Finance Committee - Regular Meeting

Meeting in the member of the committee, 06:45PM, small conference room town hall, 10 Exton Avenue for reporting on Anakin. First order on the agenda, pledge of allegiance.

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

Hey. How are doing?

Alright.

So moved. Second. Discussion? Hearing none. All in favor?

Discussion, fiscal twenty seven budget updates and processes. So what we have is the back in front of everybody is presentation from Joe Perkins. It's gonna be presented at the select board meeting tonight with that town manager report. I figured if we can actually if it's the will of the board, you know, we can actually, you know, take care of our business in here and our meeting and actually be able to join because I didn't have a joint presentation. It didn't it hasn't developed at the point by the time I had made the deadline to actually post the meeting.

I didn't wanna have nothing posted for us, so we could not meet. If we want, we can discuss having a meeting on Thursday this coming Thursday. You know what mean? I've gotten confirmation from Joe Perkins that we can actually have some one on one time with him. The only thing is we don't have access to a large conference room.

We don't have to be in here because planning board has it for the next three weeks. And whether we want to convene Mondays and Thursdays or we wanna just move to Thursdays or we have I'm not sure a 100% yet whether we have joint presentations coming up for other things that we need to address on Monday nights. So, basically, I'm looking for insight from insight from the board What's

that?

What would you like to think?

Mister chair. Oh. Go ahead. I'll defer to my senior.

Go

ahead. Well, we have any prior information before we meet on Thursday? Or we just gonna come in cold and then have

Every every bit of information that I can get, I've been trying to get. You know? I shouldn't say trying.

I'm I'm not I'm I'm just I'm just asking the question. You may not have the answer now, but I was just hoping that we didn't have to walk in cold. We'd have something in front of us that we can deliberate on, you know, meet ourselves. Yeah. You can only give what you get.

Yeah. So I mean, this presentation I think will dictate what's what we can talk about there, and we can have questions and like, you know, I can get that information that we need so we're not going in cold.

Thank you. Yeah. That's all.

Mister chair, I think it's a good move if we do meet separately with the town manager to go over this. I don't know how in-depth this budget and operational correction plan is gonna be delved into this evening at the town manager report. Typically, town manager reports don't always afford the best, like, for back and forth questions and so forth. It's more of a presentation. So I think at the very least, to Bob's concern, I think this would definitely be a good launch pad into meeting with him.

I'm sure there's a lot to unpack in here. I've just given it very quick thumbing through. So, again, I think I think that's a good plan moving forward. Meet on Thursdays regardless of where we have to meet as long as we can I guess, is it well, actually, Bob, you probably know this? Is it required that our meetings are recorded by MCAM with or they just have to be properly posted.

Mister chair, I'm not aware if the town has done something, to require that. The town may have because it seems that every the boards are being televised, filmed, whatever you call it now. So you might wanna check if the town this board's like them have made a decision that meetings have to be posted. I mean, video. Okay.

The only requirement on, you know, that I'm aware of is based on the open meeting law that has to be posted forty eight hours in advance of the

settlement. Right. You know? Okay.

Sure. Just to piggyback a little bit. Like that last Monday's meeting, the select board meeting was broadcast live with the finance committee meeting that went, you know, concurrently or afterwards was just prerecorded. There's no with open meeting, lot of normal requirement that the meetings have to be recorded as long as they're accessible to the public and the meetings are meeting minutes are taken. That's really about it along with posting stuff. So but it's always good to have finance. It's always good to have the coordinate with them.

Chair, I I agree with both Bob and Matt. I think Thursday night would be good. Although I the one exception is I think I'd like to also see the live presentation by the Intertown manager. It is like this evening, we can wrap up our work by so we can hear it, then we can study this and come prepared with questions for discussion Thursday evening, if that makes sense. Just it there's a little more information that might come out with like a q and a Mhmm.

With with town manager. So it it just might be helpful because I I'll just sit there and write my notes on here and then we can come up with some questions and have a good dialogue perhaps with town manager Thursday evening. So

I think we need to move Ricky Tick then.

Yeah. Just just as like an information policy like, you know what I mean? In there, like, it's you know what I mean? Save our questions or formulate our questions if we're gonna move to Thursday. Just as just to in the interest of, like, transparency, not that we're having deliberation, are we something that could be construed as an opening law violation.

Mhmm. Something like that. So, I mean,

sounds like we we will have that time on Thursday to find out any questions and, like, the select board meeting, we should be able to timing persists. Like, it it will be closed on end camps. If So wanna find anything, we can can go back and watch it and try to figure out where we have to where we sit. Okay.

And just for the record,

I'm good with Thursday.

So through the chair, do you wanna take a formal vote to meet? I mean, I don't think we need to vote on time of schedule, so I think we're all in are we all in agreement? Hey, Mike.

What's up, guys? Hey, Mike.

We're just discussing potentially meeting on Thursday with the town manager and

just discussing that. So Okay.

Thank you, sir. Just having a discussion about whether we should kinda forward our business, the general meeting, and then meet on Thursday so we can meet firsthand to see what's there and then formulate questions that we can address. We have some Yeah. What time are we thinking? Has it been proposed? We haven't You

wanna do seven?

I mean, we can do seven. Later, the better for me.

Okay. Seven's good for me.

So in Morton's for me.

We're free. Alright.

Works for me. Any further discussion? Moving on to public comment.

I just wanted to mention that I had sent this out. It's a follow-up to the information that m a MMA put out earlier in October about the fiscal cliff, and they had some suggestions on how to navigate. But, you know, something, If you read if you read it, there's a lot of things that we've already done with meals to access. So it's like dropping a dime in a bucket, but anyways. Yeah. Yeah. I don't if you read it or not. I I did.

That was that was very helpful, Bob, to just see where I guess it's There's

no big money page

in there. No. There's not.

There's and and it I guess misery loves company. Right? That seems like there's a lot of misery out there right now, unfortunately. But think at least there's some ideas that MMA might be working, how far stretched they are in terms of increasing state funding is another matter. Right?

I haven't had a chance to read it yet myself, but is there a part in there that says don't spend more than you take in?

No. That was in our when we became finance committee members. Okay. This one from the book that said what you shouldn't

do. Okay.

I'll make sure. Spending.

Just a check. Just to kind of piggyback on on Bob. I these were talked about at the MMA conference, but there is a I don't know if you saw the previous one. There's another one called Perfect Storm that came out in October. And then navigating the storm came out in December. Right. Yep. Yeah. The one thing that I brought up in the email to everybody was that when I was on the select board years ago, they had a in their iPads for each meeting, there was always a copy of MMA handbook for the select board. And I just wanted to toss it out as an idea for the finance committee because I asked MMA if they if if they had one.

My I was just assuming that we were already members and that we had a finance committee handbook. So I asked and then she said, well, we're not a member. If we want the handbook, we have to pay the dues for it. So I just wanted to bring that up for a discussion. Mister Chair

Oh, right.

This has been around for a while.

So I don't know. We have we have been members. Hope we continue. Okay.

Because this is the this is the email I got from MMA saying that the they haven't paid their dues for fiscal year twenty six. I'm just Maybe we should. I can't. I'm just presenting what I was was that what I

was

emailed. But if there is a copy of that, if we have a copy of that, we'd like to have a copy of that for sure.

Just may I ask mister chair to to Bob, is it was that in the Dropbox folder?

No. I don't know how to Dropbox this. When I first became a finance meeting member, I went after it. When I called the office, when we found out we were members, we received one.

So maybe I had this to the agenda for maybe a a further discussion in the vote to just renew our membership so we can just keep that going, have that in a in a drop block for prosperity.

Yeah. Looked And into the square way to do this. I just don't know exactly how much it was. Believe that we in the past, we've, you know, voted to renew that subscription. I just haven't it wasn't in light of everything that's going to

happen, you know

what I mean? It just didn't hadn't popped up on our end. And,

brother?

May I ask you a question about that? The MMA guidebook, like, But is that do you have to pay MMA dues to get the copy for free? Or can I believe you can just buy it? You can just

I believe that we've had members of that portion of MMA for, let's say, yearly dues. And then think what

it is I think the dues probably give you the book for free, but I do know if, like, any not that anybody should be shelling it out if they don't want to, but I do know I believe I saw a link because I was like, oh, book. There's a book. And then I was like, oh, it's $65. And I was like, no, I'm not paying $65 for a book to be the secretary. But I was like, I just thought, you know, if anybody needs it in the meantime Mhmm. It might be able to be like downloaded and shared if it's different from Bob's.

Mhmm. I can look at

it both ways and then bring it to the board for future meetings and

see what we do. What's up?

Anything further? Entertain a motion to adjourn. So moved. Second. Allentator? Aye.