Budget Committee - Regular Meeting

Today is August 13th, 2026.

At 6 p.m. is the meeting of the final question committee. And we're at the Wilco Public Library. If you'll join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. I now open it up to our public comment. Three minutes per person for a total of 15 minutes. And in my discretion to make it go on a little bit longer. Any public comment from anybody? Okay, we'll move on. Town Manager, if you'd point.

Okay, so I just want to hand it out to you is the latest expenditure report through the month of July. So it's different than what you've been provided prior for this meeting. This just went to the Board of Selectmen Tuesday evening. So this gets us up to date right here. If you do note, we're at the 58% point in our budget season. Doesn't always correlate directly, but it gets us an idea. On the pages following the summary talk sheet, you'll see some of my areas of concern, which I've noted, and various departments, some overages, some possible places where we can make up those overages. I would advise you to go through those. If you have any additional questions, feel free to reach out to me. Overtime. and the fire department and the ambulance budgets are continuing as they have been to have some overage. Some of that is a learning curve, because as you recall, it's our first year in the ambulance business, and staffing has been a bit of a concern there, in and out, which has required some overtime.

I've got a quick question. I understand the shortages of staffing. I'm a little confused when you say inadequate distribution of the first year capital monies.

So if you recall, the ambulance fund had a capital warrant article to fund it year one. So those monies got distributed throughout the budget of the ambulance with no history And nothing going in to where exactly the adequate distribution of that money into that budget went. It made some line items look really out of whack.

So up and down. Up and down. The bottom line of the thing is okay.

The bottom line is okay. And I have been assured by our fire chief that we're going to make the bottom line at the end of the year. We are definitely going to be watching you.

Another quick question. Do we know if they got any of those grants that they applied to? There was two grants they applied for.

Grants for the, I think, believe one of the grants for the ambulance itself, I think, Bob, they got. Yes, I believe that's the case.

Did they get it or no?

I think they did. I can confirm that. Brian, did you? I think they did, yes. Yeah, I think they did on at least one of them.

So that's going to help offset.

We, I think it's already... I think it's already factored into this.

And then the other one they didn't get, that was staffing.

I don't believe they did get the second one. I can confirm that, Joe, for sure. But I think what you have in front of you as far as the ambulance budget is pretty much what we have to work with at this point. One of the things we can, as we get further into the year, and we will make a decision, If we are going to cut ties with our current contract, which we have the option to do with 30 days notice. Does that save us a lot? Well, what we don't pay out as a contract, we still have to pay for internally with staffing. I'm not quite so sure. I think we wait another 30 days before we even contemplate that.

The plan was... 31, 2026, correct?

We have a contracted amount that gets us to the end of the year, correct. Correct.

But it's over at that point?

It is over at that point.

But we may be able to get out of it earlier?

We can. Our contract is written in a manner that with 30 days notice, we can get out of this thing earlier. And it's not as though I think it's going to break anybody's heart on either side. I think Stewart's is pretty amicable to it. The town's I just want to make sure we're ready before we do that. And with some of the staffing inadequacies, I have a little bit of concerns at this point. Are we missing any runs because of this staffing problem? We're not missing runs, no, because we're kind of that, and Tom would be a better representative of exactly how we do it, but we kind of get the overflow right now, and then we will make the flip-flop where we become the primary responder, and based on What day it is, I think they do adjust, you know, as to what's the primary, where the secondary, and then vice versa, maybe on weekends. But there is a scheme to it.

Are they starting to see any revenue? We are. We are.

I mean, in fact, I had a conversation with the chief yesterday, and Adam has, in fact, before we start, I'm introducing here our finance director, which is Adam Camoli. I don't know if any of you have met Adam. He's week two, six days into this thing, so I would, that's why I brought him here. That's why I want you to all be on your best behavior.

I have a question. Did Adam prepare this?

He will be in the future.

Did you prepare this?

No, I didn't prepare this stuff. This is, yeah, this is my...

Thank you. This is wonderful to be able to have this. You're welcome. I appreciate it.

The last two have had that, though, Bobby, so don't treat me like I'm some kind of... No, but this one just is oddly just... All right, you know, the first one is the toughest one, and as you go along, the patterns develop, and it's just a matter of adjusting numbers, but thank you very much for that.

Okay, go ahead, Bob. Yes, thank you, John. So, Barry, I wrote you a letter a couple weeks ago, and I didn't tell this committee about it except for maybe the chair, so I'll go through it real quick. In your report on... You mentioned the content of your... July 9th. Yeah, well, I... I saw machinery and equipment, please note the 57,000 plus encumbrance in this line item which was submitted by the police commission as an unappropriated expenditure on a new vehicle for the detective. This encumbrance will be over-expended, it will over-expend this line by 56,350. The gist of the letter was it has always been Any of the training sessions we went to and anything I've ever read was any and all appropriations are only approved by the voters. We can't do appropriations without consent of the voter. This is the first time I have seen a police vehicle purchase or any purchase of that amount of money without the voters' consent. In fact, all vehicles purchased over the years have been approved by the voters. This has not been. I asked Barry in the letter if he could get an opinion from the town attorney on this because I really think it's questionable myself based on my experience and information. So Barry, is there a reason why they went for that? And did they get the car?

So Bob, they came to me with this. And their intent was to offset this expenditure with monies that they didn't spend on the employee side because of openings. I'm not going to lie to you. I was dead against this. I, like yourself, was under the impression The appropriation of this nature would have to go and be a formal appropriation in the budget, and it would have to be approved by the voters. We had actually, we found out, I have no say in this whatsoever. They're governed by the commissioners. The first thing we did was we went to our county attorney and said, hey, this is something we've never really The way the commissioners were set up, the police commissioners were set up, if you read the language of that original establishment, there's nothing in there that prevents them from making this request. There's nothing in there. It's kind of a gray area, I'll admit. Regardless of who was in there or not, my recommendation was not to proceed with this. They went. We got the advice of its town council. It was a bit of a gray area. Again, looking back at how the commission was originally formed, its duties, its rights, responsibilities, there's nothing that prevents it. They did go after that. I don't know if it was as a courtesy. I'm assuming it was as a courtesy. My original thought was make them come here in front of you folks and make that pitch. They did go in front of the Board of Selectmen. It was at a Selectmen's meeting. The Board, after listening to the Town Council's recommendation and lack thereof teeth to prevent it, they took a vote, more or less as a courtesy, and they did allow it at that level.

So that was approved by the Select Board?

The Select Board took a vote, had a meeting. I don't even know their argument.

I've done it. I'm not done. I'd like to finish, please. Thank you. Somewhere in the middle of all of this, I've done a lot of reading on how money can be moved around the budget. And we know all about that. If you have a disaster of some sort or necessary overexpenditure of any line in any department, A snow disaster is a perfect example. A police situation that forces the police department to spend a lot more overtime money than they thought they were going to. Then money can be moved around the budget. I've never read anywhere where a new appropriation can be made to fill in space that they left in their budget. To me, it's totally illegal. And I can't see whether the power of a police commission supersedes RSAs. I'm done now.

I feel your pain, Bob. It was much more ambiguous than I intended it to be, but it does exist in that nature. Now, one of the things you've got to remember, they move monies from within the same budget. They didn't take it from another general fund. They didn't take it from another fund than from taxation. So still, yeah, Brian can draw the line.

Yeah, I just want to point out a couple years ago, and I can't think of, what's the snow mover, the tractor? A couple years ago, they purchased one on lease that was costing us money, and that was never appropriated. by the taxpayers. I think this one is harder, because we were very clear last year that we did not want the police vehicles in the budget. We pulled them out, and it was separate warrant articles. So that's probably why it's a little upsetting. But there's another issue. What's happening with the compressor, too? Is that because we appropriated that $68,000, and now what's happening with the new compressor that's on its way?

OK, so are we done with the police topic yet?

That's similar, too.

So Linda went through DRA to see if they could transfer to a line item that was machinery, not vehicles. There are towns in the state that have machinery slash vehicles as their line in their budget so that they can do this. I went to the New Hampshire Municipal Association And we both went to town attorney to find out the exact statute that you say. The statute is very gray. It says that the select board can do interdepartmental transfers of money, but it says that department heads can transfer money in their own budgets. The New Hampshire Municipal Association confirmed this with me. That being said, when Steve did his transfer for his new truck, he came to the select board and asked for permission still because he wanted complete transparency. There was an actual bill in Concord, and Bobby, you may have seen one this year. There was a bill this year in Concord that addressed this exact thing, that said police commissions could not move money in a police budget. It failed in the state. So that did happen. When we were in a default budget, the Select Board sat and transferred money from all sorts of different departments to cover expenses. Different mortgage. Correct. We were allowed to do that. The police department, the DPW, the electric department, they can't transfer money from one department to another. Only the select board can do that. So my problem was the same problem that Bob had. I was told, nope, doesn't work. The select board did not take a vote on that, because we were told that we didn't have to approve it, that they could do it on their own. My bigger issue with it was transparency. For the police commission and the chief to get a car, if they have money in their budget, okay, but the voters should know what's happening every step of the way. And I'm glad that the chief came to a select board meeting and presented it to us and said, we have money in our budget, we're going to do this, we're going to buy a car, so on and so on and so on. But we didn't make a vote, Barry. We didn't have a vote. OK.

If that was the case, I apologize. But I think you may have made a motion not to interfere or something like that. Yes. That's what it was. Yeah.

There was talk of a motion happening to say we're approving their transfer. And then basically, the board said no, because technically, we don't have to. OK. I'm sorry about that.

Well, I was just going to ask if there was any discussion or concern by the police commission about the appearance that this is going to give in the future?

I can tell you, Brian, that we informed them, myself personally informed them, that this is not going to look good at any level.

Certainly when they come before us next year.

I know. Look at me. I'm up here on the firing line listening to this. And I was there against you. Maybe not then. Oh, I was never before.

No, I mean on the firing line. Give me another 15 minutes. Two questions.

What board of selectors meeting, what date was that? discussion we can get that out of my memories terrible yeah it wasn't that long it was within the month i look for the date then we can we can pull that up and get you that it was before the fifth i know it was before that's okay he'll get to the date which is fine thank you uh what's the statute that you're all talking about which rsa yeah it's um okay it's uh rsa 32 is your title uh

budget number. There's a lot of subsections to RSA. But you can enter RSA 32.

I've read that. Is there a subsection that you were leaning on?

I think I can send you some of those emails, correspondence where we It was A, B, and C, I believe.

Went through that, John, specifically.

The final question is did town council give a written opinion? I have an email opinion. Did I have that?

Sure.

Well, I don't know. Ask Nathan.

I'll have to ask Nathan. I don't know if it falls under attorney-client privilege or not. To me, there was nothing there that was... Bob?

What's to prevent them from doing this again? Have we established a precedent now where we're going to, police departments are just willy-nilly going to go out and buy vehicles through the police commission? Because we have established a precedent. It's not us that put the precedent out. My position is, I can tell you, in the budget for this year, that $57,737.61 is coming off their bottom line. Is that a motion? That was a joke. I'll make the motion when it comes time.

Okay, so I clipped out a reading from, this is case law, a case in the town of Litchfield, New Hampshire. This is very brief. An appropriation is the authorization to spend money. An appropriation can only be authorized by the legislative body, and that's the voters. That's it, that's it. John, what I would like to see us look at, there are approximately eight, police commissions in the state of New Hampshire out of 208 towns. I would like to approach the New Hampshire Municipal Association to have a training session on the duties and rights of a police commission in a town. This is not the first time we had an issue with them, and I really think we need to clean this up as far as what they can and can't do. As far as all the reading I've done, they can They can hire and fire. They can discipline. They're not allowed to do any investigations, even though they do. And they're not allowed to set policy. That's, from my reading, this is setting policy. And that's why I think we should have a training session by the New Hampshire Municipal Association to try and straighten all this out. I think the statute's pretty clear.

Hire, fire, sets hours.

Yeah, I've read all this stuff. But it was the chief. who moved money in his budget and told the commission he was doing it in the commission agreed and that's the way it happened that's got nothing to do with it. House Bill 1085 this year in 2026 was introduced to restrict and redefine the authority of local police commissions limiting their scope to personnel appointments, rule enforcement and compensation structures while barring them from authorizing budgeting salary increases. So there's already, that's salary increases, but there's already bills going through to stop this kind of thing, or related things from happening, but that bill failed.

Yeah, that bill came before my committee, and the reason it failed was because there was only one department that came with it, that testified about it.

Because there aren't many police commissions in the state. Eight, not eight. Eight.

What I read, when I did a lot of work on this, When they came up for you know, they came up with two votes to They were Warren articles to eliminate the police commission. I did a lot of reading on it those twice those two times and You know they did there to me their duties and powers are extremely limited Much much tighter than what they've been doing. Yeah, so but but that's why I say I Maybe we should have the New Hampshire Municipal Association identify all of this and give us some, you know, some forward look on it.

I've got a question for you, Barry. Do you remember which line item that the two cruisers were in the budget?

So the two cruisers were in Warren articles. So those have their own separate...

Prior to that, he put them in the budget. And we asked him to take them out.

Okay, so this is, forgive me, this is before my tenure here. They probably were a capital outlay. That would be the normal way you would do it.

I believe they were built into the budget. It was part of the police budget. It wasn't in the back of the book.

It wasn't even a capital outlay. It was a line item in their budget. I mean, we can find that out. And we pitched a fit about it.

I always thought machinery and equipment.

Whatever the line was. Vehicles were capital outlays. It was inside the budget, period. It wasn't a capital outlay. I'm learning a lot.

No, no. Actually, they can be a capital outlay. It can be done in one of several ways. But a capital outlay is part of the operating budget. And the operating budget is approved by the voters. This vehicle was not in nowhere in the operating budget that was approved by the voters. Do you know that? We've been through this three times now, so thank you, John.

I just think that the chief reminded that we got a lot of flack, at least I did, about having the cruisers in the budget. And if we took them out of the line item that the heat had transferred to it, he should show some concern for what we did the previous budget, the very movement of those two cruisers. I don't think this falls solely on the police commission. I think it's more towards the chief, because that's done under his authority to buy the cruiser. My other concern is I don't recall me ever buying a new cruiser for a detective. He's always got a hand-me-down. I would be more happy if the cruiser was assigned to patrol, a brand new cruiser to patrol, than one of the older ones went to going to the detector, at least for now. Anybody else have anything?

Yes, sir. It was line 740 within the 42.

So 740 is the machinery equipment, right?

Correct. You stole my thunder.

No, I'm sorry. That's where it is. Go ahead. It's machinery equipment. I have Nathan Britton respond to that. Would you like me to read it? Yes, go ahead. So my question was, obviously, Nathan says, Barry, is this separate from the two cruises that were approved at the March 26 town meeting? Obviously, yes. This really falls into a gray area. The commission is empowered to appoint police officers, constables, superior officers, as they may, in their judgment, deem necessary and to fix their compensation. said commissioners should also have the full authority to make and enforce all rules and regulations of the government of the police force in the town of Wolfwell. But the statute is silent on appropriations of the budget and says nothing about equipment and capital projects. So it's not specifically called out. Theoretically, the chief could choose to reallocate funds from staffing to make an equipment purchase, and he is only answerable to the commission for approval of such. The board could respond in the next budget cycle by substantially reducing the police portion of the budget. You didn't hear that from me. And he says this appears to be more of a political fight than a legal fight. There's no specific guidance in the statute or in case law. Well, he was talking about a different statute.

The statute about the voters must approve appropriations is quite clear, you know, so. Yeah, so, but when we come up with this, I have another question for you, Barry, but I'll walk it until we finish this one.

Did we already buy both the cruisers?

It has been ordered.

There are orders.

Well, the two cruisers that were part of the warrant.

That's what I'm asking, were they all purchased?

Yes, yes, those have been ordered. I believe they're in it. They're being fitted, updated, but they're in.

We don't know about number three yet.

Number three was a deal where it was one of these cruises that was set up for another department that didn't take order. It's coming jointly because it was basically already built.

So I brought this up last year in the police department, and some of this could be solved, I think, by a capital reserve.

it and it will you'll put money into that and we won't have any more of this hopefully we won't have any more of this but i certainly think it helps and that's something however we do that i think it's important to set that up but just to your point how would a capital reserve have prevented this from happening it wouldn't i mean you could still have right so brian you're still in a situation where you know they've got uh you know, under-expended funds and in many ways.

But we have an avenue to deal with that, which is bottom line, take it out of their budget the following year. And the capital reserve, they can't do anything else with it. That has to go to the select board from the expended side.

On that, a capital reserve account is approved by the voters. The select board has the authority to expend the money that is in a capital reserve account. So that's a very good recommendation. So what they could do is put X amount of money away every year and buy police cruises out of that with the authority of the select board. That would eliminate this problem.

Except if they still found more money in their budget for something else, they could still buy something else. There's safeguards in other departments like the highway department and everything because their direct supervisor is the town manager. so they can't move money in their budget unless they ask their boss and the town manager would go to us the select board because we're his boss so there's that's the safeguard for all the other departments but there is no safeguard because we have a police commission but i but again i'll reiterate the same thing the same thing we're going to do most likely when they when we go before them we do their budget you look at the line that they spent and you cut it by that

Now, you may not get everybody, but you make the statement to them, if you keep doing this, this is what we're going to do.

Well, I can read a motion right here and a second right there, so it looks like we're on our way.

I have a question. Is there anything in the, I guess the RSA doesn't deal with this at all. It just talks, if it's not there, we can do it. That's kind of the assumption. Is that correct? So my next question, the second part of my question is, can only the state amend that RSA? So if we can't establish a town ordinance here to restrict the state issue.

But I don't agree with that. I think the RSA is quite clear about it. RSA 32 is quite long. If you run through all the sections of it, it's pretty clear that, plus case law, it's pretty clear that the only ones who can can permit an appropriation of all the voters. That's it. And it's pretty clear in the RSA. To me, this is just, oh, we're gonna do whatever we want anyway, and that's it. Is that Article 32, the police commission article? No, no, it's RSA 32 in state law, and it has a lot of subsections.

I understand that. I'm talking about the one that deals with police commissions, period. That's the one I'm talking about.

There's different sections. Like, Wolfo has its own law on police commissions. Like Nashua, the governor appoints who's on the police commission. Well, there's a bunch of different ones and stuff.

So the town doesn't have the power at all to adjust to, you know, it'd have to be done by now, I would say.

So I also got a ruling from the New Hampshire Municipal Association attorney that said the same exact thing that our town attorney said. It's a gray area. What I was trying to get my head wrapped around is we're a Dillon rule state. So it's supposed to be that you're only allowed to do what is allowed written in state RSA. And it's not written in state RSA that they can do this, but two different attorneys in the Hampton Municipal Association and ours said it's a gray area and There's really been, because we were under the assumption that the select board would have to approve this, and that's not what ended up happening.

Paul, we're talking about the police law enforcement.

Sounds familiar.

Yeah, I kind of get that.

Okay, one more.

Go ahead. I got something else. We're still on police vehicle. Okay.

Yeah, just one more commentary. I see this as a reflection on our budget committee and a reflection on the police commission as to the budget they presented to us. Every year we try to do everything within our power to keep the budget at a reasonable level and at a minimum. information that there was something, you know, unanticipated that created this windfall, so to speak. I just think as it sits, and especially this time of year, we're going halfway through the year, it's a terrible reflection on The job that we did as a budget committee in paring down the budget and the job that the police commission did in presenting a budget.

Brian, mission statement, we've got three things in the mission statement. The first one is to help voters understand the budget. Under the umbrella of that part of our mission statement says we are to oversee the budget. We are the oversight committee. And I think by talking about this today, I think we are doing our job. You know, Barry didn't get a lot of support. All he seemed to get was, well, there's a lot of gray area. I don't think what a police commission can do cannot supersede RSA 32. It's quite clear that only the voters can appropriate money, not the police commission. So that's why I brought this up. And we're gonna have to ride it out, that's all.

I'm sure their position is that the money was appropriated.

The money wasn't our budget. No, there you go. Well, further, if this was a question when the budget was presented, I'm kind of going after your comment about the budget committee may have fallen on their face on this one. It seems to me that the police commission and the police department fell on their face because they didn't put the third vehicle in their budget. There was no request. So let's not criticize the budget committee for not picking up on this.

I'm not criticizing what we did because we couldn't have foreseen what was coming down the road here. But my commentary is that, you know, the public is going to look and say, It doesn't reflect good on us. Why did this happen?

Why did you let this happen? Right. So if I could speak briefly on that. There were two cruises scheduled for this year. There were one for next year. They're telling me that the one request for next year goes away with this request. I would hope so.

That's not the point of everything. I know.

I'm just . Can I just ask a question?

So the budget, when we were making the budget, one of the things that the chief came before us and spoke about was the need for these employees. And part of the budget cut was that the employees, that it was going to be hard for him because he needed to onboard extra employees. So I'm a little concerned right now. Are we not onboarding extra employees? Because he said he had already cut.

employees so now i mean you're just paul you're just coming from their meeting are are we down employees we should have now i mean should the citizens be worried and concerned that we don't have police officers i believe i heard the captain uh say that they're uh they're bringing somebody on board shortly i didn't get to look at the exact date i didn't hear an alarm bell being run about wrong about being short-staffed Their overtime, as you can see, is a little bit up because they're covering shifts. The overtime that's up, I think, is distributed across not only PD but also dispatch. I'm not trying to kick this one around. I think the right thing to do is have those questions written down in the way you do and invite them to sit down Because an explanation is probably required.

They could have done that before they made this move. Thank you, Paul. Sorry, John, not to share. Can I ask, I have another topic.

With no other police vehicle. What's that? With no other police vehicle. I'm sorry, John. It's okay. Okay, just the other concern I have, I just want the public to know that we didn't try to hide this. This wasn't in the original budget. and to put him in a warrant article. And if there's any issues with the third vehicle, that should be addressed with the chief. I'm also disappointed because when we did the police department, the budget, I asked to see if we could cut a couple of months, January, February, March, out of the budget itself. And it was done, but it seemed to show a lot of concern about not having that money there. and yet he can go out and spend $55,000 on a new Crozer by taking that out of the line item for the employees to hire another officer. I would like to ask the attorney, many times when there's a gray area in the law, that's best addressed by a court, and why this wasn't challenged in the court, the Superior Court. That way we could have got some kind of definition or some guidance from the court on future actions done by the chief of police. Welcome to Wolfboro. I thought I was going to protect it. I'm just concerned. I think this has got to be addressed by somebody, and the court's the one to do it. what that entails, taking something like that to the... What would have happened is if they had said no, then the police commission would have said, well, okay, we're taking the town, selecting the town manager, whatever the court. Well, they could have said, we're not going to do that.

So I can forward it to you guys. I got a legal service counsel, Jonathan Cowell, who spoke with Steve Buckley at New Hampshire Municipal Association and gave me a ruling. And the ruling says the same thing. If they don't overspend their budget, that they can do that, which is why there might only be eight place admissions in the state.

if they don't overspend their budget.

Can you go through that again, please? As for the spending authority of the Wolfport Police Commission, this, too, would depend on the session law that created the Wolfport Police Commission. It is quite possible that the Wolfport Police Commission is analogous to library trustees as provided in RSA 202 , whereby library trustees have the entire custody and management of the public library and all the property of the town related there, too, including appropriations. Nevertheless, what the Wolfboro Police Commission could not do is overexpend the total amount appropriated for police purposes by the town meeting. Thus, if the total amount appropriated for police purposes is $500,000, the police commission could not overexpend that amount, but probably could move dollars around in that total appropriation and award hazard duty pay provided the total annual expenditures for police purposes did not exceed that $500,000. Thank you. Appreciate it.

I'm sorry, John.

We hit a wall. One point about that, Brian, is the libraries are specifically mentioned with those powers, and the police commission isn't. That's a big difference. It's not a gray area in my opinion at all. And I'm not well-versed in the nature of law. But I have some experience elsewhere that when something isn't mentioned, everybody calls it a gray area. But if you don't want it, you have to push back and maybe go get a ruling in court. So that comparison that that gentleman just made, to me, is a false comparison. Because the enumerated powers that the libraries have, right, that those enumerated powers mean a lot, whereas there's no enumerated powers other than for the budget and personnel and things like that for the police commission, which I've read that statute as well, doesn't leave it wide open.

So here's me cutting my own head off in public. My answer, I disagree. We should not allow a cruiser purchase. The select board, town legislator, and state legislator never gave the police commission the right to initiate line item transfers in their budget. Also, we are a Dillon rule state. The RSA does not grant the police commission or chief the right to line item transfers without select board approval. Not granted. It cannot occur.

And I was cut off at the knees. So I tried. it would have been $55,000 going back to the taxpayer for the rest of the budget.

I'm curious if this is unique to the library and the police commission, for example, other departments in town answer to the town manager. So short of them going rogue and doing something wrong, even within a line item, Do they have the ability to spend what they deem necessary to spend so long as they don't overspend the bottom line and then answer to the town manager as to why?

Not the case. In all other cases, the town manager would have to ultimately approve that budget, have to approve that purchase order, that budget expenditure.

Is there a threshold for where that gets triggered? $20 for some paper clips is within office supplies, but something... You know, the way our system is right now, virtually everything over $200 is a purchase amount. So in a way, the town manager's one of the charges is to be the overseer of the spending, and then the finance director oversees that as well for checks and balances.

There's three different levels. Finance director, town manager, board of selectors, and ultimately...

But we don't have any control over the library and its budget. And we don't have any control over the police department because of a police commission. And of course, a lot of citizens don't understand that we also have nothing to do with the school budget. They're a whole separate entity themselves.

So they do come before me, their purchase orders. I don't know if it's as a courtesy or what. But in this case, I refused to sign it, so it didn't matter.

It was just all about transparency. That's the big thing. If they had pulled the RSA, showed us we have the right to do this, if they had gotten a legal opinion from their council, town council, whoever, and then came to us and said, we're going to make an announcement, we're buying a cruiser because we have extra money in the budget, we could not like it. But transparency is very important in this town. We're under a magnifying glass, all of us. OK. On your next topic, sir.

Yes, Barry.

I realize I'm not even supposed to be here. I'm supposed to be out of here. They dragged me back in for another couple months. I got more stuff.

But anyhow, on this topic. Our electric contract is up at the end of the year. I can speak to this. I know the answer.

Thank you. This is the one thing I know. We are out to bid. Indicator pricings are due actually Monday, this Monday the 17th, 5 p.m. So what we do is we request indicator pricing. What's your best pricing as of Monday at 5 o'clock? And we'll probably get $5 or $6, $7. quotes from the big guys that provide power in this country. We'll write contracts with two or three of those based on pricing and what's the best deal. Based on that, we'll have those contracts ready to roll. We don't have a date yet, but it'll typically be a day mid-October, and it'll be at like noontime where we request final pricing. And it has to be somewhere in that guideline of the indicative pricing. Once those come in at noon, we have like three minutes to sign a contract with one of them, one of the three. And so that's why we have contracts ready to go with all. We typically narrow it down to three at that time. It appears, I'm probably going to jinx myself, but in our budget guidelines, we're probably going to be looking at 20% to 30% increase on the energy supply side. if you look at our rates still compared to wall our fellow we're still going to be much lower than them it will be the first price increase we've had in 16 years so let's not forget that we're we're probably overdue i don't know anybody that can go 16 years on a stable rate in any utility so that's i'll know more Monday evening when the indicator prices comes back. And based on that, I will have a better number for the budget. I have a number out there that I've given the department heads. Three, three and a half cent per kilowatt hour increase. I'll know better next week.

It's not a surprise to me or anybody who has reached the stuff about ballot cards going up all over the place. So actually, yeah. So it's not quite as bad as we originally thought it may be.

Natural gas, I mean, fortunately, natural gas is staying pretty damn steady. It's not that bad right now. Not like our other friends from the petroleum-based people that are taking it. But New England is highly dependent upon natural gas for our power plants. So let's keep our fingers crossed and And we hope to get another five-year term. That's what we're working for. Oh, okay. Yeah, that's not even guaranteed, right? Sometimes we'll go with a three-year term just with extensions. I don't know. There's many different ways. We offer like four different options. We'll either buy full-load energy, which is for every bit of energy we buy. We'll either buy blocks of energy and then supplement it with spot market. It's just... There's a lot that goes into it. So we'll look at the best option for Wolf World.

Thanks, Barry.

Barry, do you know of anyone that's total solar? It's hooked up to a power, but nobody gets an electric bill. They get everything done, but they want solar.

Does anybody like that in town? There's probably two folks on our system that are interconnected with net metering and solar that run a credit. In other words, at the end of the year, we owe them a little money. But those people are also folks that have a lake home. They don't stay at their house in the summer, so they just build credits all summer. And they go away to Florida in the winter. So I wouldn't say they're full-time residents and building credit.

Do they get the full credit, the full price? per kilowatt do we pay or how does that work?

So no, we changed our net metering policy some time ago because originally we did a full swap when we did the pilot program. Oh yeah, it was a great deal for folks. Not so much for us. We did that for about five years until we got some good numbers and some data. After that, we only reimbursed them for the energy portion of their bill. Not the distribution because why are we just, you know, Why are we crediting for our distribution? Right, they've got to pay for the upgrades. There's something in the money that goes to pay for the upgrades and things like that. Correct. You know, their meter charge, they still have to pay for their meter charge, basically the cost of having a meter, having power available, which funds a lot of our billing functions, meter reading functions. But so, yeah, if we're a quick guess, they'll get $0.10 return on a $0.14 full price. Thanks.

Any other questions? Yes, sir. Just an observation. One of those places is the library right here. Is that correct? Yeah, it's not running on credit, though, John. No, I know.

Yeah, but there's like a... What are we, 75 KW up here?

Why am I looking?

It's a 10-year recovery. I'm looking at you because you love solar.

It's a 10-year recovery for the right now under the process, but they're saving... They're net zero, really, right now.

Yeah.

Yeah. There's a little machine out here that'll tell you that every time you walk by it.

It might be the summer because of the sanctions.

Summer, winter, you lose. I mean, we have it down in our shop. We have a very similar size system at our shop down in the department. You know what? We're probably the best one to look at. We are running a credit. Why didn't I think of us? We are running a credit down there full time. So at the end of the year, we're up a little bit, and that's That's why our next vehicle, our next Meteor Reader vehicle, I'm going to look at buying an electric one that we can plug in to basically, because we're running a credit, what are we doing? It's not like we're going to cash it out.

So what about other town buildings, like the POP, for instance, that has a pretty good-sized southern facing roof?

It does. I mean, we've looked at other town facilities. The Energy Committee has spent... A lot of work looking at other buildings and facilities. One of the things up there that needs to be concerned is the snow load off the roof. We're still trying to solve that up there now with some of the danger of the snow coming off the roof. So down the road, that may be an option, Justin.

We're looking to expand the energy committees to expand EV charges in town because they're getting to be used quite a bit.

Any other questions?

You loved him from the start, huh Barry?

Any other questions on the appropriation report?

If I can bring one up, the third probably key topic to you too late here. The Pop Whalen compressor. We recently had a compressor up there, it's one of the two. We have a 12 cylinder one, we have an 8 cylinder one. During warmer months, And during the season we're making ice, both of them need to be running at optimal to maintain the ice. The eight-cylinder one, Pond Styra, suffered a failure. It's something I didn't point out on the board the other night. I mean, this compressor's a 1970s model. It was used when it went in there in the early 90s or whatever. So it had a failure. A new one is not available unless we're going to re-pipe and reset up the whole facility. We found a used one out in Oregon. It's going to be cost up to the tune of potentially $70,000, which we do not have in the Pop Whalen budget. There's no place to find that in the Pop Whalen budget as it exists. So we will be going to the board. I went to the board initially. just to get a feel for the fact we're going to have the rink running this year, right? Are you supportive of that? Yes. So we have a replacement, that replacement compressor heading our way. We're going to have to do a little creative savings elsewhere, searching, scrambling to find those monies to assist and pay for that. So... out of the operating budget? It's going to have to come out of the operating budget, but there was a warrant out in 2021 that was approved that allows money from taxation, general taxation, to be used to fund capital expenses at the pot, oil, and ring. So in this case, there is a mechanism by which taxation money can be used to supplement which was at one time an enterprise fund.

Another thing I was thinking of was, I mean, we've done this several times before now, was Jim Henio reached out to DRA and came through us on a request to pull, I think one of his requests was to pull money out of the electric department surplus, if you recall that a couple of years ago. That's the only thing I remember.

Yeah, that didn't apply. That didn't. I shut that down, Bob.

Oh, you did. Wow.

You did.

You had the pump action going on there.

Yeah. I was gone now. But that's another question. That's something I think you need.

That particular Warren article, there are references that was passed

We don't have a contingency fund either, which we probably should have. A contingency fund requires a warrant article, and it has to be approved by the voters, and then you build up your contingency fund. We don't have any of that. If you have to go to TRA, you have to make a request for DRA to use money in the on-site fund balance, and that's got to come through this committee.

So I will tell you, I did go to DRA in this one. I did go to county attorney, and our auditors happened to be up this week, so we checked with them as well. In this case, because that warrant out for the way that was voted in, we don't have to go to DRA to make an additional request. The board members can approve that request. Because of that warrant out, the mechanism is in place. So all three parties that I would... Yeah, our auditors told us that they would not question that whatsoever if that came up.

So now you're going maybe 70G on this and 57 on a police car. So you're going to have, and you're still going to have enough money to get to the end of December.

We're going to have to find it, Bob. So there's two mechanisms we are looking at. We haven't made a final decision on either or mechanism. One is we find it in the bottom line of the budget somehow, the vicious budget.

Right.

The second option, we do have the option of delving into, and I'm not saying we're going to do this, but we could delve into the unrestricted fund balance or what happens to be in there. And it could be funded from that. But of course, that means those are monies that may or may not be returned to the taxpayers if there's a surplus in there. So those are the two options we're looking at. And the board made the motion the other night that we would wait. I don't know if it was officially a motion, but they made a decision that we'll probably wait until mid-September, mid-October, and see where we're at at that time to further drive that decision which way we're going to go. How's the operating budget look? Is it even feasible? Bonnie?

I just have a couple questions. What's the revenue looking like right now at the POP? Where are we?

So, I haven't run a recent one since, I don't know, it was probably two months ago, but obviously it's pretty straight flat during this time of year. Shouldn't be much change at all. I will tell you, we're going to lose a little revenue if we're being down. We're not going to open up in August. It's not happening.

Yeah. Did we have a big hockey tournament scheduled this year?

There was one hockey tournament scheduled that will lose revenue, will be open. for the September, the mid-September, the next round.

That was $11,000, I think. And it was a hockey camp.

It was a hockey camp. And they went out to play hockey. That camp has been canceled.

Okay. And then the other question is, we went some time without an employee there. What was the amount of that employee that we didn't expend funds for the director of the POP?

Yeah, I think we were probably $20 to $30, but

we also had to replace some cooling tubes in there that's that so that sort of balanced out the monies we may have saved from the employee and then we have another set of soup okay wait a second hold on i want to stop you for a second we we expended we gave 68 000 more last year at the last minute and i just now i thought that went to the cooling tubes that's what you said Was I wrong at the select board meeting the other night when I asked about that 68,000 that was for the compressors and you said it was for a tower and tubes.

Okay. So the water tower was a whole separate subject.

And that was 68 from something else.

Wasn't there a cut at the deliberative session? No.

Cut at the deliberative session was, was the select board made it early and it was those payments.

for renting the ice time that we normally use.

That was different. I'm talking about the last minute 68 we added.

I can give you, Bobby, I can give you the specific breakdown of where the monies that were in that maintenance line item, building maintenance line item, where the cooling tubes, there was two sets of them were found to be bad. Because I wasn't part of the budget process here, there may have been one budgeted for and one not, but There were other things that were found to be ailing. I'll be glad to give you that rundown of those items.

And the other question is the Zamboni was fully funded from friends? Correct. From all the donations, right? We're not sitting on any of that.

Electrically. There's some electrical setup work for the charger and whatnot out of there that's going to come out of this same line item. We're hoping our friends from the friends will chip in on this one, but we've got to make assumptions.

And what's that amount right now, do you think?

It's less than $10,000. It's not huge.

$10,000 right now is a lot.

No, but I mean, I know, every four or five, it's less than $10,000, but yeah, it'd be nice to... Thanks. Anyways, let me... Let me get you that information, and I'll send it to you. In fact, if the whole board wants it, I'd be glad to share it.

We're done with the pot. I'd like to go back to the ambulance for a second. Everybody's done with the pot. And I want to preface this and be crystal clear that I don't in any way mean to suggest that we should do anything that is unsafe or compromises the service in any way. But if you need to give 30-day notice and could be able to give that on September 1st and have stewards be done for all of quarter four, that could potentially be a savings of roughly 190,000 or whatever it is.

It actually wouldn't be because a lot of that's going to get sucked up in making sure that our ambulance service is fully staffed, equipped, safety equipment, which it wouldn't be as of right now. to pull off. So what looks like over $100,000 is probably going to shrink down to about $20,000. Because we haven't even used the monies to fully outfit a couple of additional staffing members to take on. So I went the same way. I said, oh, here we go. Maybe we can gain. But if you look into it further, it's not as good as it looks right now.

I would look into it. We have three command staff that are available to, and have been, I should say, covering shifts, and especially during the so-called work week, they're available to backfill shifts, should that be the case. So I would just ask you to ask them to consider it, look at it.

The infrastructure's there for a short,

a couple of positions it would be worth looking into.

It's a fine line.

If someone from, someone from Stewart's, I don't know, what's the highest you can be in the EMC bar? Paramedic. Paramedic. If someone from Stewart's is a paramedic, did he get a job here working with the ambulance or did he have to be a certified fire department or fireman?

I'm out of my line. They had one of his.

So, yeah, your answer was George, yes. But were you a certified fireman also? I don't believe so. Okay. Just straight up for a minute. I wonder if at first you'd be just a regular paramedic and not a fireman. If you're a certified fireman and work on the ambulance, would they get that? They can.

I could. I believe it can. It's against the department operational model, but that's what I'm saying. Look at creative ways, because if somebody was committed to just working the ambulance, staffing the ambulance, I mean, that's what, we would have with stewards doing it. So there's ways to sit with them.

We already got some staffing issues on the fire side as well. So we'll look at all options. They're going to have to. Trust me. They're going to have to.

All right. We all set with a report here? OK. How many did you all set?

OK. Come with it. Yeah. I'll remove it.

I think this is a fantastic report and we have been getting them regularly as of late, so thank you for that.

My only comment or request would be to continue to receive them on a monthly basis and to have the monthly

numbers in addition to the total year-to-date and throughout the year. Historically we've only had them when we've had meetings and that's great. I think that one of our charges as the budget committee is to review the numbers and I personally would like to see a packet like this on a monthly basis and the only tweak is to add in the monthly in addition to the year-to-date.

Sounds easy, but we're using Unismart.

I think he's asking you to volunteer.

Seriously, I think we should seriously talk about softwares here.

Well, we are having a conversation. Even today, we had a conversation, and we recognized some of these deficiencies. I mean, I have been doing monthly. I will tell you, you usually get them a little beyond the last of the month because i i feel as though we need to present them to the board of selection prior to presenting for you folks and so depending on how those meetings work out it's just so happy we had a board meeting the special meeting tuesday night if not you wouldn't have got this tonight because i was able to give it to them tuesday night except i do a monumental basis that typically is going to be the third week the following month so that we can get all of sort of the month-end stuff in there. Right. Okay. I hope that's my last one I do. I'm sorry. John? Yeah. Are we on other business?

We're just wrapping up the finance, I hope. So I got a few things. How much time do I have? Ten minutes. I was going to say eight minutes. Just give me the word. Go ahead. Okay. I'm going to start out with budget presentation. So I came back from the game a little late last year, and you had changed the budget presentation where we all had a little bit to say, a report on, and I thought that was, I didn't think that was such a great idea. And unbeknownst to me, it seemed to have a lot of support So I am suggesting that we meet again next month and discuss this. We talked about discussing it at our meeting in April, so it might be a good idea to discuss this. In fact, my idea is to break this down into five segments and five of us report on each segment. I don't know off the top of my head. I'm thinking about general government. I'm thinking about public safety. I'm thinking about DPW. I'm thinking about enterprise funds. And what is the fifth one? It doesn't come to mind. Oh, parks and recreation. I think we could break this down into five spots, and we could have five retirees from this committee to make a presentation. on each one, and that's why I think it might be a good idea to meet again next month and get ourselves moving on that, and then we'll probably meet again once before we get the budget books and then talk about that. So I throw it out there, and I'm welcome to any suggestions. Okay, thank you, Bob. What else you got? Oh, okay, so now on the schedule, I noticed we have, on Tuesday, November 17th, we have agencies, and I believe we're doing the agencies with the select board at the end of October, at one of their meetings. Yeah, we did that last year.

Yeah, you started that last year.

I believe it's also listed on the select board schedule as a co-meeting. On what day? The same day. No, no, the select board meeting is at the end of October. Oh, I have it right in front of me here. It says Monday, October 26th, Great Wall, a joint meeting with Budget Committee, Agencies, and Welfare. And we have Agencies and Welfare on Tuesday, November 17th. And economic, library economic development. So I think we can pull agencies off of the November 17th, because we're doing it with the select board. I think we... We kept that in there in case there's a filler. Oh, for the agencies that don't show up? Yes. Okay, all right. So now my next one is Thursday, November 19th, I believe is the third Thursday of November, which is the conflict for Paul O'Brien, because he might be meeting with the police commission that night. The third Thursday? Mm-hmm. So what we could do maybe is pull that back to Wednesday.

Yeah, I'm the lead. He's the... No, I'm the lead.

Well, I thought we'd be polite. Pull the back up. Well, if you want to leave it the way it is, then we'll leave it the way it is.

I will tip your apple cart all upside down. I've got a standing video. Disregard that.

Paul and I will converse after and I'll tell him anything that is pertinent. Uh, so, um, I think also, um, this is just a suggestion. I think we should try and narrow down the number of revisit items we do. We didn't used to do that too much, and it seems like we're finishing up, you know, the better part of a budget schedule, revisiting, like, you know, maybe 15 things. I don't think we need to do that much. So that's it for me.

Thank you, Joe. We'll probably have to play that by the end of the year. But hopefully we'll have a new town manager by then. Nothing against you, Jerry. And see how it all, not that they're all shaped up. That's it. We can't wait. Okay, what else do we have for new business? Anything else? Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself, sir? A new financial director. Adam Camoli.

Sir? Yeah. So I come from the private sector. I work for an investment bank doing primary issuance for municipal debt and secondary trading of municipal bonds. What else can I tell you? I have two young kids. I currently live in Maine, but we're slowly making some moves to relocate to Wolfboro. And yeah, really looking forward to working with all of you. Oh, excellent. Thank you.

Any questions? Hi, Jonathan Bradley. How do you spell your last name?

C-O-M-O-L-L-I. Thank you very much. Sounds like a good Italian from the state of Maine.

Any questions?

Okay, thank you.

You're welcome. Okay, so the next thing we've got to do is approve some minutes. Well, these would be the only ones we have right now at the June 11th. Do you have any for also?

Well, I think the, I think I saw April 20th was drawn into the agenda. I just show June 11th. That's, yeah, okay.

can you check on the website and see if the A4 ones are on there?

It is. It is? Yes, it is. Okay. Just under the minutes, and they are definitely on there.

Okay, good. Okay, a motion concerning the minutes for June 11th, 2026. Approved to the motion. Motion to approve. No, I'll second it. Second. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor of approving the minutes of June 11, 2026, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? I'm staying. Motion passes. Okay, any public comment? Okay, no public comment. Do we have anything else we've got to deal with? Anyone here on the committee? Any questions?

I have one more thing, John. Yes, sir. So I don't know if anybody's been watching the Slutman meetings. I have indulged myself on YouTube to watch them. They're interesting. I'll just say I hope the tension subsides because you can see it. Even on TV you can see that tension. It's not good, it doesn't get any accomplished. One thing I do want to say is I hope whoever the new town manager is that we allow that town manager and that finance director to do their jobs. When I first got on this, well 20 years ago, when I filled for a vacancy, the budget committee members at the time, John probably remembers this, they asked me, who runs the town? And I said, it's the town manager. But I said, at the end of the day, it comes down to the voters. But the day-to-day operations is the town manager. And we need to support that person and support that finance director. Those are the two most important people in this town. And if we get great leadership there, the town runs well.

So I just wanted to add that.

The other thing I wanted to add as well. And so I've been doing a little more in-depth review of kiosks regarding parking spaces. I still think this is a good idea. It's something I do intend to bring up. I think if we walked around and asked taxpayers and they got to see the revenue stream from that, there is an expenditure. And I think asking the taxpayers to fund the dock handlers, which I think is a great thing, but we've had people come in here and ask us for flowers, $10,000 for flowers. You know, anything to do with the immediate downtown area. Those kiosks could be very helpful in subduing that from the taxpayers. And use your resource. Your tourist site, your resource. They don't create an eyesore in town. I know some people don't like it, but if you look around, there's a lot of towns and cities. Well, there's not many destination towns. That's correct. That don't have that.

Can I ask you a question about that? Didn't Jim, I wasn't on the board at the time, but didn't Jim propose a pilot a few years ago to do kiosks?

Two were suggested. Luke Vordenberg suggested a pilot at the town dock parking lot that went down in flames quicker than he could get the words out of his mouth. I suggested which gutted it. A five second listen before it went into the trash can and it was what's called virtual tire chalking. It's a system where The people we have now, instead of going around and doing what all they have to do is walk by with a handheld unit, hit the license plate, hit a tire, and keep on walking. If the car doesn't move in two hours from the time they do that, it automatically sends a ticket electronically to the driver, and nobody else is involved. And how much does that cost?

That is way cheaper than kiosks. Over time, it's not. I've looked these things up, so I know there is a revenue. I'll give you this. The town of Montgomery, we're in Montgomery, $5 million a season. $5 million.

I'm sorry if I brought it up. What I hear Brian and I hear you say is this is parking ticket control. What I hear Bob saying is this is an opportunity that for a couple of dollars in the way,

and try to offset what the taxpayers are putting.

And I think one thing that's kind of hit us is the only place on the lake that charges for parking is the weirs. Laconia is old. And on the water, the only place on the lake that charges is the weirs just on the strip, just on the pier.

And that's all. You wouldn't go out of the downtown area to obviously fix. You wouldn't even go to the back parking lot with it.

And I think the feedback we got from the public at the time was, we're going to be the first ones that start charging tourists in the Lakes region. And it didn't go over well. But we're not.

It changes the topic.

It is.

Okay. Next meeting, how about... That's a Tuesday. It's the day before, or the week before. And Madam McCoy, if you could clear that with the library, because we do reserve the room for you. Yes, sir. And that'll be probably our final meeting before we start the... I've got a problem heavy lifting. Yeah, who are you going to start? CIP in Penningworth, Great Hall.

At nighttime? Yeah, 7 o'clock. Come on over when you know. The CIP...

We're going to cut to six, and we can address that if there's any. Anything else from anybody? Seeing none, then I'll entertain a motion to adjourn. So moved. Second.

Bob Lohman.

Bob Lohman. Bob Lohman. Seconded.

Thank you, everyone.

Thank you.