February 13, 2023 | Town Admin Town of Sutton Sutton Budget Committee Draft Meeting Minutes for Monday, February 6, 2023 at 6:15 p.m. Present – Bob Wright, Gail Guertin, Samantha Gordon, Bob DeFelice, Walter Baker (ex officio) Absent – Bruce Kozikowski (excused) In Audience – Mike McManus, Nancy Glynn, Catherine Paden, Elizabeth Geraghty, Betsy Anderson, Emily Cooper Call to Order – Meeting commenced at 6:22. Agenda Discussion Previous Minutes · Bob W. made a motion to approve the 1/30 minutes as presented. Gail seconded. Unanimously approved. Updates The chair reviewed several updates to the budget worksheet: · We had the wrong numbers in lines 1-01-4140-101 and -102, but those have now been updated. They previously had numbers for two elections but there is only one in 2023. · We did also hear back from the Scott Air Pack people, and it’s about $3,000 more than their previous guesstimate. It doesn’t change anything about our current plan for 1-14-4914-990, but it changes to goal to $129,000. This Capital Reserve (CR) will be fully funded at the end of 2023. · Personnel administration salary contingency 1-01-4155-214 has been increased by $10,000 to be safe. In particular this will cover our needs if we need additional funding to hire a new town administrator, and will also cover hours for the current town administrator to train her replacement on an as-needed basis. · The highway department budget 1-03-4312-101 has been updated to include the $0.50 raise for the one employee who had this as a condition of their hire. This is the clarification on the $0.50 question. This also affects the retirement fund 1-01-4155-231, so those numbers are updated in kind. · There was some discussion of the Planning Board taking over capital reserve planning. The chair has had further discussion where the Planning Board will take over the Capital Improvement Plan (CIP), but the Budget Committee will continue to oversee the CR funds to support the CIP. Library · Representatives from the library were in attendance to ask questions about the issues with their building and the funding of these repairs (from existing CR funds). The library building has multiple high-priority issues with their building that need to be addressed, including an electrical issue and basement moisture issues. A de-humidifier is only a temporary solution and doesn’t fix the root problem, so we likely don’t want to spend a large amount of money on it without resolving the wet basement issue in general. The updates to the building fall under the purview of the selectboard. The selectboard will decide the best solution for the issue, while the budget committee assists with budgeting and funding the solution. The selectboard has not yet decided on the final route to take with these repairs, and do not yet know the definitive costs. Wally explained that some of the work required to fix these existing problems may expose other issues or require additional funds. Work like this on town buildings require at least three comparative quotes to review. The library has provided two estimates to the selectboard for the work needed to repair the library building, one for a smaller temporary fix and one for a larger scope fix (but the estimates can’t be directly compared). Additional quotes will be needed. · The library also provided their 2022 expenditures to the chair, so their requested line item budgets can be reinstated for the budget hearing. Warrant Articles · The chair passed out the warrant articles to preview. They will be reviewed on Thursday at the hearing. Upcoming Schedule · 2/9/23 – This will be the date of the budget public hearing. Committee members should be there at 6:30 and the hearing will begin at 7 p.m. The chair will have the report of budget line changes for each department for review and voting. Next Meeting – The budget committee hearing will be on 2/9/23 at 7:00 at the town hall. Adjournment – Bob W. motioned to adjourn the meeting at 7:58 p.m. Gail seconded. Unanimously approved. Respectfully submitted, Samantha Gordon