October 26, 2020 | Town Admin TOWN OF SUTTON Pillsbury Memorial Town Hall 93 Main Street Sutton Mills, NH Sutton Mills, NH 03221 Budget Committee October 26, 2020 The chair, Robert Defelice, opened the meeting@6:00 PM: present were Pete Thompson, Gail Guertin, Samantha Gordon, John Mock, Mark Peterson and Bob Wright. The minutes of 10-12-2020 were approved without correction. The minutes of 10-19-2020 were amended to read: ‘Items 392, 393 and 505 were place holders as the amount for those items was zero (0). Such items are normally kept open for seven years and then discontinued as a budget line item.’ In addition, Samantha Gordon’s absence@the 10-12-2020meeting was an excused absence. This is important, because of a member of the budget committee does not attend three times in a year, then the individual must be removed from the committee. The chair then distributed a review of the highway budget: actual amount spent in 2018 and 2019, the budget for 2020 and 2021, and the amount spent through 10-23-2020. The committee is to review highway CR’s at a later meeting, but the chair reminded the committee that gravel and black top are two large CR’s with the black top to be $250,000 in 2021 budget as Sutton has 60% black top vs. 40 % gravel. This is a response to the State of NH guidelines relating to proper road Adam Hearst, Town RA was invited to review the Department of Highway budget. It was moved by Wright 2nd by Peterson to zero out line items 102 and This motion passed w/o dissent. Brief discussion of part time wages (town employee) part time labor (3n1 party and not a town employee) Crack sealing does extend the life of a road, but not practical for the town to purchase and maintain a sealer. More beneficial to use a 3rd party, although that brings its own problems. It was pointed out that the state of NH uses a 3rd party for its seal The budget is reviewed for one year, but with history to assist the committee and the department head in its future budget projections. The longer the recorded and available history, the more accurate the planning and The 2021 highway budget as presented by Adam recorded one change from 2020 -#804 road signs. From $1,000 to $3,000. All Sutton Road signs are being replaced. Adam was able to reduce the cost of this,by reducing the sign size as out speed limit is 30MPH – easier to spot. This was a two year program – $2,000 for each The committee reviewed each line item and the following line items were reduced: (a) 102 Part time labor 2020 $1.584 2021 $0 (b) 102 Part time mechanic 2020 527 2021 0 (c) 741 Hand tools 2020 1,000 2021 500 (d) 805 Liquid calcium 2020 26,000 2021 15,000 Some items: electricity, custodial, heating oil, are paid by the Town Administrator’s budget for the town and the amounts are allocated to each department. Other items: retirement, health, life and disability benefits, WC and SS are paid via executive department (TA) and not shown on this budget presentation. Bridges called for $3,000 in operating budget, no change and used for repair to railings and tread base. This is for the three wood bridges only. There is a CR balance to rebuild town bridges as of 12-31-2019 was 267,627* with an additional $50,000 added in 2020. The chair thanked Adam for his presentation and invited the Road Agent back for CR review in December.. The committee then reviewed COLA and for the year 2021, the increase will be 1.3%. This amount is sufficient to bring the town to COLA parity and no further catch up is required. The chair also explained that dollar merit increases do not qualify for COLA increase, but merit percentages do. Bob Wright briefly outlined the BOS position: COVID- 19, the removal of any state of NH support for class I and Class II retirement plans puts an added burden on the town tax payers to fund not only our police department but also the teachers and administrators of KRSD and the revaluations are sources of concern; the board would like to keep expenses as low as possible. There was discussion initiated by the highway sub-committee relating to the amount of equipment, how it is used and how it is cared for, as an interim report. The sub-committee will review further and offer up a more complete evaluation and offer up recommendations for potential cost savings. The committee adjourned@8:20 PM. The next meeting of the committee will be on Wednesday, November 4th @ 6:00 PM – the day after the presidential election held on Tuesday the 3rd Please note the change of date. Respectfully submitted, Robert W Wright Jr. Scribe * p. 63, 2019 Town Report