Minutes June 25, 2002
Finance Committee
Attending: Susan Brooks, Paul Giese, Mary Cancian, John Robinson, (Al Schmerzler late),Tim Higgens, Town Admin, Colleen Wilkins for the Fin. Dir, and Chuck Miller, MIS Dir.
May 16th minutes approved. Hereafter, the co-chairs will take the minutes and email a draft to members for their changes (returned to co-chairs by email). Approval and turnaround should be within a week.
If CPA passes the town ballot in Nov. 02, the Pentamation accounting systems (Collections module) will have to be upgraded. This upgrade needs to include long range systems upgrade plans (7 modules). The Town Group presented the options and implications (attached) and FinCom decided (unanimously) to approve selection of a new software vendor and to take the opportunity to begin the migration to a new future system. The reasons for this are: 1.November time constraint; 2, Pentamation obsolescence, poor functionality and expense (upgrade and maintenance); and 3, total short and long range cost. The Town has analysed prospective vendors and selected Vadar, the only MA based vendor, as the best overall choice. Because of the time constraint (November 02 implementation), 03 uncertainties and 02 Reserve Funds availability, FinCom decided (unanamously) to approve an 02 Reserve Fund Transfer of $68,195 for this purpose.
Reserve Fund Requests were reviewed and approved as follows: 1) -$64,902 (money added back to Reserve Fund) for money newly provided by State to METCO/SPED, rescinding their previous decision; 2) $25,800 for additional legal expenditures (bringing total Legal Exp. in 02 to $170K vs. $120K budgeted); 3)$7,500 for Unemployment Ins.; 4) $3000 for ambulance maint.; and 5) $1368 for Library for failed AC unit. This brings the Balance of the 02 Reserve Fund to $201,343, less the $68,195 in 2) above, equals $133,148. There are no further 02 Reserve Fund Transfers expected.
The next draft of the proposed legal expense containment process was reviewed. It was agreed to shorten it and to endeavor to make it a combined directive of the Select Board and FinCom if possible.
Action 1) Redraft a shortened, modified version
Resp: Mary and then Susan -- Date: Next Monday, July 1 and then within a week
Action 2) Discuss draft with Select Board Liaison to FinCom prior to full discussion with Selects
Resp: Susan and Paul -- Date: week of July 1st
Susan reviewed the results of the Budget Process Review meetings (May 8th and June 13th) to date. The write-up is still in progress with a document expected by the next FinCom meeting
Action 1) 1st Draft of the prospective Budget Process
Resp: Susan -- Date: July 11
Mary reviewed a draft of the FinCom Guidelines statement, describing the no override baseline that would provide an initial no override base budget guide for the budgeting boards every September, and the approach to be taken to arrive at town meeting budget proposals after that.
Action 2) Draft a memo to the budgeting boards informing them of the approach and including the FinCom Guideline draft.
Resp.: Tim Higgins, Town Admin. -- ASAP
The contract negotiations process in progress was reviewed for the K8 and Town negotiations (LSRHS takes place later). A question was raised whether or not FinCom could provide any information to the negotiating groups on expected Base Budget (revenue based) estimates in the future to be used by them as appropriate. It was agreed that FinCom would develop a preliminary estimate and discuss how to use it in the next meeting.
Action Develop a 3 year, 2.5% revenue projection plus estimates of (a) other revenues minus (b) fixed costs
Resp: Paul -- July 11
Liaison reporting included (a) Communications and (b) Data/Statistics and (c)K8 Task Force. A preliminary communications topics list was advanced with the idea that a figure implying position in the budget process might accompany any writings. Data/statistics possibilities were listed with further effort needed to explore a) what data would be useful, b) how to get it and c) what towns to use (if any) for comparison. The K8 Task Force survey was handed out to help think about ways we could make any inputs to the Task Force. These Liaison topics will be continued in our next meeting.
Action Continued Liaison reporting (Comm, Data/Stats, K8/TaskForce & Tax Relief)
Resp.: Mary, Pat & JR -- Date: July 11
The meeting was adjourned. The next meeting will be Thursday, July 11.
Paul Giese and Susan Brooks
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