen you can see that the goal was to get somewhere in between that yellow line and the black line with the x's on it above

Right.

So the goal of the committee was to get to a million dollars plus a year and we're at 850 this fiscal year. We would be at 925. The one that we're talking about right now.

So, along those lines, right? Trying to get all those sort of forties and fifties and even low sixties roads up to up to snuff. Is there is there any sense of like, how much if that was 1 capital project rather than. obviously we need to do ongoing maintenance to keep them there but there's one capital project to get all the roads up to snuff do you have a sense of what that would cost or what how long would it take to get that done i think we looked at like a bonding like like if you were to do a binding or something like that and

I gotta be honest with you. I don't know off the top of my head. I'd have to look at the model road, but the issue that comes with stuff like that is that it's not just the paving when you're dealing with those roads. It's the drainage. There's all kinds of other work that goes along with it. Right? So. The way we're currently doing it is, you know, we're doing all that pre work public works is we're doing the drainage and, you know, repairs we have to do 1st, and then they're payment. If you had a massive project, you're talking. Lots of contractors them doing the pre work because, you know, I have on a good day 8 guys. So, you know, it's, it becomes more than we can do. Um, and I, I know that probably doesn't answer your question. Well, I don't think that's going to solve millions and millions of dollars.

Yeah, it's a million, but in some sense of what that number is, I think would be useful as we do sort of plan out the town. The other question I had was, do we have a similar rate grading on the town parking lots?

No, not really. I mean, it's. On the town side, we don't have that many. I know the board has 3 or 4. Right? But yeah, the parking lots always kind of seem to take a backseat. We've, we've kind of picked them off. We did the firehouse. company one three or four years ago we're doing company is that three or two three public works is going to pave company three this year um and if you saw those parking lots you'd uh they're like company three is horrific yeah yeah so it's like they we kind of haven't really done much maintenance wise with the parking lots until they get to this point where they're they need a reconstruction so if you were to so you don't have that but like just for a simple visual estimate what would you

Candid ballpark, say, example, the middle school parking lot right now quite to Charles row, which is at the fifties or.

Oh, yeah, you know, I, I would say, you know, if you if you had to look at the middle school, it's in a failed condition, you know, so it's, it's probably a 50. You know, the pavement is completely deteriorated. It's still drivable, right? So, you know, it's, you know, but it's got potholes. You've really got to get in there and maintain it. And it can get worse. You know, it could go to a 40 where it looks like company three. That's a very small parking lot there, but that's an idea of what it could look like. You know, who knows, like one year of plowing again, the whole thing could get tore up. But it's kind of a, you don't really know.

Yeah, it's curiosity and just for equate. Yeah, it's a good thing. Yeah, and it's definitely failed, you know.

It's not in good shape.

Thank you. An example of Main Street would be the top end paving as an example.

That's nice, right?

That would be 99. Yep, that would be a 99.

And then, you know, even brand new roads like Barton Hill, you know, we did that last year and we still, I went in and crack filled it. There was a couple places where there was a few joints opening up because it was just a mill and overlay. When we were in crack filling, I crack filled those just to try and keep up with it. You know, maintenance is the key to keeping the infrastructure strong. You know, the chip ceiling that we do is, I know a lot of people don't love it, but it really, it saves the road from falling into that next category.

Matt, how many miles of roads are in East Hampton?

90 miles of road and then 80, 10 of those are dirt, so 80 miles of paved, I believe.

Was that the 84.14 that was on that slide a second ago?

Yes, thank you.

Any other questions for Matt? I think we're good. Thank you. All right, thank you. All right, I want to start driving a little bit more toward you know where we think we can go from here what we'll do this we think we might want to do um i think one i'll say the easy part of the discussion is we are projecting about 600k in surplus 600k in surplus if we can redirect that money is a one percent reduction to the increase in the budget right off the bat and we can tackle projects that are in front of us that are costing us money that doesn't necessarily put us in a spot where, at least in my opinion, we're setting ourselves up for being on a cliff. It's helping to manage some of those issues that we do have in front of us. As for where we put that money, naturally, I think a chunk of it wants to go live in the capital space where we have those bigger types of projects. It doesn't really impact staffing, things like that. I think in the discussion around the schools, there's been a lot of maintenance issues that are starting to crop up that in my mind, start to look more like capital improvement projects. There's potential we can target some money there as well. So I want to kind of open that up and look at, hey, what if 600,000, I'll say, quote, available as surplus Where would we like to target that type of money and use that to help manage what we're spending this year? Now, it doesn't solve everything. We still have big challenges in front of us over the next couple of years that we're going to have to be a lot smarter on what that plan looks like and how we manage capital and big expenditures as they come up. This is a point where we can provide a little bit of relief in a re-evaluation year, recognize that the majority of the tax pain this year is tied to the re-evaluation and not necessarily the budget, but where do we think we might want to go with that money?

Of course.

Yes.

If we don't spend that money, is it going to fund balance? Okay. The way I read this, the fund balance right now is is 10 to 12. so in the discussion of 600 000 if we put it towards what we need versus putting it in fund balance they'll make it who knows where it will make it maybe 13. and our goal is 10 to 12. so why wouldn't we want to spend that money. And of course, the question is where you distribute it. But I think it's a good idea to use that money and do what we have to do.

And Dave, this is where you said, if you, if you do send this in my year coming to a fiscal cliff, is this kind of look is that I mean, that's always the concern when you use cash reserves.

That's always the concern and so using it is is to be done judiciously. Really, I would always encourage that if you're going to do that, it's for 1 time only activities. I guess in the back of your head, you need to be thinking about if we didn't have this money next year. Could we cut this thing that we're talking about? Right? Could we not do this thing that we're talking? So, I would never encourage that use for operations. I might also encourage you to think about whether you do this in, I'm going to call it two parts. You know from what the finance director said, what Jeff said, that you already have received $450,000 of revenues that we didn't anticipate. That's, so to speak, in the bank. You know you have that $450,000. The rest of that is a projection. The rest of that hasn't happened yet. The rest of that banks on the fact that the rest of the year goes, now granted, there's only two weeks left or so, but that banks on the rest of the year going as we anticipate and that there's nothing that comes along that pulls that down. And so I might encourage you to think about that in almost two parts, that if you're going to use all of that, that maybe you only that you're careful about that extra 150 above the 450 that you know you have because theoretically it is possible that we won't have that 150 when we go to close out the pistol year in x number of months and by the way from a from a logistics perspective that's how it would happen in three months or so when we get around to closing out the current fiscal year is when those dollars would truly become available and when they would get assigned over into the next fiscal year. So that's just a bit of logistics. But I would encourage you to think about that carefully as well and think about it perhaps in two parts.

AJ, just a quick thought. I'm realizing there's a lot of, whether it be here or whatever, is like this cliff. And, but we're here now and we have to get something to the voters. And I realized you could have a lot of rejection. What are we going to do next year and start looking ahead? But I guess I keep looking back here now and, you know, following along what you suggest is that's something we could do now and not make it a pattern and agree. We're not going to make it a pattern. And just when we look forward to next year and we start drafting our budget, There's a lot of little things, what we need and what we want. And those are two different things. And I think we have to, now it's not the time to do that. The time to do that is in the fall when we start developing the next budget. But for me, I personally like to just get this one behind us and then start looking ahead in the fall. It's a thought.

Yes. Well, I think especially in the capital, there's some items that are things that we kind of need to have the funds for every year. Things like the replacing of window AC units, for example, or pavement obviously needs to get funded every year. But there are some things in the list that are maybe more like one-time expenses, certainly on the town side of things. And I think the Board of Ed also has some sort of facilities line items that we could do as a one-time expense. We'll certainly get those covered now, rather than have to think about levying more taxes for them. um which would have the effect of uh reducing their their budget going into next year which reduces the minimum numbers going to the following year um and uh can can reduce can get that sort of covered ahead of time rather than after after the fact so if we're if we're you know we've got he says 450 is kind of in the bank and maybe another 150 or so, 160 is maybe in the bank, but we'll know that really in another couple of months for sure, but, or at least in a few weeks, we'll be pretty sure, and then in a few months, we'll be definitely sure. You know, maybe doing something where we, you know, the budgets are roughly two-thirds to the Board of Ed and one-third to the town government. Thinks you're 450 and split it that way. In terms of projects, let's say 150,000 out of capital transfers, Somewhere from some of those projects and at the town level and take the cover that with. Surplus and take 300,000 from that surplus and cover the facilities expenses at the board of that board of Ed. And then that extra 60, when that comes for sure that we have that. You can cover something else on this list for the town. I think that probably the best way to to handle that. that gets us a long ways towards a budget that that maybe is more supportable by enough people to get it passed um you know I think the idea of you know combining that position um talked about at the public zoning I mean 31 000 is 32 000 on the insurance cost there is certainly worth you know pursuing um you know I think that's it doesn't sound like the Sidewalk question is going to be answerable fast enough for us to say for sure. We're going to do 1 thing versus the other on this budget. Right because that if it's an ordinance in town that requires a town council to pass a new ordinance.

You know, which I don't know although summertime is a good time to tell everybody. This next winter we're not doing this.

Yeah, no, I think I think that's probably a worthwhile thing to do, but I'm not sure if we can count on that in the budget as we guys would put that budget forward.

You know, can we say, let's reduce that line item by 37 additional things we need to pass in order for us to be ready to go and take credit for that now. know i don't know if we can make a recommendation on those types of things but it would be certainly something that i would love to see the town council discuss further you know as to whether or not they feel it's an appropriate area to go and look at changing the ordinance in the future yeah i think i think something you know and in terms of the the fees that we charge at the transfer station um you know for people who use it

I think that makes sense to charge a higher rate on all that. Something that comes out of this, this body, or comes out of town council, though, in terms of that, right?

I mean, ultimately, the town council has to change that figure, but. Certainly, you're you could make a recommendation.

Okay.

I personally would like to see the money go into the fund balance. I don't think this is what the, uh, the voters want and resoundingly said no to the budget. So my thought would be to have that money go into the, uh, the fund badge, uh, balance fund. Uh, and I on the side of caution and what Dave recommended.

With what goal, though, if you're just putting in that fund to do nothing except for sit in an account?

Which is fine. I think it's fine. I think what I've heard is that the voters would like to find relief. And we have needs in the town, just like families have needs. Capital is an area where I think almost everybody on this board would agree. We have needs that need to be met. And where are we going to call the money? To go cover those, or what are we going to not pay for when we're just going to go put more money in the bank. Instead of using it to help us cover our needs and what are we saving for?

I guess is another. Just to say, oh, we save more money, but not using it. You're not giving it back to you. Me is just going to an account. So what's the, I guess we're talking about this is really future versus present.

I mean, I would still rather have it.

But nothing targeted.

Nothing targeted.

Saving over spending.

It's not what the taxpayers want. What does that? I'm just curious. No, that's my answer.

We're talking about if we take $600,000 out of the budgets, right? It's effectively a 1% reduction in the budgets. What does that equate to in terms of mils? That's like 0.5, 0.4, something like that?

Thank you. $600,000?

Yeah. And if we can then find another few hundred thousand between the town and the Board of Ed, we're getting close to almost a mil. And there is 1.6 million, but if we can get to, you know, two-thirds, I mean, the increase on actual tax, you know, the mill rate is minuscule at this point. We're already at 0.98, which is still very, very small year over year, right, for what the mill rate would be if we were trying to collect last year's taxes. We can get that number down. I mean, we're talking about under a 2% increase in the overall budgets. That's a very reasonable number, I think, in terms of, you know, considering the cost of everything is up 4% right now.

We can come in at 2%, which also addresses the affordability issue that's been brought up.

It keeps everybody, you know, gets that raise mill rate lower, which is what people want to see. I don't see why, why do we need to have that extra, when the guideline is 10 to 12%, why do we need to put that extra money aside for what rainy day are we saving for, Jim?

I would just rather have that money saved for something that's unexpected down the way. And again, I'll reserve it. This is not what the taxpayers voted on. What do you think? They wrote around to see cuts, true cuts. So what do you think we should cut then, Jeff? Be specific. Where do we cut? Where would you like to see a cut? In the Board of Education for assistant, anything admin assistant related, just look at bodies, look at efficiencies to do more or less. And if we pass the budget, as you're suggesting, doing this at the minute. I think the referendum, it'll go down again.

Not done. I said this is the easy part of the conversation, right? Or I thought it was. I just got a quick thought.

Looking for the taxpayer, are they looking for cuts or a reduction in their taxes?

Those are two different things. I want to give Ted a chance to talk.

Okay, everybody. Question three was about parking lot at the school. It was going to come out of fund balance. I think that was all misrepresented. The voters didn't know where the money was coming from. Therefore, they voted it down. They thought it was a tax increase this year. And we now know and we knew before that it's coming out of fund balance. The fund balance is 12.5 and the range is 10 to 12. That number three question should have been passed, but there was misinformation out there, and I don't think people understood where the money was coming from. That's all I got to say.

I apologize for cutting you off. Sorry, I didn't. But to me, there's just two sides. What do the voters want? I see a lot of reading, and I talk to folks. They don't say, well, we want to cut a program. They say, I don't want to pay taxes. So those are two different things. And to say that the taxpayer want like reduction in staff, I didn't hear anybody say, I want that person fired. I never heard anything like that. I don't want to hire a cop. I've never heard that. I just don't want to pay more. And they're putting it on the board of finance. You guys got elected. You have the responsibility. You make it so I don't have to pay more. So, and The plan now, I think, on the table addresses most of the voters' concern.

We have seen, at least in the education space, a lot of people come out and say, we don't want to see those programs go away, but we can't vote yes right now. It's not that people want services cut. I have not seen anybody say cut services, at least in the stuff that I hear. What we're hearing is that there's an affordability problem. I think that those are two different things. And this is one way to address an affordability problem by taking money that we have already collected and surplus that we already have in excess of the town guidelines for how much we should have saved and use it to help and improve the affordability piece of this problem.

I understand what you're saying. We may have to agree to disagree, but I would rather see that money saved for something that's unexpected beyond what we may understand as a board here today.

I think it's important to define what that unexpected looks like too, Jim. So I do this with my clients all the time, right? Somebody that has a very large cash fund in their sort of portfolio over and above what would be sort of typical or normal for someone that their age or whatever their finances are at. I always ask them, well, that's a just-in-case fund. So, is it just in case 1, but I want to get clear clarity just in case. What?

Well, that's an example of the bridge that got washed out and there goes his money. I mean, that's an example of an unexpected 100 year flight. You know, for example, and then there might be something else that comes up that needs attention to and I just rather. see that money saved for that unexpected reason like the .

I think that's actually a great example. This again, this is why I do this with my clients. I want them to give me a specific thing they're really worried about. I think the bridge is a good example of that because I've wiped out the payment budget for the year he said. Payment budget that year was $450,000. That's the number that I want. $450,000 inflated to today's number is called $600,000. We're at $7.2, $7.3 million. in the bucket, right? That's less than 10% to cover that particular cost. It's one year surplus. It's one thing, right? So let's say we have that event happen, right? Let's say we have two of those events happen and we've got to suddenly fund a bunch of stuff, cover things, right? But still, we'd still be over 10%. Even if we use this year surplus to cover stuff that we're talking about. And then had 2 things go wrong like that in a way that it costs us to pay all the money. We'd still have more money in our savings account than the numbers at the time. Council would like to see us at the boiler was another good example of an unexpected.

That was about 250. Right? These are small numbers relative to 7Billion.

Yeah, they're not nothing. Right. But it's this. And so and then when you have that conversation and have this conversation with the client, we can say, OK, well, we can we can identify what those risks are. And if we can cover them in other ways, that's one option. Or we could just say, OK, well, let's get let's quantify those risks. Right. Instead of it being like, oh, I'm worried about this thing that could go wrong. Let's quantify the risk. Give it a number. Give it a real number. Increase the number by, you know, 25 percent or whatever that we think that that cost might go up in the future. But then we can say, all right, now this other money is actually now free and clear. We actually could do something different with these dollars. We can invest more for our future. We can afford to take the vacation we wanted to take, or we can afford to go ahead and put our kid through college or pay down this debt or whatever the case may be in some particular situation. In our particular situation, I think what we should do is we should cover some capital things that are more like one-time expenses. In the Board of Ed's case, they've got facilities, line items that really ought to be capital anyway. I think we should cover some of those. And we think we should take it out. I think we should reduce the mill rate rather than having to keep the mill rate up higher. The thing is about these kinds of dollars, the thing about people, when you start firing people and letting people go, right, it's like the maintenance of roads thing that Matt was talking about. You know, when people can't trust that their employer is going to sort of keep them on and their job has stability, they're less likely to want to come work for you. If you get a reputation as a town where people don't want to come work for, it's hard to get the quality people to do the jobs, like town planner, which needs a really good quality, highly technical skilled person to come do that, like high quality police officers. How do you get people to come work for you to fill positions you really need to get filled? If we're selling, well, we're going to cut admin. We've already cut a bunch of admin in the board of admin. That happened last year. We've already cut You know, there's been cuts made in past years. We've lost people, good people that were hard to get back, that went and worked somewhere else and were great contributors to that town instead of our town. I think that you've got to be very cautious before you say, okay, we want to reduce positions for people that are currently already working for us because it makes it very harder than when we need that person back to then go get that person. Or for someone else that looks around and says, I don't know if I really trust this town to keep employing me. I'm going to start looking for a better opportunity somewhere else. I think that's a real risk that you run. And it's different than when you're in a manufacturing plant and you've got 10,000 workers and you're going to lay off 1,000. That's horrible for those people that get laid off. And they do have some of the same issues, but there's reasons that there's unions, there's reasons that all these kind of organizations exist. It's a little bit different when we're operating on a couple hundred people rather than 10,000 people in that kind of environment. So I think that using the excess this year, the surplus this year to reduce next year's taxes is a really good use of those dollars.

Well, keep in mind, too, we got the $279,000 that we got for education. That's a one-off. It may not be there next year.

So half of it was one time, and half of it was supposedly included going forward. At least that's what the state said, right? And we'll see what happens this next year with the state. Obviously, there's an election year. We'll see what happens in the following year. I'm not hopeful because the state's not been helpful in the past, but you never know. Something that I think everybody's going to still advocate for. Right. Like, you know, but there's, there's not, you know, there's not access people in the, in the system right now. That's the, I think that's the problem is that there's nobody that doesn't have that, that sort of, no one's sitting around twirling their thumbs and not accomplishing something, whether it's in that board of ed or the government, uh, town government. Right. So, I mean, that's, that's the question. It's like, where do you think, I mean, you think we should kind of administrate? I mean, where, where do you think we should, if you said admin roles, do you mean

And just, you know, maybe secretaries of staff, I'll just look at those numbers, overlaps on services. Is there anything that's duplicated roles and efforts? And I'm sure the Board of Education is doing that.

How do you reconcile that statement with the fact that we have one of the lowest or highest student to admin ratios already in the state? We already are running a very lean administrative side to our schools. One of the leanest of the state. Do you think that that's still not far enough

along we still should be doing more there there's many other towns that are running a lot more on the island sides than us but that it gets back to the taxpayers and what they vote i don't know if i agree on the other side what the taxpayer i i think the taxpayers want to see cuts reductions i mean we want to see when the next referendum goes yeah said here's the thing i think you should cut right

All we've heard from the public is here are the programs that I don't want to see cut. We want to keep the senior center position at a full-time equivalent, which I'd like to. We want to keep Smart Start preschool program. We want to keep the Bellringer preschool program. No one's come by and said, this program, I don't think we need to do this program. Or this position, I don't think you need that position anymore. No one's got that. We've asked the Board of Ed, you know, where do we think there's any space for room to cut? And like, they already gave us their best budget, right? Down 3.58% increase when the average around the state is closer to four and a half or five. I mean, that's pretty lean. The town already gave us their best budget. We found some places we could save a little bit of money. So that's where I think, you know, we got access, let's use it. Everybody that reached out to me after that meeting about that idea, Thought that was a pretty good idea to use current surplus to reduce our future budget need. And now maybe next year we don't have that same surplus. We got to decide, is it these things again, like Dave says, are these things that we can live without in the following year? So things that you got to replace every year, probably not. Things that you got to replace once or twice or we can get more years of use out of them. Yeah, those things we can probably afford to pay for.

AJ, as a thought, I think we're starting to, people are really expressing their entrenched in their positions and maybe it's time to distill down exactly what it is and so that was piece number one I think there's

what I would like to see and um is I think we still need to go a little bit further than that I think if we just say hey we're cutting the budget by using surplus I don't think that's in fairness what the taxpayers are really after I think we do need to go a little bit further than that and so what we you know the numbers thank you Dave for giving us our first estimates were you know maybe not as high as I would have liked to have seen them but there's there's areas where we're looking to try to go and make more cuts. I did reach out to the Board of Ed with the question on what is another, in addition to trying to cover off the facilities piece, what does another 250 look like? I don't know if you guys would like to speak, or Dr. Van Tassel, I don't know if you wanted to say anything tonight, or?

It has been probably one of the longest meetings where I actually have to say anything. i've been listening to all of you and i i worry you know i worry we want to see this program we have got this kids are coming the first day of school is right around the corner across i know summer's about to begin we have got to get a plan in place and knowing before having a better shot of the budget testing recall where the opinions are it's a induction is it based on affordability what's what is the foundation about like you you have taught that there is A need that you recognize we are going to be faced with some level of reduction and those reductions are programmatic. We're beyond the conversation of it. You can do things without it impacting programs. I. Thought last year that was understood, but, you know, that there are still some conversations suggesting that what reductions were made weren't made. But the reality being what I worry about has been what you all have stated. And even the member who called in. for board finance member, it's the shadow cut. It's reducing a dollar amount that ultimately we are going to end up having to build back into the budget next year. It's an artificial cut. For example, the $278,000 that we received in educational aid, that moved the needle from our board of education from 4-3 to 3-5. But we know that come next year, at least half of that $137,000 is expected to come off the roll. They're saying we will get a second year of supplemental aid for $137,000, but it's the other half of that that it's only a one-time offer. So now we know we've got to build up that budget of $137,000 because we took $137,000 worth of expenses to make that happen. I worry about those. Those are the types of things in the year that I had come here, there was a $200,000 get back from the insurance company that caused the thing and trying to get that number back into the budget is a problem. So whatever we decide, whatever Board of Finance decides, Town Council, those are going to be program reductions for next year. Would I rather hear a number? I would rather hear a number and let us focus on what the number. I put my cards out on the table with you all last week to say we're going to Wherever we have to make this work, we will make this work. It will result in program losses or staffing losses. But the board has to be able to decide where those are going to come from. I know people would want to know right now. Is it going to be smart start? Is it going to be the world language at the middle school? Is it going to be sports? Which one is it? Or it's got to come together to have that conversation. So, if there is a number, I would ask that we know where that number is. If you want to hear numbers, we can talk numbers if you want.

So, my 1st, put at a number is we talked. About the facility side of things we know that that number is in the order of 300. Give or take, um.

Can I speak to that?

You can.

Okay. I just Dave and I talked up there. All right. We were asked the question of what are our facilities? These are operational facilities costs. that we are building to the budget. There are, I believe it's seven lines, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven lines that are specific to facilities that touch all of those facilities. Building equipment maintenance and repair, that's in that line. Perhaps some of those have got to be capital expenditures. Heating and ventilation repair, yes, those are capital expenditures. refuse, review, move list in there, that may not be seen as a capital expenditure. So what we talked about today was that if the decision were to be down the road, that these facility lines come away from the Board of Education's budget, they would need to be carried somewhere because those are going to be year over year expenses. And you could shift them to the town, but just moving it from one side of the ledger to the other, And if it needed to come back into the board of education budget at 390,000. I would worry about, okay, how are we going to make that on top of the 270 or 137 that we have. So, some of these bills, these are all the operational facilities lines that we get. Those are kind of the bigger picture of these are. These are those facility lines, and I just don't know that it would. I'm not sure that that's exactly what everybody is thinking of doing. It's not just one-time capital expenses.

Thank you. There's a fair number of things in the town capital budget that also are not one-time capital expenses either. They're still considered capital expenses. So, I do think that, I mean, long-term, I think that facilities things like HVAC repair and equipment maintenance that really ought not to be the Board of Ed's responsibility.

And those are bigger discussions that, like, they're not going to be solved before we have to put another budget forward, right? And so we're trying to look across the board and understand where are the right spots.

We appreciate you on the box thinking and that's how we're going to end up having to thank you to all of us. And we have talked about shared services. And we will continue to as it relates to HR, as it relates to technology, further advancing facilities, we know that that's the direction to go. We have been looking at those are all the things that do that eventually be again to make sense, but it's going to take takes time to get us to work through the budget here.

I love it. Long term, does AI come into play with saving on personnel? I'll give you an example. My doctor, Dr. Ouellette Marlborough Family Practice, I go to that. He's my doctor up in Marlborough. They have no more scribes anymore. Everything is artificial intelligence with an app on his phone. The app doesn't need expenses, healthcare, it doesn't sleep. There's a cost to that, but there's a cost savings to not having to scribe there. So does that come into play with

I think you have to identify for what role, what position, what we learned in education, what's online learning, remote learning. It doesn't work. So I think the institution itself isn't going to be necessarily defined by what AI brings. Are there some supports that perhaps will be a part of it? Yes, but it's not going to be a factor of the teaching and learning. I think there are some functions of roles that may eventually be somewhat more manageable. But I don't know because it's not clear yet what that's going to look like. It's just speculation on our part that it's going to transform everything. I think our objectives for you all are to figure out how can we share services to make things work. I want to just speak to this because it's come up a couple of times. You began with administrative assistance. There's a rumor that's out there right now saying that I hired three additional administrative assistants in central office. There is not, and that's been something that's out there. There's a lot of misinformation, but there was not three. There wasn't even one additional administrative system hired central office since I've been here. There isn't space in central office to have other people. So that was something I've put out there as reduced administrative assistance. We removed the secretary this past year. But I shuffled the deck with the entire district secretaries, moving them to different buildings, because we went down a secretary advisable. And then the administrative position that I think has come up, and you mentioned this as well. And I know somebody put this comment out here. We are going to move that position from a 12 month to a 10 month. We know that there is a will of this community. I'm not saying that I fully support it overall, because of the fact that there are 100 Faculty and staff, and that's all it's 650 children. To have 1 adult as a possibility, which has been proposed 1 supervisor for all of it. It just. You don't have a department in the town that has that type of a ratio management. So, I just get very concerned. You have got really slim. Margins when it comes to your administrators, but we are the board, we've discussed this. Going from a 12-month position, bringing that AP position down to a 10-month, 210-day calendar. But that is a reach at a time when we're already understaffed for staffing for administration. And that's now been shown in the data that we've presented. But we're trying to figure out best ways to operate moving forward. So once again, now you've given me a mic and I've talked about it. So I'll let it go.

I appreciate it. More to Ben. Did Doc answer that question like you would have?

I assume you're referring to the maintenance? Yes, the original question. I think I have the conversation we had this morning, a fairly lengthy one, was to make sure that I understood A, that as part of the version of the budget that you approved X number of weeks ago, um they that is the board of education had already removed capital type items that they funded in their budget out as it relates to maintenance of buildings so they had moved 60 000 i think was the number out of their budget that was capital and i am i was concerned i i don't know that i'm that my concern is completely this way that the operational numbers that the that the superintendent is talking about that some three hundred thousand dollars related to building maintenance and HVAC and testing and refuse and other lines of that sort are merely operational activities related to those pieces of equipment and are not, generally speaking, capital replacements, replacing a motor, replacing a compressor, replacing a motherboard. They're really more like filters.

But that's... Now, my understanding is that is what you just said.

Because they've been underfunded. So I don't know that we can say it's all $300,000 without starting to injure how we even maintain them.

Understood. We're looking to understand where and what we can do, right? So outside of that bucket of operational, I think the challenge is $250,000. That's what I would like to see.

If that's where we can get well, to get this budget approved. We will obviously there will be 250,000 dollars with the programming reductions. I decided nobody's going to want to know what the answer is now. But the reality is, it gives us a direction forward. I just hope everybody comes out. Everybody's trying to do because I think you're all trying to do the right things.

can't guarantee that that's the right number unfortunately i think it's you know if you look at what we want to do with surplus plus that plus a little bit out of the town and capital side you're getting close to a two percent reduction on a three percent increase like it's substantial and so we're running out of other avenues to go down in my opinion um But that would be where I would set, at least for me, the next bar. And we go from there. And again, we still have to work out the details on what that other bucket and how to appropriately use the surplus piece, what makes sense and what gets split off from that to each side. But in aggregate, that would be the number that I would like to see us get down to.

Well, AJ, would it be smart to table this discussion reschedule another meeting at a later time when we have more specifics as to where some reductions may be and then once we have the specifics then we can approve hopefully a budget that will pass the referendum in other words we need another meeting to come up with the more i think we need one more meeting to go and actually put forward a number

I think we are on a very tight timeline of, I would like to see that make it to town council next week. So it would be either like the end of this week or next Monday for having that discussion.

I see nothing wrong with that because at least there will be specifics instead of this kind of nebulous.

I think to align on what we think the right number is so that when we all come in and say, here are the specifics, Of where those numbers where that comes from that we have a plan that we're comfortable with.

Correct. And that's why I'd recommend. To table this and come back and review with more specifics.

So, we're not going to get into specific on the board of it. That's for the board event to go to. We can give them a number and we can say, that's what they need to go after. And it's up to them to go figure that piece out. I think we have a little bit of. Alignment as to exactly how the 600 gets spent. And then I think there's still a little bit of discussion before I say we're done on where we go with the rest of the town budget and capital. You know, I, I asked the question on, you know, what happens if we pull. A bunch of money out of roads. That's obviously not something we don't want to cut it to 0. But. that's a probably the biggest chunk of money that's available in the town budget while maintaining some semblance of the services that we have today right so what does 500k there look like you know that might be a discussion that's relatively straightforward um but these are these we make decisions together I want to understand where other people are is that do we think that's the right way to go about it for this year do we think that's the wrong way should we be looking more at staff in the administrative or you know positions like the senior center position like the planning and zoning position like the open admin position should we be looking at those as spots where we want to go make the cut I think we should have that discussion and not just come in with an answer this is how we can educate the public on what we're doing and why So, I just threw a bunch of ways to pull a bunch of money out. Are there thoughts on any of those?

Well, from a budget perspective last year, the, but education wanted 7.4, the town approved barely. 2.5, so if you look at, uh, correct, you had said, you know, where is the public lie? Where's the public said? That's probably the best data. We have. from an affordability reduction standpoint to kind of target. And I know, AJ, you're probably not going to go in that direction. I don't know. Wasn't it 2.75? I thought it was 2. Well, it might have been 2.75.

And it's pretty bad 6.8.

6.8?

The full level was higher. The boards were stopped. So it's 2.75.

2.75. The 250, and if we can cover some, maybe not all of the operational expense, gets you pretty darn close to that again, to be blunt. So it's in the ballpark of what has passed previously. But I asked questions about capital and the town budget, not the Board of Ed. So do you have opinions on what we do there? No, I'm good. I understand what you're doing. So if I said, hey, 300 out of roads?

No, I think that's excessive. No, that's excessive.

Because I believe roads can be used by anyone and everyone in town. And roads are critical. I think what we have to look at is non-essential positions and perhaps reducing those.

Is the senior position on that list?

The senior center, I would consider that position non-essential i would consider essential positions police fire ambulance public works two-thirds of the volunteers one planning and zoning and one planning and zoning person yes that would be essential without that one planning and zoning person this town will just stop as far as any zoning i'm just trying to wrap my head around when i hear

basically, if I use it, then I should have to pay like an a la carte budget. That just sounds something that's not how towns operate and that's how they fail. It doesn't make sense to me and a person who doesn't use 85% of the stuff to sit there and say, well, I don't go to school here, so I shouldn't have to worry about it. I don't use the senior center, so I shouldn't have to pay about it. It's for my community and support. I just feel like that's when we get into that route, that's not That is not how you prepare for a future of a town, which was proposed in one of the comments earlier. So I just feel that that's not the best mentality to approach things. Of course, everyone uses roads.

I get that.

Not everyone uses the lake. Why are we paying for aeration? You can do this all day long, but it's an inaccurate way to handle any kind of planning.

Is there a cost of breaking our lease on that?

Like the lake?

i do have one comment sorry to throw you guys on the spot i have to look there used to be but we've paid off the old stuff so i'm right they're talking about something new now too so it's just you know with respect to the senior center in that position i view that more of a public safety and a wellness position we do have an aging public here in towns And there are health issues that are related to that. If we could somehow mitigate some of those issues. And I know many may not say it's the same as a police officer or fireman, but they do serve the community. And there is health and wellness involved in that. More so than bubblers in the lake.

I guess it goes to the point, like, as well as, like, you mentioned, I should say, sorry, I forget, increasing the fee for the stuff that we.

That was me.

There you go, Dan. Yeah, then I'm just going to get us to do it with, like, the boat, like, the boat permit, the boat license here. All that stuff you can do that. It's just without, like you said, I don't think that that's small at the end of the day. That's going to affect. But again, I would love to see that eventual. A look at ways to increase the revenue for the town. There's, of course, you see other towns everywhere else in the world. You found there's parts of Florida where, when you sell a home, you get a. 3000 goes towards your capital budget, you know, just for an example, that's the city that I used to live in down there. So. Proposals like that, because it's not going to. At least in my eyes, I don't think that I would keep some for my own home. But again, long-term growth, as far as what can help produce more revenue, always an option.

So I think we are running quite late here. I do want to ask, are there any other comments or suggestions relative to either capital or the town budget?

We're into the next meeting.

So I think we have to work with Jeff. I would propose that we meet again on Monday, if possible. Oh, boy. It works for me. Hey, that's your best option, because that gives us a chance to get in. We need to give Jeff and Dave some time. Is that too soon?

Well, scheduling a meeting is definitely not too soon, except to see what rooms are available or not. OK.

um so you know let's maybe quantify this just a little bit before so we can they can actually give us some numbers for that are real right so if we take this you know let's say we just take the increase this year out of roads instead of taking 300 000 let's take 75 000 right that's the increase every year but if we take that we would take off one year and we just stay where we were last year What if we do that combination in planning zoning and that admin position to save $32,000 on insurance? So now we've got $100,000 out of the town there. And can we find another $100,000 or $200,000 worth of places to save money? before we start doing stuff with the surplus in capital, like another 100,000 from the, or 50,000 from the town, something like that. Is there a place that we can kind of go find that? That would give us about $150,000 reduction on the town side. If we get 250,000 from the Board of Ed, again, without looking at the capital piece of it, we can then do some magic in capital with things that are maybe more one-time expenses using the surplus. Now we're talking about $800,000, $850,000 reduction in the overall budget. That feels like we're in the realm of what passed in years past. I think we could probably get that done. Does that seem reasonable?

There's a starting point, sure.

Well, where do you want to end up? Because I don't have a lot of time to do more than just a starting point.

I would like to see a little bit more cuts. I'll come back and I'll have some information for Monday. Thank you. Well thought.

Let's face it, the reval is killing us.

It is. I mean, there's no question about it.

That's the bottom line here. I think we put out a good budget. We didn't have the reval this year. I think that budget would have passed. But you put the two together, it did not pass by we know by how much. Right. But the reval killed us. So we'll see what happens next year. Yeah.

So, we need to make a motion to table this discussion until the next scheduled meeting, which would be next Monday, which is yes. Then I make the motion table.

Oh, wait, sorry. Any time we can we do 7 o'clock next Monday next Monday. Sure, can you do 7 o'clock next Monday?

That would appreciate it.

So, just so table the motion and schedule.

the table right and it's you have to i don't know what the procedure is currently you have to make this i've specified it's monday next monday whatever date it is at 7 pm location to be determined sure that looks good did you get a complete motion out of that did you yeah yeah jeff knows what i'm talking about okay We need a vote.

I think he's second?

Yes.

Dan, sorry. All in favor? Aye. In the interest of brevity here from liaison reports, is there anything noteworthy from the other? Everything's cool. Everything's cool? Okay. Do we have any closing public comment here?

Everything's cool.

Kim crab skyline drive. Thank you so much. All of you not just for listening, but for hearing for really hearing this, but I just had 1 quick comment and I don't know if you were aware of this, but the senior center director has in her budget for the past year. A 10,000 dollar amount to hire another part time driver bus driver. She has not been able to fill that. It's been sitting there for a year. She said that she would. Give up that position, at least for the next year and put that money towards the cost of that transferring the part time to the full time position. So, I think it was 62,000 for the additional full time position. Take 10,000 off that. If that helps at all. I don't know if you're aware of that, but I did want to share that. So. 25 wasn't it?

It was 34 and 60. Just over $61,000. That's the incremental cost. Okay.

Oh, yeah. That was sneaking insurance thing. But still, 10,000 is 10,000.

Yeah. Every part else. Thank you. Every part else. So thank you so much. Thank you.

All right. Sorry. Sorry. My bad. You can put me online over here.

I just wanted to kind of reiterate again what I said. I think you all are working tremendously hard to figure this out and kind of racking your brain. about where the cuts can be because obviously there need to be cuts. But as you mentioned, I think it is a matter of affordability and people are really struggling to figure out how to make their lives affordable. And the only way that they see to do that was to vote no. And so now we're trying to figure out where we're making cuts. And I appreciate Mr. Vadovich that you said you were going to go back and try to figure out where maybe those opportunities can be because as others have spoken, About an offered suggestion, and they're looking for more suggestions and I see a couple of town council members here also that have offered suggestions. But again, I, I voiced that hopefully we can speak to the other town council members that have also voted no to provide that input as to where those. potential cuts can be because I think that input is important because as you have struggled and I have struggled, I don't know where it is. And I think you did put forth a respectable and responsible budget that unfortunately, people can't afford and I get that. So thank you for your time.

Dale Herrick, 74 Royal Oaks. As you can tell, I'm a senior citizen living in this town, and I know everybody talks about affordability, but Just I'm kind of getting more involved with the town. So I've been to a lot of the meetings recently. It's just a little disturbing to. The different views of the finance board. We're just on total opposite spectrum half the boards 1 way. Half the boards the other, and I know a lot of comments were made about social media on how the people feel. I think that is. Not. What's out there? That's not reasonable. That's just a person's opinion of people that they might know. But being a person that's a senior that affordability, there's programs that I don't think you should cut. That if you keep, if you start cutting programs, like the smart start for the school, the bell ringers, or even the senior citizen positions, you're going to end up creating a town that's going to just slowly die. know you just keep cutting positions you cut things you cut services you cut maintenance of buildings things like that your town will die people will not move here people will move away businesses will start closing and it happens just go around the state and look at different towns if you keep cutting back and cutting back and cutting back Your town's going to die and I'm on a fixed income. So it's like, I like it when our taxes go down, but I understand reality when you're locked into contract raises insurance goes up. They have these people have no control over that whatsoever. They have no control. So now to make them meet their budgets. Now you're saying, well, we're not going to fix the roof. You know, we'll patch it. You know, or Matt, when he's talking about roads, we're not going to fix the road. We'll just patch it. So now you put off a project and maybe it's going to cost $50,000 this year. And because you put it off, now it's going to cost $300,000 when you have to do it three years from now. That just makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. You know, you just you need to be realistic about. The budgets, I think a lot of people are trying to do that. I know it's a hard job to do, but just to cut things. To because some people on social media are out there saying, well, we have to cut the budget. That's just not what's out there. Like I said, I'm assuming I'm going to fixed income. it's like i don't believe in that you know i think you just have a reasonable budget but just to cut programs to meet you know what you want to do or what you think the people want to do that's that's not reality and you're just going to have your town die and i don't think you want to have that happen thank you you want on the phone i have one online

Hey guys, can you hear me? Yep. Okay. Hey, Brian Turner again, Spice Hill Drive East Hampton. Hey, look, watching this meeting tonight, I saw a couple people that were listening to the voters from the referendum and striving to find ways to cut spending. And then I saw the rest of the folks there defending spending at any way they could. I know it's emotional, it's hard, but it's not going to get us there. Two people I saw were representing the voters, the rest were representing government. You got to stop that mindset. Got to open your mind. Some things have to be done. It's not going to be easy, but you got to do it or it's not going to pass the referendum. Thanks for your time.

Anything else? That is it. Motion to adjourn.

I'll make a motion to adjourn.