Budget Committee - Regular Meeting

Budget Committee to order at 700 p.m. All rise for the pledge of 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.

So sorry about that, folks. Thanks. I thought I would have laughed. Uh, so um, can I have a motion to open up public comment? So moved. Second. All in favor say I. I. Not going to vote. No one's here from the public. Can I have a motion to close public comment? So moved. Second. All in favor say I. All right. Public comment is closed. So first the election of officers. I'm just going to be here for the chair. Then I'm going to get out and let you guys get on your way. So are there first? Is there anyone that would like to be the chair? Anyone with interest? I want to be chair, please. Okay. So then I Please, please. So, Wow, the words are escaping. I move to

You'll accept a motion, too. So, I'd like to accept a motion to nominate Kate Burbage as the chair of the London budget committee. So, moved. Second. Second. All in favor say I. I. All right. Yay. Thank you, everyone. You guys on your way. Thank you. Thanks. Republican meeting.

Oh gosh. All right. So now I'm in charge. Um. All right. Do we have anybody who would like to be vice chair?

Yeah. I have a feeling you and I are going to say the same thing. I'm just going to be quiet for now. What are the responsibilities? Can we go over that? Yeah, absolutely. That's a really good idea. That is a good question. That is an excellent question. Let's go over that.

Um, so the vice chair is responsible for filling in when the chair can't be there. Um, so they'll run the meetings in the chair's absence. Um, and that traditionally has really been it. Um, you know, when I was vice chair, I tried to take on a little bit more of the additional responsibilities like writing the annual report, that type of stuff. Um, but gen in general, that's really it for the budget committee. So, um, yeah, we can see how that goes for this year and if they want to add more to it, we can. But yeah, that's it. When I can't be here, you you're you pretend to be me. I mean, I'll do it if if nobody Okay, great.

All right. Um I uh I'd like to make a motion. Uh I will accept a motion. Thank you. New to this. Um I will accept a motion for Nicole to be nominated as vice chair. So moved. Yes. Second. Great. Uh uh all in favor say I. I. All right. Okay. Nice have it. Thanks.

All right. Now we um are going to elect the secretary. Uh traditionally secretary is somebody who is new to the committee. Um we usually have somebody who is um it's their first year. It gives them a little bit of an idea on how to get the ropes of being on the budget committee. Um and just gives them that little bit more experience, you know, taking notes and doing minutes and that type of thing. Um, and to be completely frank, it's not the most glamorous role on the committee. Um, and so, you know, it's one of those things we say, please, um, could somebody who, um, is new and obviously hasn't done it before do it. Um, because it is it's a I've been secretary before. It can be a little bit of a slo to take the minutes and then send them over every month. But um yeah,

I've started using AI a little bit to help get summaries things summarized, but it still takes a little bit of time to figure out who said what and you have to go back in the recording and make sure you record like who voted certain ways. I I like I don't mind doing it cuz what you just told me, I know how to drop it into AI and have it go and perfect. All right. All right. Minutes have to be posted within five business days of the um Yes. the meeting. And that's per 91A, right? Yep. Correct. Yeah. I've been taking a lot of meetings and just put them into and I usually just record them. You can also get the recording, you know, once once they're on YouTube, right? But I like to get a jump on it. So, yeah,

we will also send out all the most current requirements for minutes to the secretary, like what has to be in it, the statute, and everything. Okay. Good. And directions on what to do with that. Yep. I'm going say usually I just go back and look at the the previous copy of and get the field from there. Okay, great. Sure. All right. So, I'll accept a motion for Matt Tapley to be secretary. So moved. I'll second. All right. Uh all in favor say I. I.

All right. Great. So that's done. Now we have liaison assignments. Um so liaison assignments are you're responsible if you can't attend the meeting. So let's say school board, you're on this the leazison to the school board. or do at least watch the meetings. Um, when I can't attend meetings, I know that they're recorded. Um, I will watch them on YouTube. You can watch them at one and a half to two times the speed. If you watch them instead of attending them, it's great. It goes real fast. Um, that's how I like to watch my meetings. Um, but um, but yeah, you're just responsible for reporting on a monthly basis. Um, anything budget related back to the committee. Um, so you know, if somebody resigns on the school board, you know, like great new opportunity for them, but that's not budget related. Um, we're looking more for um, there was an additional cost here that was unexpected, things like that. Um, and uh, if you're a liazison to a department head, we're looking for information um, as to what do they foresee coming up uh, on this year's budget that they didn't really see as an an expected expense. Um, the mold in the library is a great example of that. that um nobody was expecting to find mold in the library. That's a big expense. Um that is um something that we'd want to hear about. Um but and and then anything for the upcoming budget season they think they are going to be needing to be increasing their budget for or that maybe a warrant article. So uh a couple years ago the police had a warrant article for uh body cameras. So that was something that they tal we talked about ahead of time. He presented it in the November. Chief Bernard presented in the November meeting and made it on the warn article. It passed. Um and now the piece of body one cameras. So, um that's sort of what we're looking for. Um so, first up is school board. Um who would like to be the leazison to the school board?

I can take that. I watch all the movie. Um I mean starring Bob All right. And will we have a backup again for the school board? I know that one had a backup this past year. I don't know if we necessarily need backup since they're all on YouTube because I think like before I think we have always had backups in case somebody couldn't attend the old days. Yes. Okay. And I think that's a tradition that we probably no longer need to carry given that everything goes on YouTube. Um. Got it. Fortunately. Um so uh town council

great perfect thank you uh town hall um you will be meeting monthly with uh Justin Campo who is our finance director and Shawn Mahaland who is our town manager. This is one that I've been doing for the last couple of years. I don't mind keeping it but if somebody else wants to take that on they're more than welcome to it. If you don't want it I can take it. Okay, great. Do do you want it? I mean,

I was thinking about having doing something new this year. Um, and it has nothing to do with the fact that I don't like Justin and Sean. I love Justin and Sean. They're great guys. Um, but I've been doing it for a couple years now, and I think it would be great for somebody else to get an opportunity to take that on. All right. Oh, no, my phone. And then do not. All right. Uh, DPW. Um, I can easily take that one. I'm on the DPW working group. I talk to Dave every month. Um, because I'm on the working group for the the new DPW facility that we're hoping to build. So, um, that's an easy one for me to take if everybody doesn't have a problem with that. Okay. Uh, police. This is the one of I when I called Patrick because he couldn't make it. I asked him if there were any liaison assignments he was interested in. He said police. Um, so does anybody have an issue with Patrick taking over police?

Okay, great. Fire. I'll do that one. Great. Uh, CIP, uh, that's the capital improvement plan. So those are all the new builds, the the major projects that might be happening um you know in the town. So may I just say something about this case? So CIP this year we're starting a little everybody and the town's proposals are due by May 1st. We're hoping to get started. It's going to be a little bit more involved of a process this year. There's going to be more on it. It's going to be a bit more robust and as opposed to other leazison assignments, this is a board assignment. You're deeply familiar with this. Um so it's not like

format Yeah. So, it's not it's not like the leazison ones where you can kind of watch and catch up on YouTube or schedule your own meetings. The CIP is one where it's going to be absolutely crucial that you're able to make the meet the scheduled meetings. So, just letting you know that and they happen from June to September. That's the most intense time, but they'll start as early as May and can go into October. So, just letting you know. So, when you're thinking of your schedules, there's no harm in being like, "Yeah, no, that doesn't work for me now." But it is an actual seated committee position where you're confirmed by the council to it. Okay. And is sorry if I could just ask is it like once a week or once every other week? What's the isish or you know

generally once a month for the first couple and then bi-weekly for a bit? And I would anticipate that that would be probably no more than bi-weekly, but there is material that you'll be need to familiarize yourself with in between. Jeff's done it from the planning board side before. Y you shared it last year, didn't you? Um or two years ago. Yeah, a year before maybe. Okay. Yeah, at some point. Yeah. So, I'm actually kind of happy that they're going through a new format. Um, you know, I think the previous formats were um in very much need of a reset. So, so glad we're kind of going that way.

It's a great committee for folks to learn everything. I could take it on. I would be happy to do that. I work in I do capital planning project controls anyway. So, um it's it's in my wheelhouse. Okay. So, I got DPW and CIP. Great. Uh planning board. This is one that we have only been doing for the last couple of years. Just having somebody um because as Jeff's very familiar with planning board um that can impact revenues um and our revenue streams depending on what gets passed, what doesn't get passed. So, it's um you know, I think I'm thinking more of this from a instead of a cost perspective, a revenue perspective. Um do you have any idea how often are those? I I've never actually seen

planning boards, I believe, are every other week. Um yeah, the first Wednesdays of the month. Um and we're an exciting group. We Oh, yes. Go to 1:00 a.m. Oh, good. You mean twice twice a month? Is it twice a month? The first two Wednesdays. But again, you can watch them on YouTube one and a half times. Sometimes you want to participate at one and two times, but but yeah, it's a I mean, if I'm I can take it if no one else wants, but it's a good learning opportunity. I don't mind doing it. Oh, great. Yeah, I'll do it. Okay, perfect. Since I know someone that's on the planet board, I can

um and then the last one is library. Again, this is one we've been doing for the last couple of years. Um, this one's probably going to be more important this year than almost any other year, even though I've only been doing it for a couple years given um the mold issue and the remediation and all the unforeseen costs that seem to be coming up over there. The poor library that just been beaten down this year. So, I would do the library. Okay, great. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting.

Perfect. All right, so that covers B. And then the next one is department tours. Um, so historically we've always we've tried to do at least a couple of department tours. Um, the police department, the fire department, the library, which we obviously wouldn't be doing this year unless they get all their mold remediation done before the fall, which cross your fingers they will. Um, we've done, what else have we done? The school tours are in August. Um, DPW, we've done a tour of DPW. Um, so I don't know if anybody has interest in doing the tours this year. I think given that um, we have four members who are brand new to the committee and didn't because you were came in in the winterish, you missed the tours that we did in the fall. I think it would be good for us to do tours this year. Um, we try to spread them out um, so they're not

um, you know, too much at once. Um, so we could probably do maybe like the police department in April or May. Um, I try to skip the summers just because a lot of time people go away for the summer and then September, October, November we could do the li maybe the library DP. I think the DPW we need to do for sure. Um, and the fire department I don't think we got to last year. So that might be a good one to do again. Yeah, I would like that because yeah, we skipped we skipped some stuff last year and so I I haven't seen some of these departments.

Yeah. Okay. so I can organize that. Um we'll start with um we'll do police first. It's just right across the way. Okay. Goals for fiscal year 2028 budget season. So we just finished up and wrapped up fiscal year 2027. Um that was the March elections. Now we're going to start on fiscal year 2028. And from my understanding they've already started doing some of the work on the budget. So yes and no. We're starting to prepare. We're looking at year end. Um

we're hoping to start strategic budgeting this year. It's probably not going to go into effect quite as much this year, although we are trying we are still moving forward with the strategic plan and are going to work harder to align budget priorities and budget building with said goals. Um not quite yet on a we're thinking about it but not working on it. Does that make sense? Yep. Yeah.

Yep. Uh one of the suggestions that uh the town manager made uh I think in the February no it was the January meeting um was that we are the budget committee we can set meetings for the budget if we would so desire to um and he mentioned that it might not be a bad idea for us to separate budget from the town council meetings. Um, so we can have our own budget present at the department heads come to us during our budget committee meetings rather than presenting and the town council meetings. Um, I would like to take that suggestion and do that. Um, wrapping everything into the town council meetings makes those very long meetings um because they do go over a lot of stuff that isn't necessarily budget related um and they end up being very long nights. Um, if we have control over that, we can set the agenda and tell the departments they've got 20 minutes. we can pick the departments that we want to hear from again um you know we can say we'll start at seven we'll be done by 9 miracle of all miracles um and we'll do four departments they each get a half an hour they can present their budgets to us um and rather than meeting once a month we'll just meet uh weekly um I think I don't mind the way the school board does theirs quite honestly but I think the the way the town does it I would prefer to

take it out of the town council meetings because those end up being pretty long. The school ones were usually home by 9:00. Um, but wrapping into the town council, I mean, I think the last one we were there, the meeting started at 7:00. We were there till the next day. Yeah. Yeah. That was 1:00 a.m. There's no reason to sit in a meeting when you where you don't have value. Correct. It's an effective. Yeah. Maybe what we can do, I don't know what you think of this, but so I totally agree. And maybe what we can do is like just communicate with the town council like maybe they want to come to the budget meeting to hear what happens. Yep. Right. Because if you're the department heads, you don't want to necessarily have to present everything twice. Yes.

But maybe we become like the leaders. They can come to our meeting for the budget stuff and then they can do the town. That's what I would like to see happen. Yeah. Wow. So, one thing I just want to make sure is I think that you know you all these are great ideas. Um the town council does need to be able to be present and see all the presentations because they are it is it's in the pro that's the process of it going from being the town manager suggested budget to the council's budget. But I think that you can proceed with this model and work with your your town council lesson on Andrea and whoever the TC lees on is I think it's actually Sean again this year. they can work together to figure out a good way to move forward with that. Okay. With the town manager.

I just have a question because I my background is municipal. Yes. And um we the way we always did it was that the department heads presented to the well select or town council first and then it went to the budget committee. It always seemed to be the the process. Is that something that because you do it in like September, right? Yes. So the traditional budget process in the past has been it's been worked on at a staff level up until basically the end of October at which point it's presented to the town council and the budget committee on the first Saturday in November and then we go through a series of budget hearings at town council meetings keeping us here till 1 in the morning during the Christmas season. Right,

which is everybody's favorite. So I think that's part of the reason one of the town manager's priorities is to start the budget season earlier this year. So moving away from waiting till November to do this. Start the conversations earlier, right? And really make sure that in these presentations they're focused around budget and not broader department like you know we don't the departments aren't necessarily going to be speaking at length about their functions as much as talking about strate strategic budget goals. Yep. Correct. So, yeah. So, hopefully to move away from that. Yeah, that's a good point. Um, some of Yes. Some departments just every year it goes this is what we do and it feels like they just it's a justification

Yeah. of of their presence and it's not really needed, right? And we're going to have and I'll get in my opinion. Yeah. I agree. When we get to the end, I'll talk more about the strategic plan and everything when you're ready for me to do so. But yeah, so I think as part of as I think that this directly aligns with the general process that revisions that I think everyone is hoping for at this point.

Yeah. I mean, yeah, I'd like the idea of maybe the the major departments presenting um at a combined meeting first. The town council gets to see everything. They can ask their questions direct and say, "We'll work with the budget committee on this over the next couple of months. come back to us in, you know, if we I would like to see that rather be November, maybe October. Um, if they can do their budget presentations earlier. I think we're shooting even earlier.

Even September would be better. Yep. And then that gives us a couple of months to work with those departments. They can present again to the town council in November. Um, but that way it's not weekly meetings from like beginning of November through basically mid January. um for the town council at least. So um that should help alleviate some of that I think. And some of the smaller departments we may not need to see twice. Um so like legal um HR, sorry.

Yeah, smaller department. Yeah, it's a that's a word for it. All jokes aside, um yeah, but um but you know the I'm thinking the big ones like police, DPW, fire, library. Um yeah, those are the big ones, I think. So um but yes, I I'd like to see us be a little bit more creative with how we do and hear from the department heads on the town council side. um because those are those are arduous and I think it honestly scares sometimes people away from being doing budget committee because of how long those meetings can be. So, um okay. Um does anybody else that was just one of the things that I was thinking about for fiscal year 2028. Does anybody have any other thoughts or any ideas for fiscal year 2028? things they might want to see done differently or um ideas.

I would really like to see us being more involved in our departments, whoever we're the leazison for with like creating the budget. That way we get more of a background of what exactly they're looking for so that we can advocate for them as well. Y um but maybe like guide them in the decision processing and all that stuff instead of just being presented yes about it and then having to ask all these questions.

Yep. Yeah, I think that's a great idea. Uh so working with the department heads as they build their budgets and walking them through that process and understanding why they're putting these certain things in their budgets and how that works and that sort of thing. I think that's a great idea because we had talked about before in past meetings, we don't even know how these departments build their budget. Do they do it from a zero dollar or is it just like a certain percentage built on? Yep. So that would be nice to I think so too. I think that would be great. I think that'd be a really good idea for us to to doing that as well. I don't think you're going to get a lot of push back with that either. I think people would welcome that.

Okay. In terms of um that idea, would you would you see that um we would do it where each liaison would just have a discussion with their department and just you know position that Yeah, I think that's

idea basically. Is that how you think? Yeah, I think that's one way of doing it and I think that it should align with the strategic plan too because if we know what we're trying to uh prioritize budget-wise, strategically um we can keep that in our mind as we work with these department heads to build their budgets. um you know if you know environmental stuff is a big concern for people you know how but they want to um buy more police department buy more cars that you know have we looked into EVs as an example um because the environment is really important to London dairy have we looked into you know switching over to to EVs for our fleet instead you know what does that look like um that type of stuff so

how does it tie back into the overall you know strategic plan rather than like this is just a one-off act. Correct. Yeah. But we've always done it this way and our cars have always been this way. So, let's just keep doing it this way. What if we did it this way and we could save money doing it because now we don't have to pay for gas. We don't have to do these types of things. Yes. The upfront cost is greater, but you save money in the long run because we're not paying for this. And so, thinking about those sorts of things. Yep. Yep. I like that. Anybody else have any thoughts? Okay, I think that's good. Like next year, but

it's it's going to be Yep. There's uh between Patrick, Nicole, and I, and Rebecca, who was on for a good chunk of last year, you came in right as the pres budgets were presented. So, um you know, we've all there are four of us who have been through at least one budget season. So, yeah. Yeah, it's a little little of a learning curve, but it's it's good. Um okay. Okay. And then the next thing is the meeting schedule. So, traditionally we have met um the third Thursday of every month at 700 p.m. Does that work for everyone? Okay. We were at one point doing it the fourth Thursday, but what we noticed was is like during February and April when it's school vacation week, that was a tough week for people. So, we moved it to be the third.

You lost you lost February, April, December, and November. and you conflicted with heritage heritage commission. So that was Yeah, it was fourth Thursday wasn't there. Okay. Not a good one. Third Thursday. Perfect. Okay. Thursday. Yeah. All right. And that, uh, concludes meeting schedules. So, um, the other business, let's go into strategic budgeting.

So, I think I've met most of you before and you, but you actually still might not know who I am. My name is Cher Hilton. I'm the director of administrative services here. I work for in the town manager's office and I do all the weird things. Um Sean is looking forward to being the town manager is looking forward to being very closely involved with your work this year and bringing you more into the budget process just like Rebecca said, you know, making you part of it from the get-go. So really excited to work on the role of the budget committee and um figure out how we can work that more clearly into charge code and everything like that. So you'll have staff support um starting next month. you'll have the staff um our executive assistant Tanya Pinter who is so much more than executive assistant. Um she will be handling creating your agenda for you just like we create the town council agendas a little bit more truncated time frame because they don't need to be out quite as much in advance but so we can use the same format so that you'll be able to have all the documents online in that same so if you have documents that need to be distributed from the minutes to financial reports they'll be there. Um,

that's good.

Yeah. So, yeah. So, anything you need, you can reach out to our office. It's um, you know, Sean Maholland's for those of you who might not know, town manager. Kelly Karen is the deputy town manager and there's myself and then Tanya Pinter, the executive assistant. Um, speaking of strategic plan, um, the strategic, we have a draft done of the strategic plan that we are currently ready to send out to departments and boards for feedback. particularly we're going to be asking people to look at the KPIs um key performance indicators as um making sure that they relate that was obviously during the initial phase of the strategic planning that was the most challenging to come up with at that time but now that I think everybody sees how all the objectives relate together um I think they'll be a lot easier for people to weigh in and be like that one's kind of crazy let's let's measure this instead um from there we're going to take that feedback, bring it back together, and then we're going to be holding two strategic planning workshops, strategic plan workshops with the town council on April 13th and April 22nd, both at 6:30 p.m. right across the hallway. Excuse me. Um, we would Kate, you should have gotten that email earlier today.

Yes.

Um, so if you could forward that to Nicole as well, that's awesome. We're asking that board chairs and vice chairs please come if they can and we welcome and encourage anybody else to come. You should have gotten it as well, Jeff, from your other role. So, we encourage everybody else to come as anybody else to come as well. It's more going to be explaining and presenting to the council and council will ask questions of the people who gave input rather than people commenting to the council. So, it'll be a little bit different. Um, yeah. So, they're going to be asking questions and then there'll be a public hearing on May 18th for it. So that's when the public will get to weigh in and then hopefully after that the town council will adopt it and set those strategic priorities for fiscal year 27 through 29.

Great. Next year we're really hoping we're going to basically turn around after we finish this and start working on the next one, the 28 through 30 because so we can have that to help drive strategic budgeting next year. So we're going to just hit the ground running on that and then turn and keep cranking. And I imagine probably some of the um priorities that wouldn't have made this year's could to the next and some of those priorities will even hit likely before the start of the fiscal year, right? Because of when it's coming in and um it's never bad to start with some good wins, right? So yeah. So yeah, starting the the first time it's always the messy. It's messy.

It's always going to be messy. It's messy. It's we we've kept it to our draft has seven functional areas. I know when Sean came and presented he gave 10. Um we have seven this first time around. They have two to three objectives each with action items that span multiple boards, departments, functions. So it's it's not like these are this committees or this departments. It's all integrated together. So there's multiple groups working towards a common goal which is what it should be for the town because it's not we're not siloed. We're together.

Yes. So that is um that'll be going out. My original hope was the end of day Friday, but we're meeting as a department the end of day Friday. So we'll probably be uh sending it out on Monday to everybody. And we're going to ask people to chime in within a week. Okay.

And this is something where you're going to be able to send your feedback or thoughts directly to us. It's not going to be a send them in here and then send them over. So it's just going to be send them to us. We'll put them together and we'll look at it. Um, another thing I have for you is reminder that the 91A workshop with the New Hampshire Municipal Association is on Wednesday, March 25th at 6:30 p.m. right over there. Again, this is to make sure that we are all on even footing about the 91A right to know law. Andrea is smiling because I'm sure she's deeply familiar with this from her past life. Um, but yeah, so we're just trying to get everybody up to date. We if you can, if there's any chance of you being able to attend, please try to do so. If not, it will be recorded and we heavily suggest you watch it. If you have any questions afterwards, you can obviously reach out to our office.

Um, and I am happy to talk all things 918 because it's like a quarter of what I do. Yeah. Um, and then that brings me to the last thing I want to update, particularly for the new folks. um or people who came in halfway through and everything was so crazy last year. Um the New Hampshire Municipal Association um NHMA has some really fantastic publications, materials online, trainings and everything. And as a member of a lender board or committee, you have access to all of these things. Um, the most immediate one is there's a local officials workshop on April 2nd that is I believe it's free to attend virtually.

There's also an inerson option and I'll be sending that out to all of you as well. Um, I'll be setting you up with NHMA login, so you you're going to want to look for that. That way you can and if there's anything ever anything you can't access on the site that you would like to later just or that you would like to let me know and I can probably get it for you. Um myself or Tanya can help you as well. Um and brings me the last thing. You're the only person who doesn't have an email yet. You should have it by the end of the week. Okay.

Town issued email. Yep. Um and if you haven't signed your oaths yet, go ahead in and see Sher. Even if you signed one for another board, you got to sign one for this one. And if you got reelected, you have to sign a new one again. So yeah, I think that is all my notes. Unless you have anything for me. I don't. And then does anybody else have any other business? Because can be anything. I just want to mention that I I'll do the notes. I'll do the meeting minutes for this meeting since I've got all the Okay. But I'll just CC you on them when I send them over. And do you want me to send them to you or just send them right to You're gonna send them to Tanya? Oh, send them to Tanya. Do you want to Yeah. CC me?

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. No. Cool. Okay. Thanks, guys. All right. I think that covers it. So then if we're doing the third Thursday every month, let me just pull that up again. And do you still want this one? Uh yeah, this one is fine. Yep. Um so there's no public comment. So, we're Well, sorry. Should we have this room or should we are we expecting more people if we're changing the structure of the meeting? I Yeah. So, for now, I think until we have budget presentations, we can stay in here. I think that's a safe bet. Uh once we have our first budget presentation, we should meet in Moose Hill.

Yeah. Speaking from a room availability standpoint, Rebecca, I think come fall, we'll have a lot more flexibility right now with the library. So, for those of you who don't know, the library staff office is the room next door to us. Um, and so we're running library programming out of this building as well. So, once we hit that point in the season, I think we'll have a lot more flexibility with Moose Hill. Um, the only reason it's empty right now is we the function that was in there was cancelled today. So, right now, this month we booked it out every single solitary night. So, it's it's But you're right. I think when it comes to budget presentations, we can re-evaluate and you can work with Tanya on the room space to figure out. Nope. Okay. So, the 16th is the next meeting. That will be the 16th. Yep. April.

Yeah. One, two. Yep. Perfect. All right. So, April 16th will be our next meeting. And uh do we have bylaws or No, we do not. Rules procedure or anything? We do not. Okay. If we we can put that as an agenda item for next month and discuss if we would like to have them. Oh, no. We do not we do not need to create anything if we don't want to. So you're not elected. You're advisory now. We're advisory would be within the

we have no real power. We are advisory only. They the town council and the school board can take our advice or leave it. So um they they generally do take it u which is nice. Um, so but other we don't have any real power which is in my opinion is totally fine. But do you guys have any questions on anything in the past? Anything that happened with the war? Any of that? I mean we've kind of thrown ourselves immediately into planning for these things. We got some really exciting things coming down. The special assessment districts are a whole shiny new way of helping people get connected to water. I will say we did submit two applications for federal grants to our states to our to Senator Shaheen and Congressman Papus's office trying to get money for waterline extensions. So

great. Do you guys have any questions? Anything? All right. Cool. If you do send them over, we're happy to keep you updated on all the things that you worked so hard on last year on what's happening with them because that's part of it, too. you guys deserve those updates and you deserve to be kept in the loop and be able to share in that process. So, yeah. Um, in the past, have has there been like a process to share those or is it just kind of like whenever because I'm wondering maybe So, in the past, you haven't had a staff member. Okay. So, this is a change this year is committing to have somebody from the town manager's office or Justin depending on what it is. you know, we'll probably share the responsibility this year

and um but making sure we have somebody who can report back to you on that each time. So, having even a staff report is something new. Yeah.

And if we wanted if you want to add anything to the agenda for the following meeting, um I'm going to attempt to send everything that I want to put on the agenda to Tanya by that Monday for that Thursday's meeting. So, if you send it to me by Friday, I can ensure it gets included on the agenda that gets um posted that Monday. So, um, so anything that you want to bring up or see or discuss or or things like that, I'm open to it. So, we can certainly put that on the agenda. Um, you know, and if you don't want to put it on the agenda or it comes up before or after I've created the agenda, I'm there will always be any other business on there. So, anything that you want to bring up can always come up there, too. So, um, but yeah. Um, so we'll meet again on the a uh August. Oh my god. April biking,

April 16th. Um, if you could email your department heads or your leazison and responsibilities, introduce yourselves, let them know you're on the budget committee. Um, and try to meet with them before April 16th, that would be excellent. If you need anybody's email address, please let me know. I can get that for you or Tanya can get that for you. Now, we have a staff member um and uh they'll be happy to help you out with that. So, okay. If there's nothing else, we will adjoin the meeting. Can I'll accept a motion to adjourn. So moved. Second. All right. This meeting is ending at 7:38 p.m.