Town Board - workshop

That's okay.

I could probably find the last one. Not to say workshop and to kind of mumble a little bit.

I won't hear what you're going to say.

Workshop and that. Yeah, workshop. The last one was 20, so this is 21. Okay.

I can't get everybody. Sorry. Yes, I'm going to be in here. It's recording me.

Tim, you're a phantom. You're talking, Chair. Yeah. Okay. I'd like to reconvene workshop meeting number whatever, next, 2021, to order. Where do we want to start? Do we want to talk about the bond resolution real quick? We need a couple things done there for our resolution. Um, for the digest or improvement project. Um, we needed to approve a seeker.

Secret and, um, instead of public hearing, is that right? Right.

Okay. So we can do this 2 ways. We can approve the sequence today. Or we can just set the public hearing and improve this all at 1 shot, whatever the board. going to leave it i think it's got to be open right so you want you want to make a motion to set a public hearing at the next town's board meeting which is august 24th at 8 p.m so i'm also my second okay any discussion all in favor all right all right okay so that's good we'll do a secret then okay karen

You do the meeting on the 24th?

Yes.

And then it just has to be done before you approve the bond resolution.

Okay, that's right. That's right. We'll do that. The next thing was award a bid. Bond resolution.

It was the Virginia Development Fund grant. From?

This one right here.

$21,000.

We need a block from a special people.

This is a water.

Yeah, when he's mine.

Um. 2025 next up 2025 community block. Grant includes funding to replace for external doors, a golden age center. It looks like they have gotten three quotes, reviewed them, and they would like authorization to award the contract to door specialties in the amount of $21,905. Question. The bid isn't the same as the product.

exactly 26 640 but he wrote at the bottom twenty one thousand nine hundred five i don't know how we got that it's uh we're gonna have to amend that up to let's say up to twenty six thousand six forty in case that's just the type i'll tell you i'll only make it twenty eight just in case make a twenty equals global all right i'm gonna make a motion to approve the development block grant expenditure for door at the golden age center to DORS specialties not to exceed $28,000. Second. Second. Second. Any discussion?

All in favor? Aye. Aye. Okay. Okay. So that's done. You guys here just for budget conversation? Okay. Corinne, let's talk budgets.

Everyone's budget box. You guys, you know, we could go get ahead.

That might be why that is all. We could have had a match.

So pretty much you have all the summaries. Yeah, well, the compound summaries in this packet now. The tax cap, the rate changes. And I also provided to the budget prop reports that show the detail on my life. As of right now. We can start with the waterfront. You can see we were negative, but that kind of came down to actually become positive for $125,000. I do believe we're still short just because the delinquents are about $280,000 to $325,000 a year. So this will short us for cash to cover expenses from January through March until we left that balance. And we'll also see the water rates of how much that will increase the budget. As of right now in the budget, there is a 30 cent raise.

Okay, on balance, The 1.6, is that minus the five?

Are you on water?

Yeah. Is that minus the decrease on the bottom, or is that after the decrease?

So you'll see the order. So this is prior to request adjustments. So this is when I just had a blank slate after department request. And then supervisor budget is when Pete went through. And deleted, well, came down with more expenses.

Just as a preamble, Corinne and I went through pretty much every line of this budget because it's crazy. And we, whether we liked it or not, we got about a million bucks out of it.

Additional cuts. It was just in general fund, it was a million. We cut here, looks like 300,000 for increased revenue.

Um, we, we're definitely showing a delta of where we need to be versus what is.

So, um, I don't see 300,000.

Let's say supervisor. Well, you went from negative 153 to a positive 123 under actor here to over there.

Super. All right.

So, I don't know if you guys have left line by line. See. What adjustments you guys would suggest. The water, but. Water is not in the greatest position right now, but we're at least positive.

We're holding our own.

You said the suggested increase was 30 cents.

Yes. Well, that's what's in that supervisor budget.

Yeah.

And then after we did, this is like our pre-meeting, and then we'll get the full book where we can see line by line. You have that. That's what I sent in the email.

It's a budget package for it because we need to, I can't submit a negative budget. Did that come this morning? No, I think it was yesterday. It looks like this. I didn't want to prompt it because that would have been. Too much paper to use for one day. But it's by department. It's by fund.

Got it. Fund review, general fund, highway, water, sewer.

Yeah, the original emails are all by fund. So everything is by fund. Yeah. And you guys can come meet with me. Just call ahead because I'm still doing software transition. And it's taking up the majority of my day. So I will work with you. Got it. But yeah, you can go through line by line for revenues, expenses, you can see all the benefits, you can see the bands amount, everything.

Continuation of that, so the 30 cent raise is gonna give an extra 204,000 to the fund balance, but then total we'll have 300 and... No, that includes it. This 204 is included with 123? Yeah. Okay, so we're only adding $70,000 to fund that.

No, the other one was negative.

I'm looking at the next page here. It's showing $30,000 is adding $204,000, I'm assuming.

So I added $204,000 to that budget.

That's how you got to the $123,000.

Yes. In my mind, it's great. year by year, just starting to replace some lines there. We can feel, especially with that addition for the plant, the additional work with that, and then all of the plumbing would need to be replaced in the next couple of years, five years probably. And a lot of these older long roads need to be replaced, fixed. I have to find all these roads.

What's an average fixed cost?

I don't know what the average fixed is anymore. There is an average fixed. The last time we were looking at replacing the lines was when we did baseline road with that 16 inch. And how long was it? It was from Ferry all the way to Elgin. It went half miles to Elgin? Yeah, it went to Elgin. Three miles was?

Five million dollars. Five million dollars.

But we had moved it to their side and that was all the...

So it was not a normal displacement?

the same, but it would be part of work. And that is in the beginning of the fall season, there's a lot of restoration, factory repair, and all the things that are in there.

It's, you could roughly say 1.5 up a mile.

Yeah, probably by the time, in the near, probably 50. Yeah.

Especially when it's constructed out of concrete, it's got a lot of pay on there.

You're going to turn around every single sidewalk and mailbox every single thing that broke down the driveway.

Country roads are cheaper.

And we just...

Go alongside, leaving the sidewalks and putting the pipe and just abandon the pipe on the ground. Yeah, the Facebook. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay. Water is relatively solid at this point.

They're barely holding up. Yeah.

It makes sense to go to $0.50 instead of the $0.30. It adds another $137,000, not a ton, but it starts to look like a decent amount.

Well, let's get the sewer as well. We'll do highway because highway is causative right now. I'm not sure.

This year, but pretty much. Yeah.

um highway they're at a seven percent imbalance this year and i've been working with him trying to see where we can cut costs where we can save and he has some good plans ahead for his budget and so we'll be working with that but there's really nothing more to say on highway you have the summary you have the budget swap if you guys want to look the line by line ask any questions

You already talked about the chicken. It's all right.

Yes, it's in there. It's in there. It went from 8% to 7% with the changes. Okay. So that's all set. Sewer is still negative, about a half a million dollars. You can see there's a few breakdowns. And also this does not include the additional funding. I will have to adjust for that. I have to see how much we plan to borrow, but that's going to be a direct hit on the tax cap. So if we have to borrow the full three and a half million, it will put us over tax cap with just sewer alone.

Did you say three and a half million?

Bond authorization?

Yes.

So it's a total of four.

That's five and a half.

Yeah, so I put 1.5 in this budget currently.

At 5.6 million is still at the bond rate.

Yeah, so the additional 3.5 is not in here.

That's what you're saying.

So originally, it was negative just under a million. After department request, he put a list of summaries of equipment he needs, but prioritized the four main ones. So you'll see the without equipment, first full department request. And we only added for what the top needs were for next year. And then me and Keith went through the fund balance and got it down to 562. And I believe we raised this to 725 and 680. So you'll see that rates page as well. And you'll see all the comparisons with other towns and villages around us.

That's why we don't want to go crazy with the water.

So the break even to cover, to break even and cover delinquents, it would be a significant raise. So that's why, you know, we asked to get other sets of, that's two. So that's why I asked every one of you to also take a look at the budget, you know, talk with Tim and. see what we can and can't find.

I had a talk with Tim and I came out wanting to spend more money. But that didn't help. I went the wrong direction. Yeah. It's this right here.

So if we go up to $2, that'll wipe out the deficit and control the debt service that we have.

Assuming.

They're using the same amount. But what about the extra money from the bond? Is that in there at this point or not? So that won't, that's going to affect taxes directly, not the rate. Not the rate, but not this. Correct.

Because it'll be, like the debt will be here. We have tax directly on what the debt is.

It turns, so here it is.

Last year was what, 50 cents on the sewer only?

Or so, in this budget right now, we're at 725. So that's why I wanted to. Bring you guys in now so that you guys can do some homework ahead of time. Give me some suggestions. That I can run by with Pete so that we can put this in the supervisor's budget. And move forward to get a preliminary in September. Because I do want to file these by 9 1.

Basically, with the 2nd, highest in Erie.

You're a sewer, but not the water.

I'm pretty sure we could be number 1.

But there's also capital improvement fees, so you'll see I've been telling Wanda in Erie county. They also charge about 7,000 deficit.

We would be.

Yeah.

So that's why, you know, I just want you guys to really look line by line and see where else we can cut. I do have the original budgets of what we cut here. Again, you guys are welcome to come look at this. And next up is the general fund. Where are we going? So you can see here, after department requests, I don't have the original one, but it was out over 2 million negative. And after department requests, it went up 700,000. So- Very buckled down. Me and Pete went through this and made a bunch of cuts and brought it down to 1.7. so we made a 1M dollars in cuts. And so now the next step is, how can we cut this more?

We also had a pretty strong look at what's in the budget. It's not being used that we can expect as you turn. Right from 2026 things that line items that are not being used or we're not getting to it this year. So we can. Kind of look at the back and see how that influences what's happening.

So, when you guys look at the budget, you'll see final current projection. If you see something that can be cut from that, that's this year's budget. That will also lower the fund balance. So you want to look at all the final current projections. And then the supervisor recommended, because that is for 2027. so cutting those 2 lines. Will help decrease the fund balance.

No, but why are we looking for revenue? We're always looking to cut. I mean, I mean, we got some stuff in the works with these battery storage units. Like recreation, that's general contract.

Yes.

Do you think we're getting the most bang for our buck of recreation? We're not doing in-house softball anymore. We're not doing in-house baseball. The Little League is basically banking some big bucks off of our fields and our operations. We need to bring baseball back to in-house because it was run by one woman 100 years ago. She was able to do it. That's... probably a good $100,000 in registration fees that we bring back to the town that we've just given to a Little League organization. Not that I want to hear the pop, but that's revenue.

That's not my topic.

I know, but why are we never looking for revenue? We're always looking at how to cut and or spend ridiculous amounts of money.

Or why are we not looking for revenues to at least match the... So I had Joe go through and do kind of a comparison of the summer program of what we charge and all that stuff. And... they he came through with a couple things really i don't know if you've seen this corinne or not actually you were copied out yep i saw the email increasing some rates for the yeah something on it's realistic it's not uh going over the top bringing things kind of in line to where they should be so that's basically the schedule change but it looks like you've created quite a bit of money to help offset the projects. $40,000 on one, $16,500 on another program, $6,000 on another one, and $18,000 on another one, which will kind of help with the cost. Is that correct?

No, T-shirt, that's $20,000 positive. No, we're changing the T-shirts.

Yeah, I mean, you'll see the totals. There's a total page for how much direct costs. And then you'll also see the revenue on the first page. So I mean, this is your summary of revenues. So if you find somewhere where you can increase revenue, great. And this is a summary of all the expenses. If it's highlighted, that's when you need to cut and dropped expenses. So we went through line by line to make adjustments.

There's some things in there that I wish you didn't have a choice.

Seeing I like being the unpopular councilman when it comes to money. I was in the Association of Towns and I brought this up before about our courts. of course costs us a lot of money and bringing very little revenue in comparison to cost. And I know you can't bounce, the state says you can't, it's not a revenue stream, it's not supposed to be operated like that. So I asked them, how do you manage? How do you get our justice to, you know, instead of 15,000, how do we get them at like 30,000 a year, 25,000 a year and save some money there? Said you really can't do it that way, but what you could do is sort of want justice. We need to think about that for the next election cycle, Court every other week, one justice, one set of court clerks for that judge. It's the way the association of towns recommended how we could fix the budget shortfall or the justice could voluntarily Understand that their, their salaries eventually went up crazy and compared to the volume of work that they do. 52,000 dollars a year. Or 2 days a month is a little crazy. I'm just saying, and the volume of tickets is about 110,000 a year. So we're not even bringing nowhere near. What the police department courts and the judges cost us and revenue. So I compared it to Lewiston. Lewiston is bringing in like 600,000 a year in ticket revenue. They're paying for their judges and a good chunk of their police department is 10 times more expensive than ours. They can't compare. But I think we need to think about reorganizing some of the things we've missed out on for cost savings. And I know that the judge is not going to send me a Christmas card this year, but Why do we have two judges? If we can get it done with one, if the volume of work is only 110,000 in revenue, that means the volume of work doesn't justify two justices. So these are tough decisions we have to think of and they're cost-cutting. Because if you have one judge, you only need two clerks for the judge.

So you want to talk about what you and I talked about?

Which part?

About courts.

Oh, I mean, they, we did talk to court and, um, I also talked to the police. Cause you know, there's concern of comment. If we have enough security, if we have too much, um, we have the right amount right now, potentially we would need another one now that the prosecutor is down the hallway. Um, but there's my understanding that the judges were not in favor. of moving it to every other week because they don't feel like they're giving their full service to the residents. To cut the security cost? Is that where you would move the security cost, the overtime?

So it's people, it's police, it's security, it's all that. So we talked about an every other week scenario where we would only have quote twice a month versus every week. They were... all that warm on it, so. What is it their choice and what is it our choice? Where is that line? I don't know where that line is.

Because we, you know, some people don't, of course don't want change, but sometimes we direct it. Right. If it's our choice, we tell them. If it's their choice, we listen.

I also don't understand the mandate and all that and how quickly it's moved. I don't understand any of that.

There might be some state requirements relative to how many. Correct. Court appearance or how long, how long a ticket dates out or let's say the issue 100 tickets, you can only schedule whatever 25 per. So you might issue a ticket today and that may get to court for two months because of there's not enough hearing power. The volume isn't our problem. If you go up and look at the volume of what we have in the courts, it's minuscule compared to other courts. I mean, the actual number of tickets, I don't know. It's something we can ask.

Yeah, Diane will have all the information you need if you go talk to her. And she has all the files and what you need.

Compare revenue with other towns of like size. We're not even going to talk.

We could speak to reality reality is other towns with a lot more. visitor traffic and things of that nature end up giving more tickets. You can't have more people than us. One of the falls goes across the island. My point is, you talk about the town of Kenmore, the West End, they have a huge volume because they have a huge volume of visitors that are constantly violating the rules, however they so choose. Most of our traffic is local traffic. It's exactly like that. They have a three-way through it.

I mean, another question is, do we have full-time police? We do not. So that would be another question.

We have so many layers of police on the island. We got sheriffs, we got local police, we got state troopers. We should be, there should be more generated. It's not that I want to see our residents being ticketed more, but with a thruway.

That's a matter of policy. I mean, the state police is going to set their thing, but we could set policy here. That's a matter of policy. We want them to stick to the Two miles an hour over, you're getting a ticket or? Oh, no, I don't want to punish our residents. I'm just saying. That's my point.

Reducing the cost, of course, not increase our revenue.

Can we talk, Tom, about... His views on the things, but I mean, we can't directly go to state troopers and say.

Well, we can't control no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I mean, if you're not, if you're not handling the volume, we don't need two justices. I'm not saying, I'm just saying the next time one of them runs, we just don't have that seat available.

Did you just say that we are required to?

We're required to use ways to get around it.

I think it's a lot more. Is that our legislation or is that state?

Two justices? Yeah. So it's not required.

Okay.

I noticed that it must come with a blueprint.

There's a way then. So it's just town took you down the veteran road too. They're behind the times.

Don't keep bringing up all my bad mistakes.

So the last is the tax cap. As of right now.

Yeah. Find the same document right in the middle.

So all the way to the right, you can see how much I put in each fund. To increase those taxes, and you can see our biggest hits are garbage right now in sewer. Sewer is going to go up and then you'll see in this light yellow. Around the blue, that is the percentage increase at the bare minimum increase by bare minimum for tax increase right now with these numbers based on all of this based on all of this.

Well, we're still speculating on garbage and.

Um, engineering, anyone look in engineering and just get an idea.

It's not till tomorrow. Is that? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. We don't want to look at that.

Yeah. So, I mean, I have, I think a fair number in there. I don't want to give the percentage that I put in there, but, you know, it could come on higher, come in lower and. But, I mean, this year, it looks like we're going to have to break the tax cap no matter what we try to do. Like I said, with brown, the extra money for sewer, that's probably going to put us over. Yeah. Because, as you can see, we can only really. Increase the lobby about 3%, which is 380.

I was on 3, right?

Yeah.

So, I guess we can't say until we can say. um so it'd be nice to have garbage that's one less question mark yeah we could tune that in um and the only really the wild card out there would be employee negotiations yep right so um i don't know we decided on a24 to come in early to do the union negotiations um

I don't know if you guys want to take more time to look through the budgets line by line. And we can also do that on the 24th. Or you guys can talk to me in the meantime, when you guys visit. Just because I want, you know. This needs, we need to work as a team to kind of encourage you all to go line by line in the budget.

Yes, I do because. We just find some stuff and I'm going to, I'm going to also again, say that there's a couple of things that we took out that I'm a little apprehensive about taking out, but we're really running out of choices. Like, say, you know, I just have to say. I'll put that a little bit, you know, different eyes. Okay. I see all of our notes. We spent days going through the same time.

One thing I noticed in parks is we were overfunding salaries quite a bit, they're not hiring nearly as many kids anymore.

Correct.

When he sent it back, he sent it back with a little, a smaller salary number, increased overtime number, because that one seems to... Well, I can show you what he... No, I saw it. I was with him when he wrote it all out. I'm just saying, I don't know about the other departments, if they are overfunded in salaries. Not... Because that was almost 100 grand that came out to Parks.

Well, yeah, because they projected to have all these part-timers.

He said it's been going on for years. It was kind of a TD projection, and he stuck with it. But he didn't understand why. And I said, well, it doesn't make any sense to me. We should actually budget overtime properly.

Yeah, I can show you what that did and what adjustments were made.

I'll come see you in person. OK. So Rick, did you recommend that?

670 was your recommended sewer rate? 870.

For sewer or water?

Is this what you recommended here, 670?

No, that's what we are right now.

Oh, yeah.

I wouldn't say that's my recommendation. I'm saying if you guys don't make any adjustments, that's what we need to break even.

That's a $2 increase. For 10,000 gallons?

The budget right now has $725 in it. So the sewer fund with that negative is currently at $725.

Not at $870. Correct.

So it's still negative. Okay.

So the math says 870 is what's going to get it, not negative anymore.

Where's that sheet with the comparisons?

So I'm kind of in agreement with Jose since we're writing this ship. Why don't we start trying to build a fund balance in the water department and go to $4, just go to $4 a year? change instead of go to 365. I mean, it seems if we're going to take a hit all the way around.

We're going to get our butts kicked.

At least it happened eventually. This will start building a fund balance early. If you don't move it now, of course, even drastically make a plan to keep it moving. It's going to get worse and worse and worse.

As soon as I say that, because water again in two years and four years and 10 years and 15 years and 20 years will be... As soon as I say that, the water rate, the $4, is actually cheap in comparison. Well, there's a couple of towns lower than that.

But all those other towns are...

a lot of those towns in there are being buying water from other places they're not running a planet yeah they're one yeah well like now your cat these three of these are in the niger county yeah uh that's the way you buy where we buy our water a couple other ones and if we ever get a 50 million dollar improvement we're going to make water cheaper and eventually that's going to help build our fund that'll offset yeah their account Where are you at that 59 hours? I'm pretty sure somewhere. I mean, if they can get a couple of billion dollars at grocery stores in New York City, I think they can give us a couple of million a state. What do you think? Maybe Kathy will jump in. I hope November will be very interesting. Well, let's say that it came up before November.

Well, that's we're doing. I mean, I'm probably going to be out at the end of September.

Well, I'm talking about the election cycle, how it's going to change potentially what we may or may not get from the state. Okay. Just theoretically, I don't know.

I'm just saying, what I'm talking about going to $4 here and $8.70 here, I've always been a proponent of infrastructure. I don't care what it, I don't care. But if it's to fix roads, pipes, and have pipes that bring our wastewater, and if that's the actual cost of our personnel and our pipes and the lines and the ground, then I agree. We have to pay the infrastructure.

We have to make sure we can provide.

Yeah, you can't take it away from the people and And this is just a break even for sewer and we, we have this whole list of improvements that we're not even really addressing right now. Right here, this is another 15,000,000 improvements. I think. 500,000, no, no, the whole everything. I mean, 8Million. That the capital, this is his wish list wish list for equipment. Yeah, but there's other projects. The big projects that aren't on here.

So we, let's separate them though.

No, no, I know.

We've got to keep capital projects separate from equipment because the rates will help cover equipment. Taxes will cover the capital improvement.

Okay.

So these are literally just to cover the cost of operating.

Okay.

I just want to make that clear.

I just say if we're going to, to the Band-Aid off, let's start working towards having a fund balance instead of always just scraping by.

And also with water, we do have an option not only to increase rates, but we can also increase the maintenance portion of taxes.

Oh.

Sewer, we can't do that. So there's, if you ever look at your tax bill, there's water charges. One is for the debt and the other one is for maintenance.

And so we could start to build that fund through that.

What's so important? What is maintenance to use for? What is that? We're coming to difference by from the ground and people.

The maintenance is, yeah, for pipe and ground and people and anything it costs to run the plan.

Okay.

But sewer, we cannot tax on that. We can sewer debt equals sewer tax and that's that. Where water is maintenance plus debt.

All right, so we can't go fat in the sewer debt tax, but we can in the maintenance. Because if they've got an equal debt, we tax exactly.

It's only sewer debt equals sewer tax, and that's that.

Correct, so they've got to be equal.

Correct.

Maintenance is the one we raise to build a fund.

Well, yeah, rates would be the cost of operating the sewer plant.

Oh, and then? But we don't have a maintenance line on sewer is what you're saying? Correct. And we can't put a maintenance line on it?

That is to my understanding. I have not. I tried to pull all the history we can on it. I don't have.

It just costs us so much more when we're reactive to emergencies instead of having funds there in place. Well, that's a broken record for me.

So, I mean, 1 of the major issues that I think was. Pushed down the road is at the last union negotiations. I presented how much this would cost and it was refused to give any increase in tax raises. So we could have had a steady incline of taxes as opposed to this 1 huge head. Because we weren't keeping up. I mean, when I first started, I specifically said expenses are going up double the rate of revenue. You have to close that gap before it's too big.

And your other guy showed us that. Yeah, spending our savings.

So. That's I mean, I even made a grid when I first started, I took an analysis for the last 10 years. And I brought that to the board and we did the union negotiations saying, you know, if we give them this, we have to get the revenue elsewhere. And nothing was ever closed. And I said, we should probably break the tax cap. And I know all the board members in the past and now is we don't want to break it. We don't want to break it. And I think that hurt us in the long run.

Just why we had that audit report we had.

Yep.

That's Anne. And where's our audit from the fire department?

I mean, we just got ours a month ago, so.

It's supposed to be, can actually deliver that.

It depends on when they get their audit and when it's complete. Yeah, I mean, I just need you guys to look line by line to talk to me. I'll pull the file out for you so you guys can look at their requests and what we declined. Well, not what, you know, Pete declined and the adjustments that I made with him.

There's a couple of things that I wish we didn't have to take out, but there's just not money to do so. And by the way, this represents a legal at 150 a year and 54 litigation. so we cut that already so that's our bm here what what number's in here i'm sorry 150 plus 50 200 right how do you cut something that has no ability control play nice

I mean, we've been paying $300,000 for the last trend analysis, $300,000. It was $228,000 last year.

Is that what it was? I can't remember. I haven't seen.

I thought it was $323,000 or something.

Oh, it was $317,000 and $324,000.

I don't see how you cut the line that we have zero.

But that did not include solar. Or really does it count because it's a it's a replenished, but it did not include solar.

I don't know if we've been punished yet, but I think it is going to get republished.

Long road.

Yeah. I don't know that's shown up yet.

So I mean, pretty much total legal that include general and litigation. We were. About 319 in 2024.

408 in 2025 and year to date is at 176. how do we go from florida full year to 150 that we justified 200 that's just a that's a fake line 200. that's just 10 200 000 out of expenses that we're going to eat last year was 401.

418 it was 360 for general and 48 for relegation in theory we're pending some reimbursement for that yeah

What did you give us our year-to-date on general?

Well, this was printed, you know, what day was it? 7-23. So stuff was probably added. So as of 7-23, it was 176.

I can assure you this is not going to add well.

I had just pulled it not long ago at 124, but that only included services up through May.

Right.

So it's not even a full year of charges.

So you guys can add whatever you want into it. I don't care if you make it a half million. I do care. If you want to make it a half million, make it a half million. But I really think the jet line is out of control.

Well, I think we're all in agreement. Oh, no, it's out of control. We can't control it.

It's life.

that's it i think that's one of the challenges right we don't necessarily even know what we're being charged until we get a bill right uh so things are happening in the background in another building in another place with many lawyers sitting around we don't know how many sometimes it's five lawyers sometimes it's one we don't know so i don't know how we looked at the average over the past seven years and it's always hitting that number pretty consistently

17, 314.

I'm just saying that's not, I mean, what we don't want to do is lower an expense we don't have control over. I can see if we lower something in parks, recreation, something that we can just call our department, you just don't have that money anymore. that we can control. But we can't control what Hodge and Rust is going to charge us. I think we can control what goes to Hodge and Rust.

That should be a way that we can manage that to a degree. Because they don't do anything we don't tell them to do. So I think we just have to keep track of what we tell them to do. I think we've got to go and balance some of the rabbit holes and just stick to business. And I think that's not going to hurt us, that's for sure.

I mean, I guess the question is too on the invoicing. I don't see which employee they talk to all the time.

Yeah.

So there's no way for me to go around and you call the attorney on this day.

So, there's no way to verify and we have residents that are sending emails and. Legals coming up with thousands of dollars worth of responses to.

Yeah, we have we have legal responding to residents to non board members that a little bit. That's a little open and that's a lot of open ended.

How did that start? Like, shouldn't that come through town board approval?

It should historically things have just been happening. I would, I would, I would propose it if we are going to send something to legal that we all agree on it. Around this table and say, you know, I would like authorization to work with legal on this particular topic and we all say, yeah, go. Or we all say, yeah, you know what? Why are we doing that? Because half of us don't approve of that. We should probably do this. And we should do a little bit more spitballing here before we engage with people to do all the spitballing. So I think there's ways to cut those costs. But I think it starts here. Because again, Hudson or us or any other vendor is not going to do something we don't tell them to do. We are authorizing them to do it.

and that's part of the problem policy has been contracts aren't signed and letters don't go out until legal takes a look at it right so that's the bulk of we must be missing something here are we we're wrapping up budget we can get to it it's on the my waterings on my agenda yes okay done ish ish done for the moment

I was like, did we want to meet next week on the budget? Or do we want to meet at 824 meeting? Because 824 is probably going to be busy.

I want to go back through line by line after and compare to my notes with my department to

I want a little time is what I'm saying, like not this week.

Yeah.

You can see the highlighted ones for your department of where we made changes. Okay. What's highlighted in that summary. And you can also see department requests for the supervisor requests and we'll see that difference. Okay. But I mean, I guess the question is, again, do we want to meet next week or do we want to meet at the board meeting on 8-24 when we already have union negotiations to discuss?

Well, he moved that meeting to 5, too, so if you want to email out this one. You know what we want to do? We're going to 5. Your secretary said, I said yes.

I said yes to it.

So if it's 5 o'clock, Robbie could add yours to it. That's a lot of time.

5 to 8.

You're going to need it.

You're going to need it.

Yep. Is it that bad? Yep. Because they didn't like the idea of zero?

No. um so that's the 24th so does anyone have an issue maybe we can do a daytime uh 21st friday the 21st during the day and just hammer out the budget i believe i have an appointment i wouldn't be in probably until 11 11 30. what about the 20th

Or do you have the 20th?

I was just working backwards. I can do the morning on the 20th. The afternoon is nowhere.

19th?

19th. 18th? I mean, I can do the 21st at noon.

That works for me.

And that would be for what? I got a hard stop. I think we should go to another day then. 12 to 3? It's not a full budget workshop. We spent three hours on it.

My head might explode. Okay.

12 to 3 on Friday?

21st. 21st? Yeah. And then 5 o'clock on the 24th.

Might be that like a 1 o'clock ADHD break.

And then can you have to post the workshop?

I believe. 821 at noon. What's your review?

This is going to change the 24 to 1. 5, it'll be sherry. Okay. Okay.

So if you guys want to see me of where we put money out, I can show you directly. I will be in tomorrow. I'll be more available in the afternoon. Okay. If you want to call and speak one time, I will let Tyler know that I need to take a break or whatever because I'm pretty much booked with Tyler 9 to 3 every day.

Okay. Okay. Thank you. Thank you.

Okay.

Oh.

You want to stay with us? I'll stay with you.

Okay.

I'm finding.

You want to talk about? I think I'll mix up. You only want to go back to legal and talk, right?

Yeah. Okay. Okay. I'm changing. The motion I was supposed to actually hire someone, I'm going to change that motion and then we can have the discussion to posting the position of town attorney with a set amount of dates that it's out there, returned interviews and higher. I mean, what's the will of the board? So yeah, I'd like to see it and I'll see what's out there.

So personally, I would appreciate that it should go out too. see if we get other resumes and let's understand quality, I'm sorry, qualifications and all that other stuff, what is out there. Also, I know Rhonda was doing some digging. We really need to understand what general matters includes. Because it's a pretty broad spectrum. Very broad. I can tell you that anything from bond counsel to financials to union negotiations to all that stuff. So there may be components that No matter who we hire, if we were to hire somebody, they can handle every single thing we throw at them. And there is always a litigation thing too. And it's really hard to have a group litigate something that somebody else did, kind of, because it isn't part of their game. So I'd really like to understand the general matters a little bit more and exactly what the pieces are. But I would authorize you to advertise for the position if you'd like. Let's put it out there and see what we can get.

Do we want to advertise for a town attorney or do you want to advertise for both town attorney and attorneys for the town or like the firms? Yeah, I would say both.

Yeah, I think it could be both.

I don't know if you ever get rid of the firm. No, no, but there's two things for advertising, general and litigation. So if we hire for a town attorney, we know that for hiring a town attorney, employee for the towns and a beer every day, that guy is going to do whatever his skill set is, plus, and anytime we get sued, hypothetically, we'd probably keep like Hodge and Russ or another firm to protect us on the big guy stuff that we don't, that a town attorney will be out of his league at.

He would become, or she would be like a GC of legal and pull in a consultant if we needed something.

That would be the goal, right? Hey, we want you to do this and no, and say, wait a second, you guys come out. Yeah. You threw a little too much meat in that pile. Yeah.

You know, something. So I call up the guy that does the Lewis, the attorney that does Lewis and he gets paid a fee. They separately have a, not a company, not an attorney. um that yeah that does their union negotiations separately and then they have another firm that does their litigation so they pay like 250 an hour for the union negotiation guy and then they have a firm i think they set aside 50 000 a year for litigation and then they have that attorney's salary so that's the way they're set up i'm not saying we have to set up like them but there's options for us to look at it's a model for us to check i just what i

I think they would come to the table with their strengths or their plan. That's how I see it.

We also have to see what's available, right? Exactly. What time frame you guys want to set this up for?

Is there anything, is there any requirements on how long we can do it or short?

I would say, I mean, if you guys are trained to see, I mean, you could start with a five-day posting, move to a 10-day to see what comes in. I would say a five-day posting would be safe to start with just because you don't know how many people are going to apply and you don't want to be overloaded. But then at five days, if we only have one or two and you guys want more, we could extend it.

So I would say my personal thing is I think realistically, if we were going to make a change, it would be at January 1, no matter what we did. So we have a little bit of time. I would rather put it off for 15 days. or so, see what we can catch. But I would also, I don't know if we have to put an RFP out for longer than that.

It can be . I don't know about RFP, but I don't, this is, you're just appointing someone to handle a legal matter.

Okay. So I think we need to do that. We need to look at that before we look at the RFP. You need to understand what the RFP would be. I don't know.

I'm not into an RFP from the standpoint of that's more fee. Every time we do an RFP, it takes 60 days to get an RFP together. And then after that happens, well, then we got to redo the RFP and then somebody comes in.

I don't think so. So we advertise it. People send their resumes. Firms come and give us a presentation.

we pick someone or we don't no i'm talking about if we were to also because dan mentioned to also put out for a firm to look at it that way i don't think it would matter okay yeah i don't think we need an rfp for anything it's the will of the board working days or 10 days there is no work so if we said 11 is today by next friday the 24th all resumes from firms and or Individual attorneys that would be a 10 day window. And we could actually set up interviews on the 28th or the 26th, whatever day we can get to councilman. For the whole board and set up a workshop, however, you guys want to do it. But I think, I'm not, again, I don't care about waiting until January because January doesn't mean anything to me when it comes to legal. Reorganization doesn't, we could change legal one day after reorganization or today. It's just legal representation. What's our out clause? I've already read their contract. We just give them. Notification you'll notice. That's it. What I wanted to do, though, I think out of respect is have. Some overlap 15 day to 30 day where. Whoever we hire can transition start taking over the case. Especially if the stuff that's dealing with unions. And negotiations, yeah, I'd hate to change it. Sorry to midstream on that. Well, again, I'm, I'm not saying I picked on, but yeah, the person that I talked to that he would be able to handle that. Okay. And asleep.

Okay.

So, closing date on the 21st, 21st, and who handles this? Do you handle this closing date on the 21st interviews on the 16th? So, or 26.

So what do you want to do, make a motion to authorize Kellyanne to put together a advertisement for a town attorney?

Town attorney slash legal services.

Slash legal services with a due date of?

21.

August 21st.

Yeah, and if we don't see anything, we can always extend it, right? Yeah.

But at least that lights the fire.

Okay. Where do we?

So is that the motion? Yeah, I'll make that as a motion. Second. Motion to second. Any more discussion?

I have, I just have, I don't know if it needs to be part of the motion, but when we do that and we post it, obviously it goes on our website and it could go on our town Facebook page. But is there, like with police, when he's looking for officers, there's a place where he posts that. That's a great response. Is there something for this?

I think this would show up in... Perfect, that's my question. Attorney jobs or legal jobs.

Okay, thank you. And just for the discussion aspect, I would appreciate it if you work with Councilman Degas, being that he is an attorney, so he can maybe guide you a little bit on some things that maybe.

I have a question.

I'll go through it with you guys.

Yeah, okay, okay. So motion, second, discussion, all in favor? Aye. Opposed? Okay, are we done today? Is that everything? Do you need anything special?

I think we're good. I just wanted to put out there that. Right after labor day, uh, state of the road is going to be a 4 to 5 week. On that road, so it's going to be headaches, a lot of congestion, but we'll get through it.

You sent letters to the plan, tell them all this because they're smart. I'll take alternate routes and you're working on 1 and they go the other way. Please also, if you don't mind, um.

I just wanted to inform the school district because that's the buses and all that. We'll get way ahead of this. He said something that took our voice to him. They'll work on it too.

Okay, let me click this general. I keep getting, I got a text message from a guy about flock cameras. So I called Tom. All right, Franz, and he said, found is not as not authorized flock cameras. There are some put up by the county and maybe the state. So, if I'm starting to ask you, yes, we, this, this board is not authorized to have cameras. But the county and state have, and they put them on, they have a disclosure.

We have, we had an opportunity to chase a grant with them, but it was a, but it was a. It had a sunset date and then it was pretty substantially expensive to continue them. So we decided we weren't going to send ourselves a good choice.

Yeah. It's a money grab. I just thought that we should put it on so people, if anyone's watching, they can realize.

I know the county is having success with stolen vehicles through black cameras. There is some value, but yes, there is some big brother fear. There's also that.

Okay, motion to adjourn. I'm okay. Second.

Second. You know what?