Town Council - Regular Meeting

I'd like us to rise for the pledge of allegiance. to read the legal notice for tonight's hearing and then I will review how these proceedings will go uh the rest of the way. League of Town of Plymouth public hearing on budget. The Board of Finance, Town of Plymouth, Connecticut, will hold a public hearing at the Plymouth Town Hall community room on Tuesday, April 21, 2006 at 6 PM to consider the recommendation of the board of finance regarding the town budget for fiscal year July 1, 2026 through June 30, 2027. Electors and qualified taxpayers of Plymouth will be heard at the public hearing. Immediately following the public hearing, there will be a joint meeting of the board of education, the board of finance, and the town council. Copies of the proposed budget as recommended by the for board of finance are available in the town clerk's office in the town hall during regular business hours and the proposed budget is viewable on the town website. I will also note we have a very limited amount of copies available this evening for folks and I'd like to just kind of give you an overview of how the proceedings will go tonight. Uh I will be turning the meeting over to the chairman of the board of finance in in a few moments. At that time, he's going to provide a general overview

of the budget and focus pretty much on the adjustments that were made from the original budget that was put forward by myself and at the the directions of the mayor's office taking the input from all our town departments. I want to personally thank the board of finance for many hours of review. I'd also like to thank the board of education because their task is equally as involved as the board of finance. I also want to thank members of the uh town council who reached out to the mayor's office and reached out to the finance director's office with questions and concerns and a great deal of effort has been put into this this evening. After this hearing is closed, there will be a short recess to set up room for the board of education because as per charter, a tri board meeting will need to be conducted. At that time, there will be open discussion between the board of education, the board of finance and town council. Then the board of finance will after consideration of any input in that part of that meeting as well as any inputs from the public hearing this evening may by majority vote change their recommended budget in any way vote on it before they vote to present the entire budget to the town council. At that point, the town council council will further re review and is open to make uh motions to adjust the budget as they may deem necessary. After the completion of that portion of the meeting, the town council will vote on the budget as amended by either board of finance or the town council. And then once it's accepted, then the board of finance has to officially set the mill rate for the town for the next

fiscal year. So at this time, I'd like to direct your attention to the monitors. Uh we are doing our best to uh make things visible for folks, but if you have a particular area of concern, you can reference it on the budget or, you know, as as you direct your questions. But at this point, I'd like to turn over to the chairman of the board of finance, Eugene Croch, uh, for his comments about the preparation of the budget and to focus on some of the major things that have changed. Mr. Croch. Okay.

Um, let me get you the microphone. Good evening everyone. Uh first of all, I'd like to uh announce that any motions made by the board of finance or the council today should be in the format of department line description current amount plus or minus amount and new amount. We've ran into a lot of confusion on the board of finance by having motions in different formats. Second, I'd like to say that the new mill rate is going to be much lower, as you'll see later, than the current mill rate. However, that's going to cost the town $389,17 in vehicle tax revenue. All right. And then for next year for the motor vehicle property tax grant, we're going to lose the $941,022 they will have this year. We're also facing oil prices and inflation. And oil is just not for gasoline and cars and diesel and heating. It's also a major component of asphalt, plastic, and things that we're going to need to buy in the next years. So maybe

the $6 million that we have coming up in the next few years for roads, it's not going to get the same as when we voted on because of that. Okay. Now starting next year, our finance department is going to add more detail to our revenue uh items so that we can do better projections and analysis and look at areas where we can raise additional revenues. We also have found that we rely a lot on what's called institutional knowledge. people that have been around a lot like Vicki um and know things we have trouble locating the actual documents, procedures, guidelines. So, we're going to be working with the finance department and the board to make them available online and available to the public for the appropriate parts. And we're hoping that that goes across all the departments in the town that we bring this up to stop so that people coming in new know what they're doing. I mean, only thing I knew when I came in is I had to pick up Tony and I do. Okay. We're going to ask, well, I'm going to ask the board of finance to approve a minimum percentage rate of the current approved budget to be in the undesated surplus fund, commonly called the rainy day fund, with suggestions on how any excess should be used. And that would go to the mayor and

town council for approval. And what that will do is make sure we have enough in reserve to meet the guidelines of bond council and people like that so that our bond rating and our finances that are looked at by OPM are all in line. But any excess would be available to make improvements in the town that are needed. Okay. Right now we do not have an exact number that we should have in the regular. Okay. And we will work with the finance department to ensure that the annual reports and the town audits are finished in a more timely manner. And that will allow us to do those things because right now we do not have a final 2025 audit which makes it hard to do make any suggestions on how to use those surplus funds because we're not sure of the exact number. Okay. So now we can go to the slides since I can't read that far. Um we did all of the slide one. And now um this is just a list of the board of finance members, but missing is Roxan Peragino. I don't know why. That's just in oversight. So, I'd like to recognize her. She's currently not available. Um, but she is a member of the board. Okay. And we're going to do the budget highlights,

some summary of the revenue and expenses, tax impact, and closing comments. And the budget goal as always is to prepare a balanced responsible budget under the current economic conditions. The highlights this year increase the board of education budget to 28,65 423 a 3.72 increase and the use of the board of finance changes that we made when we reviewed all the departments. The first one was board of finance. We increased our contingency fund from 50 to 75,000 in case these electrical rates and oil and gas and all that will have a little to offset anything that may happen. Um the town clerk, we reduced that by 24,000. They were going to change a part-time into a full-time and we left it at part-time regular employees. That should say minus 50,000 in land use 74,170 minus to 50 because there's an agreement to leave that as part-time position. Police overtime,

we reduced from 350 to 45,000 because right now they're currently fully staffed and we brought that back to the previous fiscal year's budgeted amount. assuming that being fully staffed that that number should go down. Public works, there's a new administrative assistant part-time 24,45. Highway, we reduced that because they're now fully staffed. and a transfer station over time. The same reason fully staffed in public works capital projects. Okay. The changes we made were the transfer station. I don't know if you've all heard about this, but the compactor broke. So, we took two pots of money for 50,000, combine them together, and we added in a new $80,000 line, which allows them to get a new compactor. And the police dash cams we reduced from 95,000 to 50,000. Must be your turn, Dave. This isn't working.

Try putting it Try pointing it behind you, maybe. I don't know. Are we picking up the picking up the changer? We have a technical glitch. We're going to seek help immediately. See? Oh. Oh, we found the click. Okay. All right. Uh, thank you, Mr. Croch. Um, I just want to hit some general high points. Again, these uh as a result of where where we landed here and just again to provide more context as part of the presentation, um just some general information that I think is important for folks to understand where, you know, where where do we go? Where does our money come from? Um folks that have been in this through this process before have seen similar slides. folks that may be new to the community or folks that are watching online, we felt it was important to just kind of provide a general overview of what these larger numbers represent. Um, in the in the uh red you can see department I'm sorry, let's well let's start with the big one. Let's start with the property taxes. Uh, as we all know, we went through re-evaluation and one of the largest considerations that we made when we developed the budget and worked with the board of finance and all our departments was to understand uh the potential impact of that and was to keep our impact down as much as we could. You can see the large uh slice uh of dependency on our operations on on property taxes. Uh the 471800,000 is the thin little red slice there. Uh that's department revenues. We collect fees. We collect um fees not only for the state but also fees for us to function. That includes even fees that

are collected by uh our recreation department for example. But we pulled those together to show what that is. Uh government grants large number. You may not be able to read the actual number, but it's $9,84,41. Uh the largest percentage of that grant is from the education cost share. Um there's a large, if you're not aware, there's a large push to modify the education cost share formula. um it might be to everyone's benefit if you want to be active in that process is to contact our state legislators and express that you may or may not be in favor of increasing it. I think we need to. It hasn't changed since 2013. Uh so that's that's that's a big impact, but um certainly an increase in that would help defer those expenses and help support the community to give us some regular tax relief. Um you know, there's a variety of other other revenues. The detail is in the revenue pages of the budget that's posted online and if you have a copy, it's in there. There's a whole three pages, two and a half pages devoted to revenue. And then there's there's some other various funding sources. Um I do want to mention quickly is other revenues. We are actively working to secure um a variety of uh guarantee grants, the steep grant, loss grant, town aid to roads, all those things. That takes a lot of work. Our finance department spends a great deal of time and collaboration working to fill out the necessary paperwork uh to get and secure those grants to help us with the various needs of the community. I want to click to the next slide, please, sir. You get it to go.

We messed it up. Vlad to the rescue. Thank you. Um, so where does our money go? Um, you know, we'll we'll go right to the uh elephant in the room, if you will, which is the uh the board of education, but again, I want to remind people that out of that 59% of the total budget, a large I'm sure Mr. Falcomi gives you the exact percentage, but I will just say in terms of numbers, you got to remember we get that ECS grant for 9 million some odd dollars. So although it looks like this is the biggest expense of the town, a great a larger portion of that and I believe um I believe the figure you gave in your presentation, Mr. Falcom, was just over $18 million. It's really the taxpayer burden portion of that. So although it looks big on this slide, that's not necessarily all coming from tax revenue. Jumping to the top, you've got general government administration and 16% total public safety, the public works and buildings. Uh I want to highlight that for a moment. As uh Eugene had mentioned in his presentation, we have got some larger issues coming down for this town in the future and we're going to have to work really hard to with the board of finance and all the departments as well as um some long-term planning efforts because we are going to have to bond additional money at some point in time to help address the the situation with the buildings in town. Uh then very quickly total health and services and the library parks and recreation debt service and then a larger slices that capital outlays at

9%. Um and you can see that um money goes pretty quick. Uh next slide. This is just another breakdown in terms of the dollar amounts of the expenditures. The previous slide was in percent. This gives the breakdown in dollar amounts of those same expenses for your understanding. Uh this is another view. Different folks like to see this data in different ways. So we took the liberty and I want to thank our um order of finance recording secretary for helping us put this together. Uh that's a bar graph of the expenditures. And next slide. Uh this is a uh chart view of the expenditures. So you can kind of see how the things have changed between the 202526 budget, the 2627 proposed budget and then the the changes. I think the important thing is to drop you down to the bottom and you'll see that this proposed budget is a 2.74 increase over last year. We are very fortunate because we avoided some of the larger expenditure increases that we expect such as health insurance, liability insurance and so on and pension liabilities have been reduced a little bit which kind of kept us in in check and allowed us to present a budget with that modest increase this evening. Uh finally, next slide. Uh just some budget totals of what's being proposed. The general fund budget from 2526 was 47,33,397. This new proposed budget going forward is for 48,600,72.

You can see a significant increase in the cost of operations of the community or a net increase of 2.1,297,000 2.74 increase and a proposed mill rate of 28.2 two. I want to thank you for your uh indulgence as we walk through those numbers. I would like now like to open up open up this hearing for public comment. Just want to couple of quick rules of engagement if you will. Uh we would like your name and your address. Again, it's electors and taxpayers, so we need your address. Um, the board of finance is here to listen to what you have to say, as is the council, but generally speaking, we want to direct our feedback to the board of finances as they have to still make any adjustments potentially before they committed to the town council. Generally, we are like to ask you to have your comments within a 3minut period. I do not have a timer, but we ask that you keep your comments concise as possible and keep them to the commitment or I'm sorry to the topic of the budget. We will do our best to address questions um after the public comment period is over. If we need another round of public comment, I will be happy to open it up for such. And of course, you know, let's be courteous. Again, thank you for your time. I want to thank you for attending this evening. And at this time, if there's any member of the public that would like to address the board of finance, please come forward and give us your thoughts. Thank you. Any public comment? We'll probably have to return the microphone to the stand or to the platform or podium. I'm sorry, whatever

that is. Podium. I should know that. Again, we may not be able to answer your questions right away, but if you have any questions at all or public comment, I encourage you to please step up and share your thoughts. Thank you very much. I believe there's a I believe there's Is there a paper there? Thank you. No one church.

It was working. Is it working? Yeah. Turn it on. I've done that.

Melanie Church, 328 Main Street. There's some things I want looked at. Number one, this building was built for our town. Paul, I don't want it ever changed. I want our senior center brought back for the seniors. We're the taxpayers and we pay the most money out of every employee here. And those things should be left the way that they were designated, not given to a to the police department or anyone else. If we have to move someone, let's move and make a crisis center or a emergency center, whatever you want to call it, and take the Terryville Ambulance on Harington Avenue, on Main Street, the Ambulance Corps, and the police department. We own part of the land up at the high school. We can put a building there and get three times the amount of a grant because we're combining. And that does not hurt what this has set for the town. This was built for the town. We did not pay for the senior center. the state of Connecticut there. They've done it for a every town in this state. All of a sudden now they want to give it away. The elderly are devastated by this. Why? They say, "Who pays the taxes? Who

pays the bills?" It's your money here that you're coming and asking for and saying, "Oh, well, the people can patty." And yet, who's the first person you want to cut? The taxpayers. And this has been going on for years. And it's got to stop. And I hope you consider it in this in this and any other place. If anybody's got to move, it's the police department. They've been offered four in four schools areas and they turned it down. When we had the school across the street, oh, it was going to be too expensive to put the police department there. The stories have to stop and you have to take into consideration every single person in this town. Thank you.

Thank you for your comments. Anyone else from the general public would like to comment on the proposed budget? I'm going to make a last call. Any comments considering the proposed budget for the town of Plymouth for fiscal year 27? I'm not seeing any additional comments. Mr. Chairman, if you'd like to have your board make a motion to adjurnn, we can adjourn and we'll take a 15minute recess to reset the room. I think we're going to allow for further discussion with the tri board. So, at this time, a a motion to adjourn would be in order.

Okay, this the public hearing portion of the evening is adjourned. We're going to take a 10 or 15 minute recess and get the room ready for the tri board meeting. And again, I want to thank you for coming this evening to discuss the budget. We'll be right back.

meeting. Thank you. Appreciate that.

All set. Yep.

Okay. Very good. Thank you. All right. Good evening again, everyone. I'd like to call this meeting of the Plymouth Town Council tribe board meeting with the board of education and the board of finance. And it is now 6:44 p.m. April 21, 2026. Like to acknowledge once again uh that the town council has all members present. I'd like to uh ask uh board of education chair uh do you have a quorum this evening quorum thank you very much we will get everybody's name I'm sure at some point and again uh board of finance you still have a quorum I assume okay great thank you very much exit notifications once again uh exit through the rear of the building go to your left goes through two doors you immediately go outside if you go to your right you need to exit through the police department area. And again, let's do the pledge of allegiance to the flag. Thank you. liberty and justice for all.

Thanks again. Just a quick reminder of the housekeeping of how we're going to uh go through uh the rest of this evening's uh meeting. Uh we're going to now move to item five, which is a budget discussion between the board of education, the board of finance, and the town council. I would like to uh take a moment for the benefit of the folks that are here tonight, also the board of education and the board of finance uh just to give a quick review of how the budget came together and just some highlights from the perspective of the mayor's office on some of the key factors on how the budget was developed and then we are going to turn it open uh for open discussion. I encourage uh any member of the town council, board of finance or board of education to ask questions. It's a collaborative effort. It took a lot for us to get here this evening. And we want to make sure if there's any concerns about any specific areas or any recommendations, those will be heard at that time and we can discuss that. And then again the board the board of finance needs to formally present the budget with or without changes to the town council which will make the final adoption based on their deliberation. So if I can have the next slide really quick. Uh next slide. There we go. Thank you. Uh just a quick summary again of how the budget was developed. We took into consideration the re-evaluation. Did a base comparison of what the potential impact of the reevaluation was going to be on the town's taxpayers. Uh what the potential was to moni how that would impact the mill rate and then you know a budget summary. What are the key things that we need to consider? what are some of the larger parts of the

budget and where the most impact was going to come from a variety of of of places and that was mainly in the expense line. The major impacts to the budget were on due to contracts and inflation. Some of this was alluded to by the chairman of the board of finance earlier. uh there are department requests. When we when we met with the departments back in late December, early January, we asked them to present as conservative as conservative a budget as they could, but to consider any staff increases in capitals. Again, we know we have some work to do, but we have to keep in mind the overall expenses of the town. Then we reviewed all of the revenue sources, permits and fees. I do expect to bring before the town council some fee changes particularly in our land use at some point in time during the next fiscal year. Uh our fees and permits are out of line with what other towns are charging for uh their services in in that regard. We also reviewed all the grant and state aids. I want to thank the uh members of the finance department for their diligence and providing myself the documentation that was necessary so we could verify the the amounts that were coming from outside sources as well as the efforts of the tax collector and her office to ensure that we had our most accurate count of revenue sources as available. I will say to you the general public you people at home and members of boards and town council this budget is not perfect. The board of finance spent a great deal of time on it. We had multiple revisions of the budget as you know and that's the result of what we're supposed to do which is to work together review the numbers ensure it's the most accurate budget that we can present possible. We also s saw outside counsel from the office of policy management in the state of

Connecticut when we had questions regarding certain aspects of the budget. Finally, we are looking at using parts of the parts of the undesated fund balance to pay down capital expenses. Uh, next slide, please. I won't spend a lot of time on this, but again, for context, uh, the re-evaluation impact, uh, reevaluation is not meant to raise taxes. It's meant to redist redistribute the tax burden according to market values. Um we had a lot of folks came in uh concerned about their assessments and we followed all the necessary protocols and appeal processes to give them the best response we could within the letter of the law. Um it's important to note nearly 50% of our properties including vacant land realized a property value increase of over 50%. So the market adjustment has had a heavy impact. some types of houses and residential usage and uh commercial usage had different rates of change. I just want to provide a couple of examples of how the mill rate would change. Um the 50% or I'm sorry how how the mill rate would change as a result of the re-evaluation. Uh you can see that if a 50% assessment was needed across the board, a mill rate would have been approximately 26. A 60% assessment increase would we need a mill rate of 2473 and a 70% assessment again this is an average across the board would have reduced the mill rate to 23. So you can see there's an inverse relationship to the value of our homes and the calculation of the mill rate. Uh the bottom line here was my original proposed budget and it proposed an increase of 3.06% 06% the middle rate would have been 3167 as you can see by what was been shared

to you tonight by the board of finance that has been modified fairly significantly. Next slide please. Some of the major line changes again I might be repeating what the chairman said earlier but the fixed cost increase contractual salaries inflation pressure insurance and benefits. We did dodge the bullet quite a bit with insurance premiums significantly lower. Our insurance premiums came in about on an average I think it was 8.9% is what we factored in. Other towns are experiencing 12 14 15% of increase. So we're kind of fortunate our um our loss ratios and our exposures are pretty have been pretty consistent and that benefited us by reduc or keeping our insurance relatively low. Uh there were department requests as again that was mentioned earlier. Uh there was some staff recommendations, some of which uh were approved by the board, some have been recommended to be reduced by the board. Um the board of education uh request was not changed. Uh I did not recommend a change in it. I believe the board of ed did make an adjustment to the request from the board of education. Uh and finally, there's a great deal in the capital's page which includes roads. The the plan for conservation and development is still an expense that we're incurring. There's expenses for CIF, which is the community investment fund. We do expect to get a grant award, a significant grant award for community investment. Uh the library has increases in capital needs including HVAC systems. Um police cameras and cars also were included in this proposed budget. I want to make a comment next slide about revenues very quickly. Uh revenues I want to remind folks are dynamic. Uh there's changes in prior year tax collections, historic tax collections, interest and leans. Some of those are more predictable than others. State aid

figures, we have a high confidence that in the budget, you'll see in the revenue section, a variety of state aids that we're we're very comfortable in. Uh there could be a change in the ECS grant as I mentioned earlier. Uh that would certainly help us out a little bit, not only for this year, but going forward. And then we have about $600,000 in investment income. If any bankers are out there, you know that we we do have a pretty comfortable pot of money in the 22 to $23 million range that draws interest and we have a variety of accounts that are swept and we gain the interest income from that. Uh there are some reimbursements that we're expecting uh from capital that we've already invested. There's a variety of grants that have been applied for the various departments and we're working to ensure that we get reimbursed for those grants and we just received back the $250,000 from the original grant that was issued to us for the community investment fund. I'm glad to announce that that and I want to thank folks that worked very hard to close that and get the necessary uh detail back including Vinnie Climus who had spearheaded that effort and made a lot of copies of checks and invoices and everything that needed to be submitted to the state multiple amount of times to recover that $250,000. Um we learned a lot from that process and we're looking to tighten up our guard rails around how grants are administered and tracked. will work with our board of finance and our finance department on that. There's a variety of other revenues as I mentioned Stanley grants town aid and the state grant. Um we this budget includes an injection to pay down capitals of $750,000 from the undesated fund balance as of 2024 financial statement. That audit has been

completed approved and submitted through the state um office of policy and management. So that at that time our undesated fund balance was $9,929,621 a 22.6% um of of the operation budget. Many towns carry a undesated fund balance of closer to 12 to 16% in that range. So, we're very fortunate and the previous administrations and previous boards of finance did a pretty darn good job, but that also tells us that we need to do a better job of budgeting dayto-day. Uh, large surpluses are not are a good indication that you got a strong bank account, but in my opinion, they're not a good indication that we're really doing as tight of a budget as we can do. We should, as you all know that you run your checkbooks at home. You budget and you're supposed to budget and spend what you got. But we'll take a surplus. Don't misunderstand me. Uh finally, uh we've been working on uh the police extra duty fund uh as an opportunity to do some uh some better revenues and and get some better revenues from that oper, you know, how that's operating, how that's maintained. We're still working very closely with the police department, the office of policy management, and our financial advisors about how that fund is managed. And finally, the uh just some just in closure again, the folks that are here tonight, myself, uh this the school department, the board of finance members, I want to thank everybody for their participation. At this time, I want to open up the floor to um any additional comments from board chairman, from the board of finance. Is there any additional comments before we

deliberate? Any questions? Mr. Chairman Croch, any comments that you might have at this time? We're on item five.

Comments. No comments at this time. Okay. Uh, would the board of education like to make any general comments or questions of the of the town council?

And I appreciate you being here. I know that there's some questions that probably going to come from the town council. I'm going to remain in item number five and open it up to town council. If there's any items that you would like to discuss or you have questions on, I will let you know that our finance director and staff are here. We if there are questions regarding modifications to the budget uh we can respond in a fairly quick manner to tell you what the impact on the budget and the um proposed percentage of increase over last year's budget might be. So I'm going to throw it out. Let me start at my far right. Mr. Angle, do you have any questions at all? No questions at this time. Mr. Tisham. No.

Okay. Thank you. I turn over Mr. Green. You have some questions? Can the board of finance explain the um staffing for the parks department and then also the library what they're requesting? Can you tell us what page of the budget that's on Mr. Green? Just 25 is the library, 27 is the parks.

Thank you. Is there a particular line, Mr. Green, that you're referring to? I'm on uh I'm on I I could say for the uh library that the mayor recommended two additional positions and which we went along with. I can just comment on that briefly. uh multiple multiple occasions it's been brought before uh the board of finance as well as in previous budget previous budget years that the library staffing was um inadequate to support the hours of the library that the director felt necessary. So I went along with the recommendation of the uh director of the library. That's how I came up with the number. I did not modify her request. I I don't know what additional information she might have provided during her review of that to the board of finance.

Basically, that was going to allow her to stay open more hours weekly with this added part-time position.

And then and then uh the uh the parks department, that's seasonal. Those were seasonal employees. 27 27 and up to 26, right? Is that department head regular

5.620 620 right 68,000 parks sorry oh there it's a different page in my job um that was one we we did go back and forth on eliminating or reducing but our last accepted motion was to leave it as what the mayor asked for. So those are dedicated park employees whereas they have in public works employees that do work in parks and recreation when they have time. But these two is it one or two positions I think it was two um are going to be working directly in the parks. position seasonal employ,000 budget part of it is other parttime seasonal employees. The total is Did the uh board of finance consider any of the board of eds capital requests?

It's um we had gone through their different uh And right now it's a very high figure. It's now either special. I ask for quotes. I do not have the chairman here and I am only They had made request and they had the big

um a couple of points of clarification. And I'm going to hand out to the board of finance some information that we have here uh that do you mind? Um that talks about our priorities. Our priorities have shifted based on some safety concerns that we have at Plymouth Center School. Um while the roof had some major issues this winter with water coming in and and uh impacting uh the alarm panel for the the fire department and so on. Uh we've shifted our priorities to the sidewalks at Plymouth Center um because we have children that are falling, people that are getting hurt, uh definitely some tripping hazards there. We do have prices on that that we're going to hand out to you as well as the roof um replacement at Plymouth Center School. With regard to the roof replacement today, we received word on what it would cost to remove the solar panels and put them on. It's approximately $260,000 additional on top of $266,000

263 263920

um to remove the panels and put them back on the roof on top of the quote that you have there. But really, it's the sidewalks for approximately $65,000 that we are looking to have replaced at Clement Center because they are falling apart. Additionally, I just want to point out uh Mr. Green asked with regard to uh additional supply money for teachers and we provided that on the front page of that for the board of finance as well. Uh, so are you asking us to include this in this year's budget? I mean, the budget for next year.

That was a request Mr. Green made when we presented to the town council with regard to teacher supplies and what additional supplies they would need uh to better meet the needs of of the the students in their classes per grade level. That's provided. Um, and I just want to point out one other thing with regard to capitals. Um, we believe it's 2008 was the last time we've had a capital improvement project supported by the town for the schools and that's when the Eli Terry roof actually collapsed onto the floor of the art room in Eli Terry. That was the last time. And and we provided a list um of the different items that we were able to take care of internally. Um but there there are some projects such as that roof that we're not going to be able to touch with the way that we can um fund projects.

Okay. So this would be net of anything you're taking care of with the syncing fund. The syncing fund um if you really want to talk about the syncing fund and who controls the syncing fund um the board of education. We are spending it strategically. So right now we are taking care of a capital project and replacing the heat pumps at Fiser School that has been on the capital improvement list for over 20 years. Uh those have failed us and we need to replace those. So we're utilizing that and grant funds to replace those uh heat pumps. The additional money we have remaining in our syncing fund is going to be held by the board of education off of my request if possible. It's up to them, but it's about $280,000. And that replaces our math program two years from now so our budget doesn't get impacted with a a critical program that we have for our students. So that program comes up in two years and that's what that $280,000 is for. And then after that we have to start looking at how we could put money into that non-lapsing account to take care of our reading program that is going to expire after that as well. So, we plan on using those funds as almost a a cycle to replace our curriculum needs before we do any more infrastructure needs um because we've taken care of as much as we possibly can at this point.

Right. So, um the answer is these are net of what you have done with the sinking fund and you what you're taking off the heat pump replacement and everything else. It's still a valid request. the the heat pumps are are going to be done through our our syncing fund, right? And with the grant. Yes. So, they're not Yes, we can delete this request. Correct.

Just are we good with that particular topic? Mr. Chairman, Mr. Green, you're you're all set. Okay. Great. Absolutely. Please do. Use the speaker. Oh, yeah. Let's pass. Yeah, let's pass the microphone. Thank you.

Okay. Capital improvements have only started about two years ago and they have handed out a couple of, you know, formulas and that that they've been going through. I don't know what the ranking is for any of the other stuff, but we will they will be starting up again to go through and do a change of what's needed. So you will have to be you have to get a hold of the chairman get put on the list and uh I strongly urge just not the person that's in charge of the uh the bu building whether it's cap uh capital building whether it's um one of you uh the principal or whoever needs to go and make a strong real strong case but they can tell you how they do the scoring. It is, you know, just a plain simp um to say it's a very simple scoring measure that they take that they've used from California, New York, all over the country to come up with the capital figures. There is a lot of capital need in this town completely from one end to the other from roads to schools to buildings. Everything needs to get done and they've tried to prioritize everything and everything right now it seems to be falling apart and the capital budget is only as well as taxpayers can put into it and trying to give the taxpayers relief and to work with you know a real true budget is really really hard. But if you can come to the Capitols, get a hold of the chairman again and make your needs known.

And again, with all due respect, um we've been to the capitals. We've been there a number of times. And um these are safety concerns for our kids. We have water that's coming into our building, knocking ceiling tiles down during the school day, uh because they are so saturated. Uh rooting the electrical panel for the the fire department. um that's that's a significant need that needs to be addressed. So whatever scoring method or mechanism they're utilizing uh we and and since nothing has been touched within the schools in over 15 years uh and I understand this committee has just gotten together recently but we feel that our needs are not being addressed and they need to be addressed because we're talking about the safety and well-being of children and so we're going to keep advocating for that. Uh so also I'd just like to interject uh not only for the benefit of the boards but also for the benefit of the general public. Um there are opportunities throughout the course of the year in multiple amount of ways to um address emergency situations as I think the board of finance is well aware and I'm sure Mr. Superintendent you're aware as well. Uh there are provisions within our town government that allow folks to bring in requests for emergency appropriations. There's a process for that. Uh certainly the board of finance or the town councils at Liberty to add what they feel is an appropriate amount additional appropriation during this process, but it's not the only avenue. Um, I would echo the concern that we need to look at our capital process. Uh, I know that that's been reestablished. Uh, but one of the things that we would

I would like to see as as mayor is to have us uh more consistently work through that process and look at the larger needs of the community as we go forward into the next next budget year. uh as has been alluded to, some of these items are quite large and they're and they simply won't be able to be included in an operating budget under normal circumstances. Perhaps capitals uh but we're going to have to get together uh during the course of the upcoming year to address the board the building needs. Um, it's been mentioned several times and I will be happy to work with the leadership of the board of finance and the board of education to begin those conversations of how we can move forward and get those larger issues. Uh, we're not going to be able within the parameters of this meeting. I don't think it's appropriate to add groups or anything like that, but there's a there's immediate capital needs. Those could be addressed uh in the form of a motion by modifying the capital accounts uh during this meeting. Um, any additional questions or comments on the capitals and roofs and the sidewalk presentation? Any additional questions? Hearing none. Thank you very much. I appreciate the information that everyone is providing. I'll go to Councilwoman Voyard. Do you have any questions about the budget at this point?

Mr. Zerki, any items that you'd like to discuss? I had a couple quick things. Uh he's going through revenues and one of them was on the police department revenue item 45102 uh parking tickets. Uh it's page number seven. Uh actual 2023 we were at uh just shy of $24,000. Now we're down to $150. Is there a reason why that revenue item dropped by $24,000 over a period of three years? the Twilight Zone. Yes, the Twilight Zone.

Um, that's one of those items we've asked the board of finance to make sure that from now on they are coded as revenues as parking parking tickets and not into a miscellaneous line item. So, they are buried somewhere else in a revenue item and in the future they will be broken out again. I just saw that was a big number to Yeah, we

uh the second thing was on capitals. Uh we have the new line item for the new trash compaction system listed under uh $180,000 that never made it to the total cost line item. Uh so right now the total cost of light it light item for capitals was uh $1,729 or $729 uh 827

small print no problem Jason very small we're all struggling today so if we added that 180,000 back in there that's going to bring that line item up to $1.9 million for capitals. So, does that adjust our 2.7% and our miller rate? Uh, microphone, please, ma'am. Thank you. Thank you.

Okay. It doesn't change uh the percentage or the mill rate. Uh all that is is the the very last item uh line the total cost 1,99,827 is the uh whole complete total of the general fund lo uh town nature roads municipal grants and any other sources. That's the total amount on that very last column on the bottom. Okay. The one uh the other one that says the general fund is the 1,271,249.

So that clarification just so that payment would come out of the general fund and not add to the bottom line tax revenue required.

That's perfect. Uh the only other question I had was the increase uh police department again line item 51620 administrative and crossing guards. Uh it's page 16. Uh we went from 148,674 to two 200,753 uh with a 35% increase. Do you know if that was just for one person's salary? Are we hiring more people? I can take that if you'd like, Mr. Chairman. Uh, it was brought to our attention that the crossing guard, all the crossing guards that support uh that support the daily school activities, the crossing guards uh wages haven't been increased for the last four or five years. So, it was a request that came through the PD and I don't know what's going on, but anyway, that's that's what the increase was was an increase for wages for all the crossing yards that support the uh support that that activity in the morning and the afternoon. That's is a wage increase across the board. I

I don't recall the hour of wait, pardon me. So that they would be paid, right? Correct. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Oipiac. Yes. Just last thing is uh the board of finance for the con reserve contingency. Um have we ever used that contingency before or has it just kind of been there?

Oh yeah, it's been used many times. Uh only in dire emergencies near the end of the year usually. I think the last time we used it was uh recently in the last budget year was to help replace the uh emergency communication tower piece. Wasn't that what we grabbed the money from? Because that was hit by lightning and their insurance didn't cover the full amount and to recover the communication towers. We I think it was six I was on a port of finance at the time. Was it 60,000 Vicki? Do you remember it was it was out of contingency. There had been other requests that were made out of contingency but were not approved.

That's all I have for now. Thank you. Uh we'll go around one more time. Any any other additional questions from either the board of education, board of finance? Any additional questions? Town council. anything. Mr. Board of Finance.

Um, I just want to make sure that we're all looking at the same budget. So, the the latest budget that I had in front of me printed that I got when I came into the meeting was draft six. That's what we're all looking at, right? Right. It probably should have said draft 7, Mr. Oyiac, but it was revised and corrected April 13, but it actually what you have was a revision from what you folks had last week, right? Two weeks ago on Thursday,

right? I just want to make sure we're all looking at the same budget. And when I quickly went through it, I saw some what I'll call uh typographical errors of which the chairman assured me is uh doesn't change the direction of the budget or what we've appropriated at all. But uh I just had a couple of questions. I want to make sure that's clear in my mind. What is the rate of that we expect to collect in taxes? What's it the revenue based on? I want to make sure that's not a typographical error. Are we expecting 100% collection 95?

We want to pass the microphone to whoever's speaking, please. Thank you. We are expecting to collect 100% after you factor in the collection rate percentages. So if you take the grand list, multiply it times the collection rate and you get up to the adjusted for collection, that's the amount we assume we're going to collect 100% of. Simple in simple terms that means we're anticipating 100% collection rate.

Everybody is going to pay their taxes 100% after adjustment allowing for those we don't collect.

Not the number you're using. I'd be happy to interject for a moment, Mr. Chairman. There are several ways that are acceptable calculation methods of the mill rate. Not all towns do it the same. This particular proposed calculation of mill rate assumes that the personal property tax would be collected at 100%. That is correct. the personal property tax. I will say that the adjusted rate, if we use the adjusted rate of 98.4%. Uh that would increase the mill rate and it would also push the responsibility of every taxpayer who does pay their taxes on time to cover for the people who do not. So that's a fundamental argument about who should be responsible for those taxes. Uh, I met with the finance director and we discussed this option with the office of representatives from the office of policy and management. I want to be clear, they did not tell us which way to do it. It was the recommendation of the mayor in the finance department that we calculated in this method in an effort to reduce the tax burden on all the people of town who just gone through re-evaluation. There is some risk in that. There are individuals who believe that that's too big a risk. There are individuals who think it's I I believe uh that are possibly overstating that risk. But I think it's with the in consideration of what our regular calcula our regular rate is over time, we're collecting 99

99.2% a rate of 99.2% 2% which is significantly different from a 98.4% rate. I hope I'm making sense. So any budget has some inherent risk. We could receive a lot more money in the ECS grant which makes this a mute point. We may not. We also are looking for other sources of revenue. So I as my recommendation and I discussed it with the chairman of the board of finance. Um I would leave it up to the board of finance how they want to calculate the mill rate. So yes there is some risk. Um I believe it's minimal considering that our historic rate of collection also had you know for overdue taxes has been quite good. Uh I don't have that exact figure in front of me but I do know for a fact that the last three fiscal years we've been in a 99.3% average calculation. So I believe that this is a prudent measure to protect and give the taxpayers a little bit of a break. Certainly from an operational standpoint as we go through the budget review process and the departments have to go through their budget review next year. We're going to monitor that expenses very closely and if necessary we could always initiate spending freezes or come before the ber board of finance for additional appropriations if it was necessary. When I was on the board of education, we froze our budget in January more than once. So, I hope that that gives a little bit of an explanation of why we're taking this approach.

Well, the only thing I can add is the board of finance directed the finance director to use the adjusted rate to calculate the mill rate. Now, if he went back to the other rate, that was without our suggestion or approval. We are still suggesting that we use the modified collection rate and then the mill rate would increase. Okay, that's no problem. You the as the board of finance set the mill rate so we can make that adjustment. I'm just concerned why it changed.

I did not know that we weren't on the same page on that topic, Mr. Chairman. So no problem.

So at the portion where we set the mill rate, we'll we'll we'll notify you of each one. Mr. Chairman, is that okay? And then the board of educ I'm sorry, the board of finance can set the mill rate is appropriate. We could set a new we could set a new collection rate now if and see what happens. uh doing 100% to me is is not realistic. You're never going to collect 100% of your taxes. You might collect 99.2, you might collect 99.3, but you're never going to collect 100%. So, I would not recommend going with 100% collection.

So, I'll ask uh VJ if you guys can run that. That's that's the column on the grand list adjusted for collections. We want to use that figure as opposed to the 1,265,13,193.

I I believe when we were working it before brings it up to 28.3 something that the number that we were talking about. Well, why not? People sleeping. 28.63.

What is it? If we were to use the adjusted for collections, the 1,237,727462 at a 98.40% collection rate, the mill rate would be 28.63%.

Yeah, there's no impact on that calculation. And this is just to set the mill rate. So all things being unchanged at this point, depending on what the council would like to approve, we'll use the adjusted rate uh for the final calculation. So those of you who have this document in front of you, uh the proposed budget and the proposed mill rate would now um reflect a 28.63 63 mill rate instead of 2802. Any other questions about items in the budget, particular line items, calculations, collections, etc. Now, council, any additional questions? I'm not seeing any additional questions, Mr. Chairman. Uh, Croch, I'm going to return the uh the discussion portion. I'm going to return it to you for so your board can make any other other final adjustments that they'd like to make. We kind of the blend of number five and number six here together, which is fine. Um, and then you can make your guys recommendation by majority vote to send your proposed budget budget to the town council. Tony, do you have any further recommendations? John,

Vicki, Jennifer, at this time we have no further recommendations, but I believe Vicki is going to make a motion. I'd like to make a motion to pass to the town council a budget which reflects the total revenue of 48 uh 48,600,72 with expenditures of 48,672. All in favor?

Oh, second. Second. All in favor.

Okay, passes three.

Thank you, folks. Okay, it is back in the hands of the town council. At this time, I'd like to move to item seven, which is to discuss and take action on the app final approval of the budget as recommended by the board of finance for fiscal year 2627. Um, is there any discussion or motions to adjust the budget from the town council? Yes, mayor.

Go ahead, Mr. Green. I will I would like to make a motion that we eliminate line item 431 51620, the part-time administrative assistant for the public works director.

There's a motion on the floor to remove that item from the budget. What was the dollar amount, Mr. Green, again? May I ask? Uh $24,45. I will second that motion. Motion made by Mr. Green to reduce the funding for that position that was added. It was seconded by Mr. Any questions or discussion on that motion?

Absolutely. That's discussion. Sorry, I was just curious as to what the thinking is behind getting rid of the parttime position. Is there a reason for that or just curious? I just feel at this time that it's not needed in in that uh in that office. Any other discussion on the motion? Seeing none, let's do a roll call vote, please. Mr. Zigerski, yes. Miss Boyard, Mr. Green, yes.

Mr. Tisha, yes. Mr. Angle, that carries 4 to one. So the budget at this point has been adjusted and reduced by that amount of money and that it line item will be removed from the budget. Are there any at least from that this time? Any other recommendations, motions to adjust the budget by the town council? Mr. Mayor, I'd like to make a motion to add $65,000 to the capital improvements for sidewalk replacements at the center school for the safety of the children. I'll second that motion.

Motion, Mr. Sigurski, to add funding in the capital line items for sidewalk repair, seconded by Mr. Green. Any discussion on the motion? Any discussion? We'll start by the same way we went last time. Mr. Zigerski, yes. Miss Boyard, Mr. Green, yes. Mr. Tisha, yes. Mr. Engel, yes.

And that motion carries 4 to one. So, we've added that additional expense. Uh, there is some off offset there, I'm sure. So, I'm sure that we are generally still within our guidelines of keeping the budget under 3% if that's our goal. Are there any other motions or comments? Motion. Yes, Mr. Green. I like motion that we add an additional $28,000 for additional supply money uh for the teachers at each school. Uh let's hang on a moment, Mr. Engle. Is there a second on that motion?

I'll second it. Okay. Now, your point of order is what, Mr. Engel? Point of order is we can't specify as a council where we can give them a long specify as a council where they

I'd have to rule on that in favor of the point of order. However, if you'd like to modify retract and modify and ask for an additional $28,000 to be added to the board of education, that would be an order and we could request that the board of education consider that addition and for that purpose, but we can't do it. That's the way the law works or we can the table. I'll retract my motion. I'll direct the second. Thank you. Appreciate that. Is there been a motion in replace to replace that one?

U BJ, can you do you know about how much money we are to hitting that 3%. Yeah.

Right. Right. Yeah. Right now we have a net Yeah. Right now, we have a net of about $41,000 additional that's been added to the budget. I think the number we were discussing previously was somewhere around,000 $90,000 would bring us to 2.9 or 2.95%. Did you have that figure? Yeah, we're still And so that's a probably a net increase of about uh some very quick math here of about $39,000 $72,000. If please confirm that that's relatively correct, the amount of 72 would put us at 299 or 295. There's no impact of the collection rate. That's an acceptability rate. So this just increases the percentage of increase over last year's budget, which is the guideline for the town council to determine whether or not we want to send the bud budget to referendum.

Thank you for your patience as we do the math. How we doing finance team? Okay. So, if we increase the budget by 115,000, which we have not done yet, and I'll recap in a moment, that would still keep us under the target of 3% if that's the will of the town council. Okay. So, uh, our net increase at this point after removing the line item for 244 and adding a line item of 65,000, we've approximately added $39,000 to the budget. So, at this point, an additional $28,000 will keep us still Oh my goodness. How much is that? You working on that? I don't want to misstate anything. And this I don't have a computer or a calculator in front of me. And my math skills used to be a lot better.

You want to recap the numbers again for you, Mary Jane? Exactly where we are. Right. So, we we still are net below $80,000. Okay. So, I'm going to bring it back to the town council. We had the motions were retracted from the floor. Is there any additional motions from the town council regarding adjustments to the budget? I'll make a motion that we add an additional $30,000 to the board of ed budget. Is there a second?

I'll second that. $30,000 increase in the board of education budget and we'll be watching. Mr. Mayor, if I might, I just would like to say we appreciate very much you considering us and our hardworking teachers would will definitely appreciate it and put it to good use for the for the kids. Thank you.

Thank you. I'll recognize the board for that. Thank you. Uh any discussion or questions from the town council? There's a motion on the floor to increase the board of educ I don't know what's going on. There's a motion on the floor to increase the board of education budget by $30,000 and it's been seconded. Any further discussion on the motion? Yep. Motion by Mr. Green, second by Mr. Zigurski. We're going to start on the other side of the table this time. Uh all those in favor of the motion, Mr. Angel. Mr. Tisha, yes. Mr. Green, yes. Mr. Bullyard, Mr. Zigerski,

yes. Okay, motion carries unanimously. Any additional motions by the town council to adjust the budget? I'd like to make a motion for Mr. Tish. Go ahead. Board of Ed two regular education teachers aids at $45,500 and a daytime school security monitor $29,250.

Yeah. Um I have to I have to rule in favor of the point of order, Mr. Tisha. We cannot direct them. If you'd like to add an additional flat amount of money, uh you can certainly do that. Yeah, I'd like to make a motion to add a lump sum to the board of ed for $74,750. I'll second that motion.

There's a motion on the floor and seconded to increase the board of educ board of education money by an additional $74,750. Any discussion on the motion? Any questions on the motion?

What's the balance? My number show. You lost your microphone, Mr. Angle. And we'll we'll recap in a minute to make sure we get it right. about 3.2%.

Do you have a dollar that that brings us over

just by uh if we increase the board of ed by what Ron wants to do it, what does that bring us to like dollar-wise? Like the how many dollars over the 3% you need 1,414 371 to keep it under at 2.99%.

So you need to shave $6 million off. How how much money do we have to shave off to get it back to three? Basically, what I'm asking You need to save 30,000,000. It's 49,000.

We are still in discussion. There's a motion been made for an increase of 74750. And during the discussion, we've identified that that would exceed the amount that would prevent this budget from going prevent this budget from being adopted this evening and it would have to go to referendum. I'd like to make a motion uh be in order to retract the second and the and the motion and the motion first. Please like to retract

your original motion petition to withdraw. Thank you. I assume the second is being withdrawn. Second. Thank you. Okay. Is there a modified motion would be order if it be in order if you'd like to do so, sir. Mr. Mayor, can I make a motion first? Sure. I make a motion to reduce the uh line item

on the board of finance. The uh line item number 59510 reserve contingency back to the record. the requested amount of $50,000 by reducing it by $25,000. What page was that, sir? It's going to be page number 12 and it was light item number 59510 under the board of finance budget. Correct. Yep. So, it' be reverting it back to the requested amount of $50,000.

Uh there's been a motion made by Mr. Zigurski to reduce the line item for the board of educ I'm sorry the board of finance contingency by $25,000. Is there a second? I'll second that.

Second by Mr. Green. Lot of accounting on the fly. Any discussions on the motion to reduce the contingency fund for the board of finance by $25,000. Any discussion? Any questions? One more time. Any gentlemen, any discussion or questions on the motion, please? Hearing none, I will take a roll call vote on the motion. Hold on, please. I want to get this down. I know our recording secretary is on it, but I'd like to check my notes as well. Motion on the floor. Mr. Zigerski, in favor of the motion to floor reduction of that amount. Yes.

Yes. Miss Bullyard. Yes. Mr. Green. Yes. Mr. Tisha. Yes. And Mr. Engel. Yes. Motion carries unanimously. We've reduced that line item. Are there any additional motions from the town council regarding adjustments of the budget as being discussed? Yes. I'd like to make a motion, Mr. Tish. Go ahead. to raise the board of ed to 60 $68,000. There's a motion on the floor to increase the board of education line by $68,000. Is there a second? Second.

Second, Mr. Zigerski. Any discussion on the motion hearing? None. A motion on the floors to increase the board of education by $68,000. Mr. Zigerski in favor? Yes. Mrs. Boyard, are you in favor? Yes. Mr. Green? Yes. Mr. Tisha? Yes. And Mr. Engel? Yes.

Motion carries unanimously. Got your calculator ready over there, sir? And there might be more questions, but we'll hold off for a second. 2.98 is what we've adjusted the budget to. 2 point that's a 2.98 98 increase over last year's budget which under charter allows us to do as a board a board of I'm sorry as a town council without bringing this budget to referendum. Are there any more motions on the floor regarding adjustments of the current budget under discussion? Are there any more motions? I'd like to make a motion to move the budget forward as adjusted.

There's a motion to move the adjusted budget forward by Mr. Engel and it was second by Miss Bulliard. Are there any questions about the motion or discussion on the motion? The motion is to move the budget forward. Any discussion? Seeing none, Mr. Sigurski? Yes. Miss Boyard? Yes. Mr. Green, yes. Mr. Tisha, yes. And Mr. Angel, yes.

Thank you very much. And thank you for your participation. The town council has voted to move the board of I'm sorry to move the adjusted budget back to the board of finance for setting of the mill rate. The mill rate Whoops. The mill rate calculation, as we discussed earlier, is not impacted by the adjustments it's made. The mill rate calculation is based on the amount of revenue that's needed to be generated to support the budget. So, I'll turn it back to you, Mr. Chairman. Croch, is there uh action from your committee to set the mill rate, please? You grab your microphones, please. Let's want to make sure we get this correct. Thank you.

We need a motion to have the fiscal year 2027 mill rate set at 28.73. hearing. None. The board of finance at this time elects not to set a meal right. Well, I'm going to interject and say that um I don't know what to do. If the board of finance refuses to set the bill rate, I would suggest that we have a follow-up meeting with the board of finance to discuss what the issue is. Uh we have by charter several days to to uh remedy that. Uh I'll have I don't have counsel here. I don't have our town counselor I'm sorry town attorney here to help me make a ruling. So I will say that at this point the town council has by the authority that's invested in vested in them that they have set the budget. they've made adjustments on what was proposed within their legal right to do so. um if there's further deliberations necessary on how to set the mill rate. Uh as I said earlier, um I'm in uncharted territory. So I would suggest uh Chairman Croch that um you and I get together as soon

as possible to uh meet with the town attorney and get a ruling on how we would move forward. I would like to suggest that we try to hammer this out right now while we're all still here. If that's okay. It's okay with me. I mean, um, you you need a motion in a second. You can discuss it and find out where the concerns are.

Do I have a motion for discussion on setting the mill rate? I have a second. Anybody? I have a second. All in favor? Tony, John, Jennifer, Vicki. Uh, that motion passes 3 to one.

Well, Mr. Mayor, you indicated we have some time, right? In my best judgment, I believe we have time by the charter. I initially asked the chairman if we could have a brief recess, but um I think we absolutely have to proceed with setting the milk.

Personally, order please. Personally, when if it came to a vote, I u I believed I was going to vote president. Um that's a vote that one of our former presidents often took in items that were highly controversial. I think we have to have a mill. I'm happy that we're under the 3%. I am a little my advice because we are an advisory kind of body. You don't have to take our advice, but we would hope you would listen to our advice. One of my hang-ups is how much money we're taking out of that rainy day fund and creating a budget hole for next year. And I think all the people and want to do the right thing. I don't question anybody's motives, but we all want to do the right thing. We're all talking about we want to give relief to the taxpayers. So in my mind, if we had a surplus of over a million dollars, we could have done a lot of things with that money.

One would be taxpayer relief

to take care of some opportunities uh to improve our top safety of the schools groups like that. And when I dug around a little bit, I found out for the last few years, or at least it was indicated to me for the last few years, We've had gigantic surpluses in my mind. What do I call gigantic? Certainly over a million dollars. A million dollars. million and a half in fiscal year 2025. If the figures I received were accurate, in 2024 it was a million 700,000. In 2023, I believe it was over 2 and a half million. So, I have a hard time reconciling. There's not places in the budget that there's extra money, but uh I've begun my to have my say. I don't know if anybody on the board wants to talk. Uh we we don't talk about the big elephants in the room.

I'm willing to compromise. I'm willing to seek the collective best judgment. Again, I don't I don't question anybody's motives and I hope people don't question mine. Does anybody else want to make any comments, suggestions? At this time, uh, I failed to move a motion forward. So, I will set up a time to meet with you and determine what our next steps are.

Mr. Chairman, I would second that motion for vote. Do I have a motion to establish the mill rate at 28.73?

And I'll let people vote for I said I would vote for second. Yes.

Please do.

I am still very disappointed with term counsel. Ron Tisha, Joe Green, you never attend the be courteous, please. Thank you. You have not attended any of the board of finance. Please don't point at your pen, Miss Gary. Thank you.

TJ Sigurski, maybe a quarter of the time has shown up. The only two people that have shown up to the board of finance and not even anybody has sat here to see how we do the budget and the discussions we've gone through have only been Mr. Angel and Miss Boyard. They are the only ones that have faithfully come to our meetings to help us and not one of you have come and unfortunately I feel that this town is not getting its fair share. It's totally all part of educa education. I know the kids are important. We've just about hit the 399% that you guys have wanted. Congratulations. But this town needs some relief and that's what we try to do. We're not playing either side. We have tried to stay middle of the road with the board of finance doing the best it can for the people of this town and for the board of ed. Do you like the figures? I don't like the figures either. There is a lot that has to get done. Also, I think there is a conflict of interest when you have a certain town council member and I wish um we did have representation from the town attorney, but when you have a member of somebody being on the board of education and somebody being on the town council making uh making uh suggestions on either side, I don't like that and I wish the town I wish um we did have legal representation with that because I feel that that's not fair. But as far as I'm concerned, this board has worked very hard and has tried to stay in the middle of the road. We try to be fair to the board of ed and we

gave them 3.7 and we're only giving ourselves a 2.7 increase. And I hate to say it, I think this town is going to fail in a few years. We really need more help and more stuff to do in the town. Our roads are deplorable. Our buildings are deplorable. And I know we want to build our school systems up, too. But you got to look on both sides, not just one side. And that's what we try to do. And unfortunately, some of the town council people don't see it that way. Jennifer, any comments? Any more comments? All right, I'm going to call for the vote then on the motion on the floor. Tony,

perfect. John, Jennifer,

Vicki passes two to one with one present. So rate the mill rate has now been established at 28.73.

Thank you for working that through board of finance. I appreciate that. A closing comment. Uh it's evident that the work of the budget is a year-long process. It's going to start with the review of the existing current year establishing where we are and we need to do a better job. As I alluded to earlier, uh to Mr. Josec's point, large budget surpluses don't mean that necessarily that you're budgeting correctly. I would also like to just point out to the board of finance that we're going to have to work together as the chairman suggested to establish some guidelines around how what's an appropriate amount to keep in the undesated fund balance. Currently, this town is in a pretty decent financial position because of the fact that it does have a large undesated fund balance. But that use of those funds and use of any other funds such as what's the such as the what's been quoted as a sinking fund needs to be carefully evaluated and negotiated civily between all of the boards. We will not be successful, nor will we be able to deal with the town's infrastructure and building problems and advance this town physically and otherwise without the collaboration of everybody in this room who's an elected official. I want to thank everyone tonight for their time, their energy that they put in. Board of Education members, town council members, board of finance members, we're all human. We're going to do the best we can. And I'm glad to announce that we have adopted a budget in no this evening. A motion for adjournment by the town council is in order. Motion Mr. Green, second Mr. Engel. Any discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor say I.

Anyone opposed? Any abstensions? This meeting is adjourned. I want to thank the members of the public. I want to thank you at home for watching it. And if we have any questions, we are always available. Thank you. Have a great evening. Have a good night. Tiredness.