Prudential Committee – March 28 2016 – meeting minutes

Cotuit Fire District
Prudential Committee
28 March 2016

Fran:
It’s five o’clock so I’m going to call the Cotuit Fire District Prudential Committee meeting, of March 28th, 2016 to order. Is anyone recording? Amy Kates is recording. We’ll have introductions starting with the treasurer.

Michael:
Michael Daley, District Treasurer.

Laurie:
Laurie Hadley, Prudential Committee.

Fran:
Fran Parks, Prudential.

Charlie:
Charlie Eager, Clerk.

Fran:
Any public comment? No public comment. Are we ready to approve the short term notes?

Michael:
Sounds like a plan.

This is the status of the borrowings of the district that I just gave you. To the left side of the barrier is how we ended the year. The short term debt that was outstanding in the top. In the bottom is district meeting voted authority that hasn’t been used yet at the bank.

So we ended the year with 651,000 dollars of outstanding notes. In this transaction we’re going to do tonight we’re going to, through our budget, pay down 157,000 dollars on the outstanding 651, and then we’re going to issue new notes for the remainder of the balances on the far right at the top. So, when we finish what we’re going to do tonight we’ll still owe on the water system roadways. On the water system security system, I can kill a couple of items at once. We have a 20,000 dollar note outstanding and we’re allowed to hold notes out in total for two years before we have to pay down. That’s a candidate for the USDA grant loan application, that project. So, we’re just going to roll the 20 and not touch it. We had budgeted to pay it down and we had figured we’d pay it off the same as the 5 year notes, but because we’re hoping to get fully funded through the USDA we’re just going to roll that which should protect us from any exposure on the grant side.

The names on main street we’re still going to owe 120,000. A little further down now we historically had water debt. I’ve shown you the, what I call non-water, and that’s the property you bought on High Street. We financed that property, at the district meeting we had an authority that was granted, of 314,000. Most of the legal associated with that was paid right out of the budget so we avoided borrowing because the difference from what we borrowed was what we would have needed to do the closing. We never fully borrowed the 314. We’re borrowing 306 last year. We’re going to pay a fifth down for 62,000, that’s ballpark, leaving 244 on that note, with a plan to pay that off over the next five years. Under the law, we can pay notes off in five years, as long it’s paid in full. The plan we had is still intact except we’ve altered the 20,000 for the security system. That’s what I’m going to have you vote is to issue a new note for 494,000 dollars.

If you would be so kind to entertain that I will tell you a little bit about what we are going to be doing with the notes we’ll bid on. We took in bids on about a week ago, I don’t see a date on this, March 17th. We got four bids Eastern Bank, Cape Cod Five, UniBank, and Century. The bids ranged from a low of seventy basis points to a high of ninety bases points. Our bank, Cape Cod Five, won the bid at the 70 basis points. That’s who we’re going to do the loan with. We had an aggressive bid and we fared fairly well. The note we’re retiring, and paying off is at 60 basis points so it’s slipped up in the past year in the cost of short term money. I’m going to have you vote on authorization of a new note in the total of 494,000 dollars with Cape Cod Five.

Laurie:
I move that we issue a new note for 494,000 dollars with Cape Cod Five.

Fran:
Second. All in favor, I.

Michael:
Thank you very much. This is the note itself. You’ve got to sign under those lines.

Michael:
All right, we’re all set. Thank you very much.

Fran:
Okay, thank you.

Michael:
Those will be in the mail tomorrow.

Fran:
I’m going to take out of order the Water and Fire Department budget so you gentleman can be on your way. Who wants to start?

Ted:
Ted Barnicle, Board of Water Commission’s Chairman. I gave you guys copies of it. I suppose I’ll just read it real quickly. We’re proposing a new budget for this year of 596,243 dollars. Last year was 589,955. That’s a total budget increase of one percent. I can start back up with the salaries. The Water Superintendent will move to 90,500. The Senior Operator will move to 65,393. The Operator’s BNA will move to 38,500, the Office Manager 46,000 and then the overtime at 22,700.

Water mains will stay at 13,500, stations, tanks 35,000. The water testing, excuse me, the grounds will go down to 4000. The water testing will go up to 8,800. Building repairs stay at 5000 and meter replacement at 10,000. We’re close to done there, metering.

Chris:
We’re done basically, yes

Ted:
Okay, good. Then, advertising went up to 5,000, postage 3,600, printing 4.000, computer and copies 4,800 is a drop from 5,800, office supplies stay the same, uniforms the same, dues and licenses the same, gasoline, fortunately, 9,500 dollars, that’s great, truck repair 3,000, tools and hardware 1,500, chemicals 24,000, telephones 3,200 down, electricity 71,000. I’d like to go back there in a second, when we go back. The heating, 2,500, consumption, assessment 1,950 and conservation 1,500, legal and engineering is again at 50,000 dollars, training and education at 2,000 dollars and the service connection’s at 26,000 dollars, for a total of 596,243.

The reason I wanted to go back to electricity is we have two on the solar. We have two pretty significant bids are returns on that solar field and that looks good, very good. That could affect us significantly in the upcoming year in terms of how much we’re paying for our electricity. It’ll help us a bunch.

Fran:
Do you have any expectation when that will be up and running?

Ted:
We’re going to interview two of them, both qualified and very good. We’re looking good at this. This looks good. It will help us a bunch.

Fran:
Is this going to be owned by us or is this going to be owned by the electric company?

Ted:
No, it will be owned by a private company, that that’s what they do and they will give us credits per say. We will gain credits in there for as much as 40 to 50 thousand dollars is what I understand. That will be significant in what we do, if we’re lucky.

Charlie:
Is this by CVEC?

Ted:
I don’t know. I haven’t reviewed them yet.

Charlie:
Charles McLaughlin?

Ted:
We’ll see it next … Chris might know, I don’t know. We’ll see at next meeting who the people are that have …

Chris:
I’m not sure the names, they were in the engineering part right now. They said they’ll put the two together.

Charlie:
I’ll tell you Barnstable has it now, has their own solar field over at the airport. It’s cut our electricity costs down to almost nothing.

Ted:
There you go.

Charlie:
We also are supposedly getting money from off-takers too. We only use a certain amount and we sell the rest to off-takers.

Ted:
When I understood it, we were going to get it as credits. I think it’s the same thing. We’re talking the same thing. I don’t think we’re going to get paid for the electricity. I think we’re going to get credits.

Charlie:
We get credits and pay.

Ted:
Oh, that’s good. We’ll take your word for it, Charlie. We’ll do anything you want.

Charlie:
It went through CVEC, which is part of the county.

Ted:
Oh, I see, right.

Charlie:
Charles McLaughlin was our representative. He is assistant town council.

Ted:
Of course he was, yes. There is one small caveat to all this. We are going to take down that tank on Main Street. When that tank comes down on Main Street, that means that we aren’t going to get 84,000 dollars worth of income coming out of those antennas that are on that tank. We are presently in the process of working with the Cape Cod Commission and Russ Kleekamp for RFQ to do a tower, do a cell tower, which is significant. I think our next move will be to meet with the Civic Association and give them an idea of what we’re doing there. I can’t envision that cell tower being a real issue. I don’t think you’ll even see it. We’re going to have to go two-hundred feet step-back and around the corner. Who knows, maybe somebody won’t like the flag that we put up there. We promise not to put up the rebel flag there. We’ll use the American flag there.

Fran:
They do have cell towers that are disguised as trees.

Ted:
Do you want one as a tree?

Fran:
Yes, I do.

Ted:
Do you want an osprey on it, too?

Fran:
No, I don’t need an osprey.

Laurie:
Oh, that would be a nice touch.

Fran:
That’s right.

Ted:
I know they do Fran, we’re talking just about everything. We’ve seen the California Furs and the different trees. What we’re dealing with more so than anything is we’re trying to get all of them on the same page, this would be all the cell people. They have their own ideas of what would be best there. We will not own that. We’re going to lease the land and the property and we’ll take a percentage of what’s going through that as opposed to actually owning that tower ourselves.

We want to stay off the tanks, there’s no question. We’re done with that. We’ve had enough problems with it and people coming in, unannounced and on the top. Chris is finding hardware at the top that’s not supposed to be there, stuff attached to the side that wasn’t supposed to be attached to the side. We’re done. We’re just done with that. We’ll keep our tanks nice and clean, we’ll give them somewhere else.

I was just up in Somerset. I was interested in Bob’s program up there. He actually has three cell towers now. That’s something that we can thing of in the future, too. It doesn’t have to just be one. It can be more than one.

Fran:
Can we write Cotuit on the cell tower?

Ted:
That would be awesome. It would be little tiny letters on there, little tiny letters about that big. We haven’t even crossed out the possibility, really, we haven’t put it in, but we haven’t crossed it out either, about the Conduit going on the tank. I don’t want to get people’s hopes up. We’ll see how that goes when we get to the painting side of it.

Fran:
I think you should have people donate if they want the letters there.

Ted:
What was the lady’s name that did such a good job for the property?

Fran:
Jackie Barton

Ted:
Jackie, we’ll have Jackie do it.

Fran:
She’s semi-retired now, too.

Ted:
Oh really?

Fran:
Yes.

Ted:
She’s a good raiser of money. Any questions at all? Like I said, total one percent increase in the budget.

Fran:
No, I do have one question. I understand at some point we’re going to have to add an automatic chlorine injection system. Is that correct?

Ted:
No, well, we’ve got some time. We’ve bought some time on that. We have to go over that on the next meeting. We really have to get our teeth into it. We haven’t yet. We’ve been mandated by DEP to make some changes. I personally am pretty upset about the whole thing. I think we just got a left hook without even seeing it coming. These guys want us to do some things in these pumping stations. Chris is shaking his head. They want us to make them like Boston.

We’re not Boston. We are going to have to address this, though. It’s going to cost us some money.

Fran:
Do I understand that’s somewhere around a 700,000 dollar investment? Could be?

Chris:
Close to it, yes.

Ted:
There you go.

Fran:
Okay, thank you.

Ted:
I’m not ready for that, though. Let’s figure that out first, see what we can do.

Fran:
Okay.

Ted:
All right, thank you.

Fran:
Great, thank you.

Charlie:
No articles this year?

Ted:
No articles.

Chris:
No special.

Charlie:
No articles at all?

Chris:
No.

Charlie:
Thank you.

Fran:
Good evening, chief.

Fire Chief Olsen:
Good evening. It’s good to see everybody. How we doing tonight? Good?

Fran:
Good.

Fire Chief:
Excellent. Okay, we did have our budget meeting at our regular Fire Commissions Meeting. What we are presenting to you is what was approved with one exception, or actually two and that’s at the very end of the articles. It was an 8,000 dollar septic article that we were going to do. We removed that. It’s reflected on the new sheets that you have there. You won’t see that. I just wanted, if you have old budgets, that’s going to be missing.

We’ll start from the beginning. The labor and salaries, as you know we have to break it up to labor and salaries, miscellaneous, operating expense and maintenance expense and then we do have our appropriations, special appropriations. We’ll start out with labor and salaries. As we go from FY16, I furnished you FY16 versus FY17, we are increasing the FY17 budget for labor and salaries very little, only due to the fact of the increases for step increases, contractual. As we work down the page, you’re going to see a total increase from last year, you’ll see there’s a discrepancy there of 508,000, so don’t worry about that. We’re just focusing on FY17. Labor and salaries totals would be 1,393,431 dollars and 69 cents.

As you go to page two, where you see maintenance, that’s obviously for the building’s grounds, vehicles, communications, protective clothing, uniforms for full time and call firefighters, office supplies and miscellaneous. We’ve gone slightly down to 79,500 dollars total. For the operating budget, is right underneath that, following it all the way down, you have a total operating budget of 249,450 dollars. What we did below that is we added the miscellaneous expense, because we have to have a miscellaneous expense according to our bylaws. We have 1,000 dollars there, so the total for the operating budget is 1,723,381 dollars and 69 cents.

The last page is the special appropriations. I kept the other things, the fire chief’s vehicle and the fire engine just to show for last year. All we’re asking for this year is to still rehab 263 once the new 265 gets here in August/September. It’s looking really good right now. We have pictures. It has been painted red and white now. We’re getting really excited now. It’s in Florida. It came from Wisconsin and now it’s down in Florida where they put it together. It’s really getting excited.

We have 50,000 dollars for special appropriations on rehabbing 263. We also are looking for an HVAC system. As you know, it’s been leaking throughout the five years, probably seven years, but we noticed it about five years ago. We’ve kept on repairing it and patching it. The last time, it was recommended that we replace it and that’s at 26,000 dollars. We’ve got a total of 76,000 dollars on the special appropriations with a total fire department budget of 1,799,381 dollars and 69 cents. It’s about a 561,371 dollars and 54 cents difference from last year. That is it.

Fran:
I have a question. I believe Medicare has a planned decrease, four percent decrease in paying ambulance fees. Did you account for that?

Fire Chief Olsen:
No, because that doesn’t go to our budget.

Fran:
Oh, okay.

Fire Chief Olsen:
We did account for it, but it goes into the general fund.

Fran:
I don’t know if you’ve gone out for bids for the air conditioning, but the company that did this building, I would consider getting a bid from him. He did a great job. I can get you his information.

Fire Chief Olsen:
That would be great. I appreciate that, thank you, definitely.

Fran:
Any questions, Miss Hadley?

Laurie:
No, I have none.

Fran:
No?

Laurie:
Great.

Fran:
Thank you very much.

Fire Chief:
Thank you very much.

Fran:
I’m going to ask what is becoming a perpetual question. Any movement on the USDA?

Michael:
Chris, last we knew is nothing, right? There’s still nothing.

Chris:
Nothing

Fran:
Any guesstimate does anybody have?

Chris:
I’m having problems with the … We have a little bit of a problem with the DUNS number. We’ve switched it from what they had originally was Town of Barnstable. Mike sent something back to change it over. We had an email back to us a couple times, both our office and the office of GHD have called numerous times and we keep getting a message, to leave a message and they’ll call us back. All it is, is just to verify the changes. They have not done it. They still say, “We’re still on the way, they shouldn’t slow it down.” It’s the state, the government, whatever you want to call it. It takes a little while.

Fran:
Yes, right.

Chris:
We’re still looking good on it. They still feel good about it.

Fran:
Glad somebody’s feeling good about it.

Ted:
Fran, since I almost passed out when you said 700,000 dollars, we did have the Tata & Howard study that we had done on March 15th that gave us an estimate on what the projected budget was going to be for that cleanup of the stations and preparing them so they could handle the chemicals. It’s a total estimated projected cost of 300,000 dollars. You just saved 400,000.

Fran:
Oh, great.

Ted:
We also have one other small issue in station one that will come onto this also. Could be a few more 40 or 50 thousand dollars for that one. That’s just all estimated at this stage of the game, but not 700. That’s much better.

Fran:
Yes.

Michael:
I’m going to finish up a real quick review of the budget with you.

Fran:
Thanks. I’ll save it.

Michael:
This is already obsolete.

Fran:
Oh, okay.

Michael:
We might be able to help Charlie out if we just look at the top page. There’s always two housekeeping articles at the very beginning?

Fire Chief Olsen:
Yes.

Michael:
Okay. Then, we always do the reserve fund budget as number three, and that’s already numbered. There wasn’t much between two and three. Four has always been the administrative budget. I’ve left a couple of placeholders in case there’s any articles that you folks have, but if you don’t have any articles in that group, then we can drop the next number in for five.

Laurie:
We’ll have to engage a structural engineer to tell us what to …

Michael:
Okay, we have a public building, so we’ll put it in like where the Freedom Hall and the High Street is. Unless you want to do something administratively, then we have some placeholders, but we aren’t going to have any articles. Fire would become number five. Charlie, see where I’m going to mark that zero into a number five? That’s going to be your article five. Then rehab 263 would be number six and the HVAC would be number seven.

Then we go to the water budget, which would be number eight this year. Water has no articles. The next budget would be the public building’s budget and that would be article nine. Then I’ve got placeholders there for either Freedom Hall or High Street if you have articles. You going to have one for a structural engineer?

Laurie:
Yes.

Michael:
Okay, so make that number ten and we’ll fill that in later.

Fran:
I’ve been working on getting an estimate for doing something about the lawn on the front of Freedom Hall.

Michael:
Okay, so you want to make that an article?

Fran:
Yes.

Michael:
Okay, so we’ll make that article eleven. There’s two placeholders there that will fit nicely for that. I’ll fill those in and we’ll drop in some numbers. Then, the next one would be the street lights and that would be number twelve this year. The next one would be library. That would be number thirteen. The debt budget would be number fourteen. The benefits budget would be number fifteen. The stabilization fund will be number sixteen.

I have an article I want to put in, we’ll call number seventeen and that’s to rescind some of this excess data. I made reference to it in the notes, both the appropriating for the High street, it was money for closing costs. We don’t need it anymore. I’m going to ask that the district vote to rescind that leftover 8,000. The same with the Laurel Avenue restriction. There was a 10,000 dollars for the cost of the legal associated with that restriction. It’s pretty much all done. We just got to show up with a check at the closing. That was all paid out of the water budget. We didn’t borrow for that. Anything that occurs, we can probably cover either in this year’s budget or next year’s budget. We’re going to rescind 10,000 dollars for that. I’m going to have an article we’ll call seventeen now to have the district rescind the excesses on both of those policies. Just a housekeeping, doesn’t really fit into any department, so we’ll drop it at the back.

That at least, Mr. Clerk will give us a 17 article warrant, baring any petition articles which we’ll drop in at the bottom.

Charlie:
Bye-laws

Michael:
Some of theirs?

Fran:
Yes.

Michael:
Okay, for money articles, we’ll go with these numbers and then you can fill in behind with commissions and other committee articles and so forth. Okay, good, so that’s done.

Laurie:
Mike, I’ve got a question about the reserve fund and the Fire Department Contract, which isn’t going to be addressed again until sometime in the fall. How are we going to pay them all the retroactive at whatever price they, whatever they settle on?

Michael:
Okay, time out. We’ll go off the budget for a second. We’re back in fiscal 16, okay?

Laurie:
Okay.

Michael:
You have an unsettled contract from fiscal 15 that needs to be funded whenever the contract gets settled. You have an open budget right now that handles any transactions through the end of this fiscal year. If the contract settles before the end of this fiscal year, you’ll go through the departmental budget reserve funds or district meeting votes. We’ll fund and pay for last year’s retro and this year’s cost of benefits associated with the contract changes. Then we will still need to put something into the 17 budget for that third year of the contract. The chief’s budget doesn’t have anything built in for that. We’ll talk about that when we get into the 17’s budget workshop.

Now, under the statutes, if you do not complete that two year negotiation period and fund it this year, and everything drops over the line and goes into next year, fiscal 15 is off the table. There is no retro by law for fiscal 15. The statutes recognize that prolonged negotiations can get arduous, especially for budget purposes. If the contract isn’t done, dealt, signed, funded and completed by June 30th, then there will be a zero year for the bargaining unit for that fiscal year. It’s also to incentivize completion.

Your concerns are, how are you going to pay for 15 and 16 within 16, I think we’re probably okay there. Worst case is we’ll put an article on the district meeting and deal with that. If we cross into 17…

Well, that may happen. Then, we’re going to be talking about a retro for 16 only and the cost of whatever contract gets executed for 17. We’ll go to district meeting and we’ve got the ability to wiggle and jiggle until we get there. Anything we know that we can put into the budget so that we can pay these two years and get them behind us would be of great importance to the district this year. It would also be of great importance to the bargaining unit. If they choose not to do that, then statute just kicks in and we’re talking about settling a three year contract with only two years of funding.

Now we’ll go back on to 17’s budget. We’ve renumbered the first page. I just want to flip you through the pages. The reason you’re asking about the reserve fund was because you looked at the next page. I’ve just level funded that. We won’t discuss that tonight. I just want to sort of show you what good of shape we’re in going into your next meeting for the workshop. I’ll update this tomorrow and email you the new, revised version based on what we learned from water. All the numbers will be good and this obsolete document will be replaced tomorrow.

Flipping to the next page, we get into the administrative budget, the elected officials, the salaries, the operation of the district. That’s all pretty much beat into shape. We just need to work it out after workshop. The next budget is the Fire Department. We just heard from the chief. That’s been dropped in and tied back. The only thing we need to keep an eye on is that unfunded contract. That’s all good to go. That’s got the two articles in it. All of the articles that I was aware of and we’ll continue to use that will be funded with free cash.

We’re trying to use non-returned substance of funds for nonrecurring expenses. We’re not getting a big demand, so we’re going to end the year with a lot of free cash left over. That we can always call a district meeting and use to fund the contract in order to settle it anyway. That would be the source of funds if we slip into 17 with nothing. We’ll just call a district meeting and we’ll deal with it through free cash, or if we haven’t set the tax rate, we can do it through taxation. Two of the years should be funded out of free cash anyway if you’re funding next year, it wouldn’t be back-funding because it shouldn’t come out of current year revenues. It already should be sitting waiting in the bank for it to be paid.

The Fire Department’s in, the articles are in, the net-net without the contract or anything is about just under a three percent reduction on that budget. Water Department I just dropped in, that will be in. I can get you that tomorrow. That template will fill in. Then we come to the public buildings. That one’s another one that you should pay attention to and make sure you’ve got comfort levels with where we’re going and what we’re doing. I’ve dropped in some things. We’ll focus on that during your workshop as well. You can come prepared. I’ll drop in the articles that we spoke of on this page in those two empty articles. That would be the two you mentioned was the lawn here and the structure on High Street. We’ll have that filled in, we’ll just have to drop some numbers in. The sooner you have a sense of what the numbers are you want dropped in, just get them to me so we can get them in. I’d like to have them for your meeting. Is it the 11th I think we’re meeting next? I’ve got an updated schedule for us as well.

Street lights coming down about twenty-five percent again this year. It’s just turned into a real good deal. We’ve budgeted a couple of lights if people come forward [inaudible 00:37:53]. Think that budget’s in good shape. Library, I just bumped it up two and a half percent. If you want to debate that or change that, you just need to let him know. We can put anything in there you want. You’re going to recommend it.

Page thirteen, the debt budget is built. It includes the cost of the notes we just issued tonight, because they’ll mature next April. We know we’re paying seventy basis points on that 494,000 dollars. That’s our interest budget for next year. I’ve done some proforma estimates of the cost of principal and interest for a proforma USDA loan and then a funded cost of the existing debt for the one older water tank. That budget’s in pretty good shape, depending on the news from the USDA.

I gave you a pretty solid schedule of costs and benefits that ties back to this page fourteen benefit article. The only thing we’re estimating in there, we already have the rates for July 1, we just have to estimate a half year cost of the Medex Medicare products when they change the rates next January. We’ll have a half a year of a new amount. Cape Cod Municipal Health has said, “Estimate a twelve percent rate rise.” It’s really like six percent, because it’s only a half a year.

I built that all in and I’ve tied this budget back to that schedule. I think the benefits budget’s all built in. I think that one’s done. Just take a look at it and affirm it. The one thing I’d also note on that one is I’ve been funding the OPEB Trust Fund at about twice the amount that comes out. You put in two and you take out one. You basically net out one-half a contribution, the cost of this current year. I’ve got that to come out of free cash this year. Not necessarily a recurring cost and you should be doing it, but you’re not mandated to do it. We’ve been using free cash for pretty much, we dropped it down a little bit last year, but we’ve got it and it’s going to stretch the tax rate if we load that on this year. We can debate that and talk about that.

The trust fund’s actually bringing in just over 95,000 this year. That’s the cost of the benefits in the 17 budget with the expected cost of COLA for half a year on the Medicare type of coverages. I think we’re all set to go there. We’ll detail that when we go through this the next time we meet.

The last page is just the stabilization fund contribution. That’s budgeted right now at the same level that’s been going on. You can debate and change that if you wish. That would also come out of free cash. That’s a nonrecurring requirement, so we’ll do that.
The next time you see this, there’ll be a page two with sort of a first cut at cost of taxation and with the funding sources. The question on the Medicare adjustment, it’s so marginal it’s not really going to matter. We get so little of what we bill for reimbursements that I don’t think … We might have some upside growth on volume, so it offsets whatever adjustment. It’s not even a one percent. I think it was seventy basis points or something they were going to.

Fran:
It’s .04 I think.

Michael:
Even less, so it’s marginal but we’re aware of it. The antenna revenue is more concern and so, sort of keeping an eye on that as we get into the estimate of revenues coming into May will be important. The timing of, presumably, they don’t want to go off the air and they don’t want to move. There move will keep you with a rental amount that you won’t miss a month’s payment, in my estimation.

Ted:

Michael:
A temporary and then migrate …

Ted:
We have to get that through information.

Michael:
Either you lose it or we don’t, but it’s not like you’re going to be missing a quarter of a year because they have to rip it down.

Ted:
No.

Michael:
Okay, so we estimate our revenues ending June of 17 in May of 16. We’ve got about a fourteen month window. We need to estimate conservatively, if anything. If you see any change in the growth that’s generated from what you have now, just let us know and we’ll drop it down.

Ted:
I’ve got it right here.

Michael:
Okay, so as we go into the district meeting, we pretty much want to have a good idea of what we’re going to get the tax rate for. The other thing is we’ve had some discussion about rate adjustments, so there may be some of that too, to deal with.

Ted:
That’s going to be on the agenda for next time.

Michael:
Then we’re pretty much on the same page on both of your revenue side issues. The revenues will appear in the next document. This one doesn’t have it because we didn’t have all the expenditures. I think your budget’s in really good shape. We’ll have a really good working model in your hands at the workshop that we schedule next. I will just give you this, set of schedules that were revised. Anything that’s not firmed up is those village meetings and I’m sure we’ll get to those on the agenda down the road.

Fran:
Yes, thanks.

Michael:
We’ll pencil those in and we’ll pick this up at the next meeting.

Fran:
I just wanted to note for the people that are here, for the street electricity for street lights, item fourteen, was 24,493 dollars and the proposed for FY17 is 7,500 dollars. That’s a thirty percent decrease with the new lights. We did a good thing when we put those lights in.

Michael:
Charlie, just make sure these are good. I emailed you these, but I just want to make sure these dates are solid to send to the Board.

Charlie:
Thank you.

Michael:
I think we’ve got 17’s budget completed and the grant applications completed and the Water Department’s budgets completed.

Fran:
Next on the agenda are the Freedom Hall doors, which I understand when the water people got here this evening, one was left open. I went out and submitted, selected, entertained bids for the work, which would be to install four crash closers on these two doors up here and on the two in the basement, with the lock-sets and they’ll be lockable. For automatic door closers and replace the two steel doors in the basement and also weather strip these two doors up here and repair the two safety gates on the back stairs to the basement. I spoke to three people, Mr. Kerr, Peter Field Construction and Sturgis St. Peter. He’s the one who did work at the fire station.

Neither Mr. Kerr nor Mr. Field were available at this time, so they’re basically no bids. Mr. St. Peter’s bid is 10,582 dollars and 99 cents, which I think is reasonable. It’s 5,937 dollars for materials and 4,645 dollars for labor. It’s going to be a fair amount of labor. If I could have a motion to accept?

Laurie:
I move we accept Sturgis St. Peter’s bid of 10,582 dollars to fix these darn doors so that they’re not left open all the time.

Fran:
Second. All in favor?

Laurie:
I.

Fran:
I. So moved. I haven’t actually, next is High Street structural evaluation. I really haven’t gotten any estimates on doing that yet. I believe when I talked to Mr. Grassetti some time ago we thought a structural evaluation would be somewhere around 5,000 dollars. I’ll get something firmer on that.

Laurie:
You know there’s a gentleman on the Historic Commission who might be able to help us out with that, George Jessup.

Fran:
Okay, I know him. A district office, I know the Fire Department is rather anxious for us to vacate their premises. I was thinking about the possibility of one of those construction office, motorized or, you know, buildings and putting it at High Street.

Laurie:
I think that’s a good idea. We’ve certainly got room for it. There’s water there and storage already.

Fran:
Yeah, electricity.

Laurie:
Electricity.

Fran:
I thought I would ask Stan to see if he could work on that and get some prices for us. I’ve also been talking to the IT Department at the county. I spoke about this last year and they’re going to be doing web business for town districts and things like that.

Laurie:
Wonderful.

Fran:
Yes, so they have been talking back and forth with our Webmaster. Hopefully we’ll be able to migrate over to them July 1st.

Laurie:
Oh, that would be fantastic.

Fran:
I haven’t gotten a firm cost on it, but it’s going to be less than what we’re paying now. I’m going to the Civic Association Executive Board meeting next week.

Laurie:
When I spoke to Rich Bowden, his concern was that he didn’t think the nomination papers had to be turned in by the time of their meeting. That’s why they have it backwoods, as far as I’m concerned. Have they …

Fran:
See, isn’t it April?

Laurie:
It’s right here, April 20th.

Fran:
I can get a calendar with me, but isn’t theirs the third Tuesday?

Laurie:
Yes, it is. I’ll look in my phone.

Fran:
I would expect that anybody who’s interested in running is going to hopefully have their papers returned by then or working on it.

Laurie:
Yes, and so April 20th. Is that after the nominations close, the third Tuesday?

Michael:
The 20th day is the date that the Clerk certifies the signatures to Charlie. The date above is the last day to get your papers. The answer is yes. They’ll know who’s running, unless they don’t have the signatures. She’ll have them to us before the 20th I suspect.

Laurie:
If they’re going to do a candidate site, there’s no reason why they can’t do it.

Fran:
Right and do the budget at the same time. Just make it a one night process. His reasoning that he gave me of why they wanted to do the budget prior to the budget actually being closed was so that people could make recommendations about changing the budget. That’s actually what the purpose of the annual meeting is. I’ll let Mike know as soon as I speak with them, what they decide to do.

Michael:
You want to take the calendar and circulate it? Are the paper’s being distributed from the Water Department?

Fran:
Yes.

Michael:
Okay, I’ll put that one here too. That’s new this year, right? That’s new this year.

Fran:
I thought it was the Fire Department.

Ted:
Last year, I did it first two years ago. It just became [crosstalk 00:50:35].

Michael:
Too difficult, okay, so that’s going to be, everyone should know, the papers are available at the Water Department.

Ted:
Jesalyn picks up the papers.

Fran:
Yes, she’s a good kid. The last item is the minutes from the …

Laurie:
You skipped over the treasurer’s recruitment.

Fran:
Oh, I’m sorry.

Laurie:
I did email the, I didn’t send one to Charlie. You had asked me to draft an ad for the paper. That’s what I came up with. I thought it would be a good idea if we put this on the website.

Fran:
Great, I wanted to ask Mr. Daley if he could review this for us, requirements and see if there should be any additions to that.

Michael:
Okay, I got this email today and printed these. I’ll take a look at it and in the morning when I’m buttoning up all this paperwork and get back to you.

Fran:
When do you think we should start the advertising? Miss Hadley?

Laurie:
We have to have somebody in place the 1st of July.

Fran:
Have somebody appointed by, or somebody confirmed by June 1st. We should probably start, do this at the beginning of May.

Laurie:
Yes, sounds good.

Fran:
Does that sound reasonable? Did you have a chance to review those minutes?

Laurie:
Yes, didn’t see anything.

Fran:
Okay, I’ll accept a motion to approve the minutes of the…

Laurie:
I move we accept the minutes of the February 22nd, 2016 meeting.

Fran:
Second. All in favor? I.

Laurie:
I.

Fran:
So moved, I’ll accept it. Any other business?

Laurie:
I move we adjourn.

Chris:
Just a quick question. Sorry, Chris Wise, Superintendent to Water. We made some decisions tonight on a bylaw change and something that we need to put in. When does Charlie need that information by or is this something Laurie, you could help me with? Is this something for the Bylaw Committee or is this something for us?

Laurie:
You have the right to put in bylaw changes.

Chris:
Is the Bylaw Committee putting some in also?

Laurie:
We are, I don’t remember what we discussed back to you.

Chris:
We do have some written stuff.

Michael:
The warrant closes the 25th.

Chris:
Okay, so get something to Charlie by then?

Michael:
Yeah, because that night they vote at their next April meeting, the warrant closes.

Chris:
Okay, we’ll get something to you by then. If you have something you want to talk to me about we can.

Laurie:
Okay, I know where to find you.

Fran:
Okay, so, we’re adjourned.

Download a copy of the minutes