Budget Committee - Regular Meeting

So we will continue with our agenda items. Do the pledge.

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.

There is no public here, so we're going to skip public comment. New community business, liaison report, school board.

I have no update.

Okay. Town, council, and town. Sorry.

I thought we were going to jump right into it this quick. I'm sorry. Get into it. If I can make it cool, if not, totally fine.

I'm joking. Okay.

I talked with Sean this morning. They signed the E-code contract, which is going to be a three-year rollout. It's basically searchable online for ordinances, building permits, anything municipal. I think this is the gateway to becoming a paperless office. This is like one of the one-step.

Yeah, this is like most other communities already use it for their municipal code. You can look at dairies. If you Google E-code dairy, they have a great example. It makes it readable, editable. It will... It saves us 30 staff hours a year. It will justify the annual fee.

It's insanely good. And then, let's see, tech upgrade, town hall access system. Are they going to be integrating with the new building when that's built? I guess they're just key cards?

They're going to be badge cards, but they also will allow guest access. So if somebody needs to use it after hours, it'll cut down the need again for staff to be here. And we'll replace our archaic system that usually ends up with one of us having to jump on over the weekend to fix it. Or come down here in person to open the doors.

And then there's going to be a breaking ground ceremony. They start in the addition, and that's next Tuesday at 3 p.m. Let's see what else we have. I think that's it for that. Oh, he did mention about the bylaws. I know you're going to speak to it because we're advisory and not official. I noticed that too when I was reading the bylaws.

I have the red line. I have Sean had sent Rebecca red lines and I have them up here. Okay, awesome. Perfect.

And then yeah, I talked or emailed Sean Faber and he just said that the approves the budget schedule. So that is online. It's I get it in draft form, but I'm sure there's going to be a budget page by the end of next week.

Yeah. Cool.

That's all I had. DPW, so we were just there at the facility. We did our tour. We all saw the improvements that are very necessary over the DPW facility. There's a lot that's not there that should be there. There's a lot that's there that Also shouldn't be there. So, you know, but today we had a working group meeting and we approved the OPM firm, which I don't even know if we've notified them yet, so I'm not going to publicly say the firm. But we have selected a firm for that and we're moving forward. So that's good news. You know, I forgot to ask Dave while we were over there how the budget is doing coming to year end, because the fiscal year ends on June 30th. But I imagine if there was anything dire, he would have let me know. They're in good shape. I don't know that much.

Can I ask a stupid question? Yep. What's OPM? Something project management?

Owner's project manager. So they're the person or group that will represent the town's best interests. Again, in conjunction, hopefully, they work along well with the construction firm. So if things are, they keep track of things that are budget related, schedule related, risk related, and try to do things that are in the best interest of the town. Sometimes if you don't have one, the construction team can do whatever it is they feel is best without, if there's nobody on the town side who knows what it is an OPM does to advocate for the town, they just might be like a, okay, well you're the experts, you know what is right. So it's kind of like a third party help. And they do a lot of other stuff beyond that too, like reporting and things like that. And I don't even know if we have the resources to be able to do that. We do not.

And that's why for a project like this, it's crucial. Yeah, right. They also do, if you think about what Southern New Hampshire Planning Commission did for the Master Plan to some degree, it's kind of like their public-facing role of that too. They do a lot of work with the public, answering questions, doing everything that our DPW just simply does not have the bandwidth. Right.

Yep. Awesome. Thank you. Yep. And then CIP. Jeff, do you want to speak to CIP?

Sure. We had our first meeting a few weeks back. The committee did their business of selecting a chair and a vice chair. Kevin Gray is chairing this year, and I am the vice chair. There's only three people in attendance, so... But the town manager gave us kind of a sneak peek of the projects that will be on the CIP, or at the very least will be presented. We'll be having meetings through the fall, early fall. with various submitters of the request that will be providing presentations to justify why this is on the CEIP, why the town should invest in it and such. It was a very productive meeting and I'm really looking forward to how it's all going to come to form.

One of the things I'm curious about with CIP, I know part of it is prioritization of projects and what we think is most needed versus can wait until later types of things. But is there a budget goal for CIP projects that we're going to try to Not necessarily meet, but if we say, okay, well, some of these are bigger ones like the DPW facility, but low-hanging fruit, like replacing the roof on the police station, like smaller projects. Is there anything that we typically do with that, like prioritize the big projects and then maybe let's do two or three million of? smaller projects each year or something?

No, the CIP is really actually not, doesn't look at the budget impact. It looks at more of the impact of what it's needed for, you know, what the town needs. The budget will come into play, but it's mostly kind of driven by municipal needs of the town.

So it's need-based, not budget-based.

Okay, got it. And some kind of policy-making. to take those priorities and decide which ones they're going to act on and incorporate. Just to let you know too on that, there's a slight update on that, is that the schedule is done for who's presenting when and how many is in the process of getting that out.

Great. Fire? I think that's Rebecca and she's not here. Police is Isaac, so I copy and pasted that. I will proofread next time. He's also not here. Planning board?

Oh, updates, really. I mean, we talked about it the other night. It's more what's been going on, so there's nothing new to report.

I can give you an upcoming thing for that. That'd be great. July 8th, there'll be a presentation from Southern New Hampshire Planning Commission. They'll be coming back. They were last there in May to talk about the work that has been done with the HOP Grant, which is a housing opportunity grant from the state of New Hampshire. We're nearing closed on that. It was a $50,000 grant to review housing opportunities and our current zoning regulations. So the planning board back in May had asked them to come forward with formal amendments to the regulations. As you know, the planning department is a little bit thin right now at the moment. So I'm not sure how fast that process will move, but we're nearing the end of the grant closeout in September. Part of the reason is that some of these amendments might be doable with current staffing and with just our current process, but this is part of a larger conversation too about the needs to address our zoning, our site plan, and our subdivision requirements, which there will be a dollar amount linked to that. because it's not necessarily something with those substantive amendments and revisions that we can do in-house. So it's something to keep an eye on down the road that that's going to be something that you're going to hear come up, not in the next couple of months, probably not in this budget cycle, but maybe. We'll see what happens with the conversations. So just making you aware that when you hear that coming up, there's work being done right now, and like I said, July 8th is when you'll see James come and give that presentation to kind of forecast that out for you.

Great. And then library? I don't have an update today.

I know that there's still, I mean, I have been trading emails with the treasurer. I know they're still going like line by line through their budget right now to try to understand it and get their arms around it since there have been so many changes. But I have to go back and watch two meetings, so I will have a better update next time.

Great. And the old committee business, so it's the discussion update on the bylaws and rules of procedure. Okay.

So Sean had sent this to Rebecca, and we didn't change the cover page. There's a new logo, and that should be advised for your budget committee. Okay. One advice I have is rather than calling it bylaws necessarily, referring to these as rules of procedure. Okay. Partially because, you know, you do have an organization that's stipulated by RSA and charter. Yep. so in here he did rephrase and actually i need to change this again because on july 1st the charter taxonomy is updating per the voting oh yeah so i just need to update that number in there but so this said this explains the actual authority and purpose yeah um you don't need organization because that's not up to your jurisdiction yep um not a lot in here this is If this is what you guys want, there's no issues with any of that.

My question, though, was with the clerk.

Is the clerk the secretary or? Yeah, you can call it either one you want. Historically, it's been secretary here, but you could call it clerk. Okay. I just want to make sure, yeah. For example, ZBA in the bylaws, in the RSA stipulates that it should be called clerk, right? But here you can call it clerk or secretary. Okay. Either one doesn't matter. So that's up to you guys.

Not what do you want to be called? Clerk or secretary?

I don't know.

All right. Vacancies, Sean did suggest removing this because You're not a municipal budget committee, so that means that your vacancies are filled by the council, like all other ones.

That's one of my thoughts, too, is vacancies will be appointed pursuant to charter code, blah, blah, blah.

That's it. And there is no format. You're elected officials. There's no format for removing elected officials in the state of New Hampshire. You're stuck with people until they resign if they don't show up. But fun fact about this one, I'm just throwing this in there. The last person to, the last budget committee to decide to appoint its own member when it had a vacancy was, I was the chair when I Counsel was like, he sounds great. We're not going to make this a problem. I was really gung-ho. So there was me. Duties of officers, this all seems pretty clear and straightforward from a staff perspective. There's nothing there. So responsibilities and duties, he took out the things that are kind of almost more code of conduct-y. Yep. And stuck with the actual responsibilities and duties that you would be held to. So that's why we're moving the Hampshire Municipal Budget Law. Yep. And then the thing about being removed because we can't.

Yeah.

Conduct of meetings took out generally the third Thursday at 7 p.m. Yeah. And I'm going to actually suggest at... I was reading over this, and I do think we should, you should probably say something more like outside of budget season, the budget committee meets approximately once a month and more during budget season or something.

So if you'd like some language on that, I can throw that on there.

There's definitely a better way to say that.

Yeah. Because that's a clear expectation for people who are joining. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I was told there's a couple meetings. Yeah. And then I was like, I'm like, okay, I have to, you know, during the budget season.

Yeah. I did four years in the budget committee because then at the end of that, I was like, I really enjoyed the, my holiday season the next year. Oh. Because I didn't have meetings. Um, special meeting, May, great, quorum. That's, that's actually true. Majority shall constitute a quorum.

Yep.

Um, And again here, whether you want to call them bylaws or rules of procedure, either one is fine. It's something for you guys to think about. Nothing wrong here. And you don't want to do Robert's Rules of Orders. No.

Let's not complicate it. I know Robert's... We almost never have public comment in the first place. Keep it simple.

Like... Yeah, if the council can't do Robert's Rules of... or doesn't do Robert's Rules of Order, then I don't think any of it... Yeah, the council purposely doesn't do Robert's Rules of Order.

But yeah, most of our bodies don't do Robert's Rules of Order.

I think we only do it

They were very clear about that when they started.

So yeah. So however you want to proceed, what I can do is I can send this out to everyone since it's been presented here so you guys can see it. I know you're all extraordinarily busy and this time of year, I like to joke around, it's May was May-tember, it's December with all the presents. So then you guys can take a look at it, maybe finalize next meeting, if that sounds.

Yeah, I think we get all the edits in, make sure the edits look correct. We can all then approve the bylaws. And then maybe we can add something in there about when we elect new officers that we just revisit the bylaws at that very first meeting, make sure that everybody's in agreement with them, and then that's that.

So what I can do is I can send these out to everybody tomorrow so you can see them. My advice would be if you have edits, send them to Kate and just Kate or Rebecca. And however you want to do it, you can tell people. But because this is the first time you're kind of working on a document together, send them to one person. That person puts the edits together and then disseminates them with the next agenda packet. Yeah. To avoid having an illegal meeting. Yeah, sure.

So you're going to send this to...

I'm going to send Sean's draft out to everybody tomorrow so you can take a look at it.

Could you BCC? Just BCC us all. Jeff. I know, I know, I know.

Jeff, come on. This is not my first rodeo. Yeah, so yes, I always BCC.

Just so that...

I always BCC and then I also announce in the email who I'm sending it to so everybody knows who's in the BCC line because they can't see it.

And then just give explicit... I just, for the recording... I love it. I think it's awesome. Give explicit instructions on what to do.

And so I'll disseminate it for you, but then I will let Kate and Rebecca it's not here to speak, whether she wants to add, so I will send it there. And I'll also give you the new logo, too.

Perfect. The other thing that I was thinking of is, I got an email, I think it was a week or two ago, about electronic document storage or something like that from Sean. Um, would that allow for better collaboration for like tech, these types of things going forward? Or is that more about like us just having a place to store things?

So I would love that to be true, but that also constitutes a meeting if we collaborate on a document.

Okay.

In a shared environment.

Um, we are doing a pilot with having shared online storage. That's the policy you the use of shared spaces for boards to be in compliance with 91A. The planning board is doing a pilot with using SharePoint. Oh, great.

Are we?

You are. You are, and that's why that policy exists. So everyone on the planning board is going to get access to SharePoint to start. The reason we're starting with one board is because it does cost more. Yep. For boards to have access to SharePoint. Okay. Each license costs more. So we're starting with the planning board. Jake's been working with Sean. And if that works out, then we'll look at what we need to do to change over more to the SharePoint license to give you. Because right now, there's this weird thing with Microsoft where if you were to just be invited in as like joeschmoe at gmail.com, we could invite you onto a team and invite you in here. But if you're on a Microsoft tenant and we invite you in,

Can I ask just a qualifying question about the collaboration on SharePoint? I don't know, Jeff, if you know the answer. Does that mean that we can go to SharePoint, we can all look at a document, we could upload a new version of a document, but we can't put a comment in? Is that basically the practical application? You can't, like, talk to each other and give each other notes directly.

Yeah, and even putting a document in there without, even uploading a new version of a document that hasn't been discussed is a challenge. Like, if it's a working document. If it's a report or something, no problem as long as it later becomes available to the public. Sure. to a shared drive like that it has now been distributed to a quorum of a public body i see okay and it is now public record okay okay so you can't do offline collaboration even if it's sequent and they're really keen about sequential communication is a meeting and okay and hub and spoke is a meeting if it's goes out privately right so that's what I'm saying if anybody has any edits you send them to one person yeah and then that one person

in public yeah I know I know I've already done this for like a year but my coming from corporate America my brain oh yeah has a hard time wrapping my head hurts already you're so used to like looping everybody in all the time that it's like you can't do that the way she's speaking right now I feel like I'm walking through a minefield I feel like

It's the exact opposite, right? It's the opposite of collaborative, basically. I mean, it's collaborative, it just needs to be visible. And the other thing is, it's the opposite of corporate America, where in corporate America, almost everything you do is proprietary unless it's public. Here, everything is public unless it's a very, very small thing of proprietary, which is basically like attorney-client privilege and personnel information and stuff protected by statute. always private yeah so yeah thank you you're welcome it's it's complicated and convoluted not anything that anybody else outside of government has to deal with andrea's nodding because she's like yeah i've been down this road many this is not a new conversation okay great

All right. So then I will work with Rebecca and, um, I will let, uh, I think the best thing, cause I don't, I think she did really great work on this. I can make the edits and I'll probably make sure I'll check with her and make sure it's okay that everybody sends the edits to me. Um, and then, um, we'll go from there.

So now it would be applicable for you and Rebecca to talk about that and prepare that draft document to send out because that's not a quorum. You two can't make any decisions. 91A for the night.

Thank you. All right. Anybody have any other business that they would like to discuss? Okey-dokey. Approval of minutes from the May meeting. I did not send those out, but they did make it online, correct? I saw them online, yeah, May and June. Did everybody get a chance to... No, it is June. Not May and June. Sorry. Did everybody get a chance to review the meeting minutes?

No, I didn't.

Very glad to hear that, Matt.

I thought they looked good. Yep. I thought they were good, too. Yep. Okay. So, all in favor, I'll take a motion to approve the meeting minutes.

So moved. Second.

All in favor, say aye. Aye. All right. Motion passes. The meeting schedule, we usually take July off. If I recall from our last conversation, we said we're all pretty okay with taking July off. We're going to work on our respective departments as they start to build their budgets or other committees or other things that we're working on. So we'll do that independently. And then our next meeting would be scheduled August 20th of 2026. I want to say that's tentative. And the only reason I want to call it tentative is because last year, This meet, that meeting took place the same night as one of the school tours, and I ended up missing it, thinking the school tour was the meeting, and then I didn't go. So if there's a common... Oh, you and I, we both did it. Yeah, we both did it, yeah. So if that happens again this year, and it interferes with the school tour, we'll either move it to the Thursday before or the Thursday after, but tentatively August 20th, pending school tour dates, so...

school starts the latest it could possibly start this year because Labor Day is the latest day it can possibly be this year September 7th okay so school won't start till the week of somewhere around September 1st I believe oh wow okay yes in September it's the first time I've seen that here yeah it's very rare it's blue moon dates so you it you may still be okay yeah but as you just work with Tanya on that and she'll take care of you okay cool

all right and uh if we if it regardless of when that uh if it's the 20th we gotta move it to the 27th or something like that um is there a tour that we would be interested in doing that day as well too to get another one in it would be the fire department at this point um the library may still be closed by that point i don't know how that's going um But last I heard, it was probably sometime towards the end of summer, so that might be cutting it kind of close.

Yeah, I heard August, so I don't know what part of August.

Exactly, yeah. So it would basically be the fire department at that point.

This is a ridiculous question, but do we take a tour of Town Hall?

I don't think we've ever done a tour of Town Hall.

You never have, but that's not to say you can't.

We should, actually. Yeah. We should. We should. Okay, maybe we could do the town hall then and then do the fire department in September.

Yeah, that sounds good.

Okay, and then the library in October. That gives them plenty of lead time. Yeah, get it all done. Fire department where there's multiple locations. Did you say we do all locations? When I've done them, we've done all the locations because each of the fire stations have different needs and requirements. They're all three very different stations. They have different engines. They're set up differently. I think it is the south one that was value engineered that needs a lot of work. But now north also needs a lot of work, too. So, you know, there's a lot that I when I was reviewing the CIP stuff that they're asking for. So it would be good to do that given the situation. I think it was millions of dollars that they're asking for. You do them all, like one after the other? Yeah, we usually, I think we started at Central the last time, and then we went over to South, and then we went up to North, so.

Okay.

Yeah.

The council did approve at their meeting on Monday the funds from the fiscal year 26 budget and some from expendable maintenance fund for Station 2 repairs. Good. So the first, not all the Station 2 repairs, but the first round of station two station two is young road in the south there's some rotting wood some issues with the roof and so they're moving forward with those yeah so one item out there yep yeah thank you

And I think it's been three years since the Budget Committee has done a tour of the fire department. Yeah, I've never been. Yeah. So I'd be happy to see them. Cool. I actually just did a tour with the fire department and the police department with my son's first grade. So they got to do... They let the kids... Sprayed the fire hose and they got to go up on the ladder truck.

Well, I mean just because they're kids Great they're very awesome Okay

So August 20, tentatively, no public comment. Nobody's here. So I will make a motion to adjourn. Oh, I will ask for a motion to adjourn.

Second.