and it's really i mean i'm living there now but it's usually only occupied by c here so just because it's for a better home it's two hundred dollars a year just for the fixed rate that the usage if you're looking at a goal of fifteen thousand gallons of water this quarter was sixty five hundred gallons of plus of what your goal is for a family to be living in a home and yet be paying two hundred dollars here for something granted it's unusual because we're not living in the house all year long but still and i want to give particular credit to former like remember john karr in the back there who recruited actually looked at actually a a water industry professional and she serves on this like gordon and now on the water and sewer board so actually  good see any other comments from the public either questions about what we're trying to do tonight all right will it let's get right down to it though we need to improve minutes from last mean for you but i think he was the only one here  all right so let's review the minutes has anybody have any comments or question  this specifically with community water systems on long term sustainability included in that is the user review and budgeting and capital improvement plan and so on and so forth i was approached by jeff actually over a year  when i when i approach a water system when i do my rate structure is i initially say show me what you got for me see what your budget looks like let me see a couple of bills let me see how much water you're  this is funky me we should think about changing a little bit and and so i did do that here so i said based on my review of the rates i found i found that the returns rate structure is as i think chris said  and everybody kind of realizes that it's kind of unbalanced and and that it's an equitable and frankly is unsustainable and just you know i'm speaking as an industry professional i'm not speaking as a richmond resident right now i'm not speaking i don't i'm not on the that's not the first time i heard that i went to a smaller school in upstate new york harbor college i graduated with a degree in anthropology and geology i have worked for the super eight years and prior to that i worked in various environmental cleanup companies and i am thirty three years old to be thirty for the summer so i'm not as young as i thought i'm not as inexperienced as many people probably think i am i have been doing this for about five years  and i've worked with at least a dozen communities and the suspect in addition to doing a lot of research and talking with the ship professionals about this so i think you know what i'm talking about so you know right as i was saying that rich means rates are frankly unsustainable the single family home owners in the high island he did users in this community really subsidize the folks in the middle who are either using out or above what they've been is doesn't actually cover the fixed expenses but what i like to see when i run community is is the beast sure should cover just the electric company charges abuse charge for your walk free or for the service and that  covers what what you need a car regardless of how much water you serve and the phone charger the variable charge covers how much you use and water systems historically have not practiced that which means that they're  the overall budget which means that they're not they're not cleaning from the system because they don't they don't have service but they're going to pay for water they're going to pay for the budget and and  industry excepted practices for this for allocation revenue strictly allocation revenue to go into a separate fund for future improvements future growth to pay for future the wastewater treatment plant does contribute revenue but it does use almost a million gallons of beer which is the gallons here which is a significant amount of water that's in this community so the current rate structure does not include the planning money that's going to be coming due in twenty fifteen which is work that either not that we know needs to happen or that we want to happen or that you know just sort of replacing aging infrastructure as it exists  representative of flushing hydrants which is a regular occurrence in water systems it's good maintenance but it's still water that's being produced that's not being sold it's firefighting purposes it's underreporting meters it's  leaks it's people who are nuts on a meter who do receive water or who are estimated to meter readings so you know the forty percent is not necessarily what's actually leaking into the ground because it's a collector presentation of water it's the allocation allocation in this community so there are a number of folks to pay basically to have future service and like i said the revenue right now is going to support the general budget but it's going to support you know paying salaries and fixing water lines on and so forth it's not going into a separate file to guarantee that plan and if those folks want the water in the future that they'll get it if it happens in twenty years and the person who owns that allocation and grows up with throughout the community and the water and sewer systems are you know continue to eat away at their capacity in that room all the sudden you don't have any well you know so it's just it's it's just a best practice to have a future growth paper picture and also water is a commodity and allocation is a commodity and and i was really struck by the fact that richmond has plenty of water but yet people are still paying for it the commodity is it's i can see it out last where there's not a lot of black people  e and they're fighting fires we've got lots of water so i thought i was a little but every community can do what they choose to do and also finally some connections are using more than what they're out here like i and others who are in the beginning is that there are a number of connections as businesses in the that all who may have once been allocated a certain amount of water but now they're using over and above it where there are other connections for example the  on a projected usage on what they're for example three bedroom home would be is four hundred fifty gallons and so the four hundred fifty gallon charge is forty three dollars species charge forty three and change a quarter so that's why if somebody has a proposed single family home it's going to be three bedrooms they pay forty forty sixty something a quarter to have that to to reserve that so when they don't connect it's fair that i answer your question different way of evaluating how things are to be done so i think i already talked to a little bit about the cost pricing but full cost pricing this is the technical term and i hate to put so much stuff onus on a slide but but for demonstration purposes i did that why is it important again and it's important because of the shrinking federal and state budgets to help water systems fix their systems you know i like i said i work in the department of environmental conservation and we have seen level funding from the federal government which then we pass on money to help water systems fix their infrastructure we've seen it level funded for the number of years and the current climate in washington is to shrink it so that means less money coming into the state which means less money to communities to help fix their infrastructure and and where's that money going to come from well it's going to come from the users to fix their own systems bonds and user rates and pitcher reserve accounts  so customers water bill should reflect the actual and future costs or provide water again the reserve funding to make sure that the water pipes are maintained and in a way that you're going to provide adequate service  price signals the value to consumers and it's important the prices reflect an increase in cost to provide water you know water is is historically undervalued in this country the the average cost of water we were just to china a little bit before the doing this and the reason why i say this is because they to accept to drive in your home a significant amount of septic driving new comes and from the fact that there is a as an excess there is excess capacity at the wastewater treatment the system and covering all future costs so clear to everyone and even on a basic line they're not even covering what it cost to provide the water right now forget about it the future is because the septic trap in the us is basically artificially lowering the and so if you're if you're offsetting some of your septic septic or waste water budget bisected then the rate that's determined is lower because you have to receive glass from your users and those commercial they're mostly you know large industry and you have those big users to support it and in a community like this where it's pretty stable from year to year you have you know the same usage from year to year for the most part that there are other ways to do it  basically saying that single family homes are one so the single family home is defined outs and community defined single family homes whatever they define it by its richmond define it as a standalone family dwelling no outbuildings no office no commercial space no mother in law suite single family home this is correct kind of yes and kendall and shooting went out and they identified all the single family homes in the community and basically start farming put it on a six times as much water as the average single family home in richmond use this so therefore they would be sixty put like residential units and everybody so with and and the equivalent residential units where you use to b your base rate on so man what you are saying is that you pay two hundred dollars a year regardless of how much water you use that's correct that's a piece charge you have you get the value and the service to your house so there is some cost associated with providing that service to the house and it's distributed equally among everybody at whatever place not based on bedrooms not based on number of people that live there not based on how you use your house except for the fact that you're a single family home and then everybody else is if the camera is basically partial it falls into the other category so all single family homes are treated the same because it's a management nightmare honestly to be count trips what if you ask what if you subtract one you know what if i had a mother must be away like we got better things to do with our time and counting people like yeah ten people can live in a two bedroom but you know what one person can be living in a five bedroom house accounting people is a bad way of doing things too so that's where treating all single family homes as one though yes i recognize that some writings last and some are going to use more you're all collectively a single family home so i then calculated the remaining number of connections fix that year use i remove sectors from a one m budget so that so again taking out the separate revenue from the water budget i also removed the allocation revenue from the budget i added the wastewater treatment plant to the calculations of use which they're not considered in the year you are right now i'm included debt service in the budget and i ran  i'm not going to show you the spoons because there are a lot of things to discuss before we start before we start deciding what happens so what's the result richmond's new year you count is four hundred fifty nine that's significantly less than what it was being calculated out of five ninety three but i'm still a little fuzzy on how the five ninety three was calculated and again that includes the allocated units so that's why i think it's the fifteen thousand times divided multipl how much water you use ok so so a single family home and a commercial building may both pay the same base rate but there are alternate bill maybe maybe significantly different because a single family home you have two teenage daughters who wash their hair seven times a day ever says an office building that has one toilet and one one employee is going to be significantly less while their base charges are going to be the same but the flow charge is going to be different charged to be straight based on plus a flow rate based on actual usage i think i kind of think of it as the electric company or the new electric company so accounts that hold allocation only will be calculated much differently i i kind of have to do a little bit more research on that and the revenue would then be put into reserve account this this new proposed method is more equitable again because all single family homes are treated the same it's based on actual and what's actually happening in this community not some sort of made up number like fifteen thousand gallons of corn i mean that's that's so high even compared to national standards that it's it's really it's really you shouldn't base it on that you should base it on what's going on in your community and it's and it's sustainable because it brings in enough money to cover expenses plus future expenses and debt service so what does that mean for my bill well as you can probably imagine almost all current costumers receipt increase and that's because not just because i'm proposing a change but it's because you have debt payments that are coming regardless you've got to jericho road project planning it would have gone up regardless it just trying to sort of it's all kind of happening sort of at the same time which is why the water and sewer commission are going to need to talk about how we phase of this how we how we work through this to make it not quite such a blow that are using more than they're allocated will see the largest increases and again those are the folks in the middle those are the those are the middle users in town and frankly the commercial there the business and i'm not anti business at all i'm just i'm i'm an advocate for equitability and sustainability so the folks that he is close to or more than what they were originally allocated are going to see the biggest increases and those folks using less than what they're allocated again like camel some middle school would see modest decreases can i have this is the last like the great is we make sure there's a will of god and this is just this is just sort of like you know like this is what i would propose to do moving forward sort of implementing appropriate rate structure apply the same rationale on the waste water side and and so we need to nail down sort of what our approach would be because like i said i work in the water department i don't work and waste water so i'd have to do this on my personal time to do the wastewater but once we have the rationale determine for water it would something that i prepare for and water system i talk to them and look for leaks and perspex them implement a more robust meter replacement program your meter is your cash register if it goes you're never going to see the electric company just throwing out numbers don't put me on it if you potentially doubled it to sixty metres here so you have a ten year education are actually making five euro taishan so for the for five years you're replacing meters and then you know it's it's kind of like a cyclical thing like a river placer police cruisers every four years we replace the meters ever on a regular basis and they have new meter technology now where you don't even have to go out and read the little thing inside your house that's connected to the copper wire that goes inside you can just drive by with the thing and it will automatically download it you can have smart meters where you can go check it on line just like you can with your electric meter i do it almost every day and i love it so i mean there there are ways to get this done without just saying all right everybody we're replacing it was all over the board i'm not i i recognise that but there are communities that do it there are ways of doing it it's management  come for water is that unaccounted for water in in lost revenue through underreporting meters i don't know and you're right but but if this is going to be a community that bases  meters then it should have a properly functioning pewters you know i mean it's a if you don't want to base your rates you have your neighbors base it on rates your meter works properly your neighbor does and so that means that they're going to pay less even though they're using the same amount of water it's you you you want you want to welcome ching system and it not only gives you it's not only your cap your checkbook but it's earlier cash register it's it's about usage so that you know do you need to play on her for another source you need to plan for  tank you know i wonder is your demand you know is it during the summer the during the winter do we have a leak things like that like it's just it's just a management also and so you know i think a lot of towns struggle with i think what what first year you're asking about and what what we will struggle here and what we struggled with with for years is frankly how do we like i don't want to be the one to raise ra but i'm going with the bad guy you know and so even if you put it out in front i mean i'm going to i'm going to call out of town that i'm working with in the northeast kingdom that charges everybody the same so the college pays one single old lady pays one so they're all considered one so the college uses half of the water in town and little mccoy ms mccoy rain uses five hundred gallons a month or whatever you know and they both pay the same base rate that's clearly credible and i presented it to them but again the whole the shift from this is the way we've always done it and this is the way people are really used to doing it too this is our new paradigm this this is how we need to make ourselves more business friendly because now we have an infrastructure that sustainable that they can rely on and that is not going to fail then you know we're not ok we're not going to face a huge rate increase because we're not adequately prepping for the future dollars a month so it's you know it's less than mice it's less than my cell phone bill so the the price jump is not quite as significant as if it was billed quarterly or angrily so the value of water is not quite as much on what the future budget is and knowing that there's significant debt payments coming up is if you stay on a structure they're not going to be able to meet their commitments and switching to monthly is not going to change things now would it make it easier to swallow read increase probably because the relative monthly bill is going to be less but then you add admin fees on top i mean that it costs the town to send it out and you know i don't i don't know the accounting on that how much it would cost to send out monthly bills versus salute through your raleigh probably not right now because and the reason why i say that is because like i said i think we need to do a phased approach because i think if we just sort of go like you know cold turkey that i think we'd have even more people here at the next meeting because it would be a significant it would be a significant increase and so i think you know the search warrants are commission certainly at meetings will need to discuss how it's going to be implemented i helping them get their rates and their infrastructure stable and then i'm a graduate of the vermont public and we're very glad i've taken steps to make myself more experienced despite my  catbirds have one dollar item purchase order and they told the board last month we saved the hydrant from the jerk the road project we'd like to raise we'd like to replace our worst hundred that needs replacing that's up until then ave disappear to morrow or we could be small right now we're swamped cleaning out a lagoon in this one and i've got three companies that want to bring us everything but self reliant and plants going to be opening back up a pretty good spot now actually said if that could change at any moment so they have a significant part of your actual user rates subsidized by something that could disappear i mean it's great while it's here but what if it fees we're increasing our subjects in just a patient by six thousand dollars slightly reducing interest on the vestments the budget overall is down except the word jericho road which is going up by fifteen thousand five hundred fifty two dollars because last year we put that in this preliminary because the bond sale was drawing now that we have the final numbers and  regulate into the budget and maybe going forward recommended those go into reserves because as we saw the reserve connection fees are are trending lower than what they were projected to be and so if we put that into our operating budget and we don't get it will come up short so you know not relying that again to sups a supplemental budget would be a good idea is to put those in terms or so we've got just one little gas heater aboard that must be a tight unless that was from a leak that happened last year you had to spend a lot of time heating up that building to know and that's actually a good would do the brown's court waterlines replacement at the time we thought it would be less than one hundred thousand dollars three mountaineering ran some numbers for us including paving they came up with two hundred thousand dollars sensually there their price on the waterline was around one hundred forty two hundred fifty thousand dollars at the time i didn't think that was something we could take arms of the line to the states with all the loan fund for that money since then a number of people year know four hundred fifty thousand or thirty thousand a year for five years keep in mind we have no cost estimates yet this would probably be a project that would be done in august or september but if the yes so what do you what are you looking for tonight are you willing to move forward with the project at a cost of a maximum cost of one hundred fifty thousand i certainly am as i sympathize with the folks who live on brown's court and i've been a recipient of a number of comments and i think that it should be done what's what's the thirty thousand a year for the next five years the design work would be less and we'd use our own water resource staff to supervise the construction instead of having a residence here there's also the possibility that we would be able to purchase the let's call the may seventh version of the richmond slike board to order please first of all like to welcome our product will remember ne he knows kind of what's going on here this reflects some back and forth between jeff to myself trying to make it a manageable length so that we're not here in tel forever but also to make sure that we have adequate time to dress  pressing issues particularly the two thousand and eleven audit report so this is the plan we have a few items of business second reading some public hearings that must be dealt with that we want to take care of right up front s then will go into the into the financial report and this is something that we wanted to make a regular part of select were being for a while and we are now officially kicking off tonight and still be a monthly  report on the financial status of the town and the way we're still feeling our way through the best way to do this but what i am proposing for tonight is that this will be of a a presentation by jeff of the financial report and then there will be a limited amount of time for questions and primarily from the slick board about that report because there may be things that need to be modified the things that are clear that report will go back and re brought to the next like or meeting for more open public discussion ok but what we don't want to do is get into detail picking a part of something which may need fine tuning before it's done the first time that this this financial report has been brought to the select board so this is the a review of the draft at this point then after a half hour of that we're going to go to a full hour by one and explain what the finding is for the the for public explain what the response of the town has been today and if it is not resolved with the response of the town will be and then to have questions and answers by the select board and will do that for thirty minutes ok and get as far as we can in thirty minutes not that we're going to get all the way through then we will have half an hour of questions and answers by the public so rather than treat each one individually in order to stand schedule goes for a half hour with as far as we can get clarifying questions from this like war and then open it up to the public we will not get through everything today we will not get all of your questions and comments and tonight we will do this at the next meeting again and as many meetings as takes to get all the way through the all of the questions that people have and all the items on the on the on the on the on it report all the finding now thirty six thirty seven and we've never had any problems whatsoever on the road around parking and anything and since the road was done instead of also let me say that there's my house has two cars and we have a house apartment that's over the garage the back in the barn that's been there for thirty seven years and there's two cars there is a couple that live there everybody has a car and parking for the last thirty seven years it's always been in the space that was cleared out here a lot i wish it years ago and we we we paid him wasn't the town doing it to have a space so we could park in the strip right in front of the house and it was done really well water pipes were taken and we took all the water from that was coming off the hill into a single pipe that went down into a drain that he had put in and it was a beautiful job so i had no complaints for thirty seven years and now with this road i'm freaking out because first of all i brought to show you what they put down for us the parking lot and this is not the smartest one but these are the rocks that are for us to take in our tires to go over had when i had i had a garden little space there with round boulders for years and they took them all all the little round rocks that i picked specially to put there with the plants planted have disappeared and this is what i have  actually been taking them from where they put us to part of putting these type of rocks near my garden space just felt like the whoever was in charge of that project nearby driveway did a really not  consideration at all for what was there and i'm very angry my daughter was born in that house thirty seven years ago and we've had parking all the time with no other place to park and i i haven't made a party every year i invite some elderly people fifty older than me and i tell them to go park down in the catholic church and take the path that the kids take a walk back up and some of them are in there and he said they couldn't do it this year they could park there and they couldn't do the walk up the gentleman there who always did my work mr irish he did a beautiful job we had rounded stones we had gravel put down we had everything was perfect and i never complained in thirty seven years until these workers started there and not only did they do this horrible job so that we can't part but not the workers but the foreman or whoever he is was extremely rude to us whenever we had any comment at all from the way he was just i mean it was really hard but i didn't never said anything to him i just let it go but it was a very it was different than what richmond was something for the first time having to deal with somebody who was working on the job had no care at all whatsoever  that one of the items that we deferred from the agenda for tonight was a review of outstanding issues like this on jericho road and the reason we deferred it is so that that neil who was on vacation who's back to the owners of the property you do this i mean harold had moved the water that was running off the hill in a way so they went directly into the great step we were put in the water doesn't even go into the greats and some of the places that they did that were so i'm just really upset with this i know i'm not sure what to do i feel like i want to take these rocks and i don't know what to do with them well actually you did the right thing by coming here i mean that's that's that's what we're for and that's for go with it this week whatever works for you ross that life does some research and what we need to have our small one and a half to two inch rocks so you can just drive on like any other parking place these rocks you cannot drive on at all i'm only asking space for two cars i miss my supply property it's right there yes even if you put small rocks he wouldn't be able to plow it during the winter so that m name is but he's not one of the young kids that it's working there or the younger guys that are working there and he or i just say that i'm not used to people in this town being rude to me and he was so good to us the entire time that it was i talked to him one time and that was it i let it go i complained to jeff i complained to my neighbors and complained everybody came specially when sister was a bit didn't come to the mayday party because she couldn't walk up to help so i was like i mean it's not a big deal but it is a symbolic of what we have to deal with so that's all i have to say to you or anybody but i would like for that to be remedied i want these rocks i'll be glad to donate these rocks to any project in iraq arden's anybody can come and take rocks i'm not kidding i'm starting to get rid of them i'm building a wall around they also by the way when hiro did the this wonderful job for me i believe fred fortune is here for an interview for a vacancy a long development review board form have you ever been involved in the litigation against the town over in the zoning related issues have been involved in any lawsuits or anything against the town over zoning related issues you especially you know the big thing is for me is the aesthetics of someone comes in and they want to put one however and they are the big thing is number one a parking secondly is is dumpsters everybody's at dumpsters youngsters don't have to be ugly you know you can plant some plants or whatever and you know make it look doesn't have to look appealing but at least it doesn't have to be generating either  these or you know things that i like to see when i drive through richmond i want people from there or visiting here or passing through i want to say well somebody kind of cares you know i don't want to look like other towns what did you find were some of the bigger challenges when you were on the board of the four  for getting approval of r f y thirteen budget includes both the capital budget in an operating budget the operating budget is down the expenses are down point three percent the revenues are down point seven percent pretty much level funded the shift in funding this year was square out of long term debt we paid off our last bond after twenty years and with board one to do is we're going through a succession plan right now i'm on a kind of a retirement notice and they need to plan and so they want to add a few staff and but as a contingency we have to go through our whole planning process succession process in order to do that so that has some labor costs that will increase everything else is fairly typical  has been that we've come to you over the years our emphasis this year is getting more people to use our facilities as you know we just built a new compost facility up and running running very fine in willesden home we just need to get for the economics of it work better we need to get more people to use it you may have heard that the state of vermont just passed a legislation called h four eighty five it's in your future that organics will be separated based on the law it's got many of years in  is also to use a recycling facility we still feel the pressure put to some perspective the new composting facility cost two point two million dollars we paid cash for that with only two years surplus from our recycling facility really depended on this year our oh wait you folks know a single stream or single sort you put it all in one bin and we sorted out that equipment's ten years old this year and we're going to have to go through and it's going to be a bit of million and a half to go through and refurbish that and give it another ten years of life  could be much more than that and so we're in the process of doing that but we just need there's still seventeen percent of what this county throws away can go to that facility and try to do the math it's thousands of times almost you know twenty five thousand tons and last had to stop in burlington intervale a year ago march or february and so now they're starting to hit us actually as of today we're not accomplished until the next patch comes around and that'll kind of winter on through the summer slots going to have a negative effect on next year's budget until we can reopen sort of cover that and be gone with it on the sale of recycling and scrap metal is still very very good very deicing so i guess you have a summary i could go further into it love talking about it starting in january of two thousand and thirteen to do that and that's not a done deal but it's looking good so that you know i don't know if the homeowner will actually see that typically when you give that small decrease is just gonna carry it into the budget but longer leapfrog and we just gave one section of a town of one section of a period to one single hauler and it appears that it's going to save us somewheres on the order of four point three million dollars if we collect the everything every week will save closer to five point nine or nearly six million dollars if we do it every other week i mean that's something that we're not ready to go and implement right now there's a ton of questions in you when you get to the last page of what i just handed you out you'll see there's on page three issues meaning further study there's a lot of questions in the biggest one that we're getting from many communities is no one wants to put a small hole or run a business they do they seem to be less concerned with the sellers of the world but we're concerned  that's a good that's a really good concern you know as when we're struggling with this how to deal with that and be fair and legal that we can protect the small fish so that and so what we're going to be asking your board wreck come june twenty seventh meeting and c s is that justify us continuing not saying yes no to the program that's just are we on the right track and should we continue on this track he had knowing that with a kaviak is if anybody pulls the plug at the end that's fine we just want to make sure section five of the park ordinance would be amended to say user so no person shall use or so alcoholic beverages with the exception of one alcoholic beverage vendor as part of the richmond farmers market which shall be allowed to sell for one produced  only one more question if there's a if there is a problem at the farmer's market if we do it agree to this we can always change it back  up on it but it sounds like there is a mechanism for dealing with that any other comments or questions all right now do we need to actually prove something years if we've gone through that process this is the public hearing this is know right thank you so now miranda ordinance zero two yes two thousand and twelve zero two an ordinance amending the traffic ordinance of the town of richmond to prohibit parking on dugway road to stab wishing a stop sign at railroad street based on the comments from the last meeting the parking regulation on section five for dugway road was any part of the trouble portion either side of town highway zero seven dugway road entire length all parking prohibited between twelve midnight and six am this is not a substantial change but it clarifies the current language slightly people are still allowed to park really is just tightening up the existing regulations the second part of it is the location of the stop signs which is town highway sixty railroad street eastbound to at the intersection of town highway one bridge street board on the proposed parking around our property with a lot of trouble to do with the cutting of this phenomenon either side of the road open it up it's more possible to have even more parking there we have a swimming pool that is right at the road and there's been parking there a danger to people speeding through there we've had problems i try to plan for their own houses that's fine with me but i don't want to overload downtown that comes with it and getting more and more people in the county with no place for recreation becomes a big problem and i would like cutting on either side of the road it's possible because they cut back on the road level for there to be a lot more parking through th to date budget in their actual for the general fund i could make a couple of copies if people are interested you disappointed well taken i think what i would like to see is that when we do this on a monthly basis let's put up on the screen and let's also make sure that it's there we want this to be put on the website so they really can access it every month but we also want to make sure that it's the best but it's what's going to be useful to people ok is is for that fund the first couple of pages detailed the revenues and where we're at with the water projections were and the next items are expenses  this is for the most part raw data but it skewed a little bit because of some of our irene claims are included in here and we have insurance receipts and also expenditures related to the detail here and i think what that what the auditors prepare is easier probably for the public to absorb as well so i think that probably would be a good template to start with instead of showing all some  for the revenues we had we didn't cover the expenses we just ran it out of the regular expense lines but wouldn't be easier for budgeting for us next fall that separated isn't that coding for special disaster disaster  and are the department heads getting a report on their area now so that they can look at each line and say who were a hundred percent one hundred fifty percent spent right we'll be giving fudge a status fine i think taxes are doing well collective want to look with taxes or other revenues seem to be pretty close to where they were i think some of some revenue lines you can see here for the past ten months are coming desire collections on our insurance in our fema claims as well be probably positive on that because we have a lot of overhead expenses that female is reimbursing is f so i don't think we're going to end up eating any significant amount of that in the insurance has been very good days they gave us one five hundred dollars deductible for the  and the question that was really to be quick are there any is there a push or two from the public i mean obviously haven't looked at anything yet about the process here and we will come back to this which caused a great deal of conversation at that time and since just a quick quick rundown of some of the events following on there was this like we're meeting on sixteenth there was a meeting with concerned citizens on the twentieth there was an interview for times inc on the twentieth the article peering in the may two thousand and twelve issue and there was a telephone before is the next in the series of public discussions about this and we will continue to have them and tell we've run through all of the findings of the audit that said it's also worth noting that the next audits lake will essentially begins now fiscal but now when we start off as discussed with thirty minutes of getting to as many of these findings as we can and with the trumbull have questions and answers from the select board and then we'll go to thirty minutes of public discussion one one comment eleven dash one financial reporting this had been outstanding issue for richmond's finances since two thousand and nine we're talking about the fact that the auditors had been preparing richmond's financial statements richmond's auditor's much it jeanette crow was near have prepared financial statements for fiscal years two thousand and eleven two thousand and ten in two thousand and nine this has been recurring audit comments the auditors should not be doing this and do not want to do this but this has been identified as you know standing deficiency for several years that is my belief that in the past half and officials were not prepared to create financial statements even though the select board received some assurance that this was possible for fiscal year twelve the town will have prepared its own financial statements and the auditors may properly audit them this may require us to consult outside resources however we have draft financial statements now i don't see any barriers to us completing them this requires we have new financial statement templates on the financial director's been trained on where to find the information that goes into those  templates what will need to have as a final review before we submit them to the auditors and i believe we may need to engage a c p a for that and what he can do is he can come on site to sort of educate select boards about audits and about what to look for do a do a valuation of our audit tell us where we need to go what we need to so you know he's unbiased so it's just it's it's an opportunity for us to to to get education so he's been in the field for thirty plus years who's not necessarily somebody who has looked at our books before who is looking at it as  contact him i don't remember his rates but i think i wrote down eighty dollars an hour and something for travelling and mileage but i don't don't quote me on it and he just training he does training yes with it you know what says is you know you can assist towns it's just a little flyer you can assist towns and cities on a wide range of financial topics including basic governance government accounting preparing for an outside audit internal frog risk assessment internal control review financial sort of look at what's been done so that anything that may have not been entered correctly and meet addressed now before the end of the fiscal year and not if it's done right if it's a technical review of the work that we want to produce just looking for but there's some sort of training piece going on so it doesn't happen again so anything that's that's discovered there's a training piece around that so little you know and you know it's it's not that difficult to go in  wrong code because you weren't given all of the information on that invoice or make sure that it wasn't i mean i think searching for payments that are that are  probably an easier thing to do because you can search on amount you can search on vendor name you can search on and date i think it's more difficult if if an invoice came in with you know  experience number it is the financial system that the town knows and additional training has been provided over the past year to bring the financial director up to speed on preparing for the angel statements and proper ledger entries the town committed to training when we hire bottom line improvement of the trading received so far is more effective reporting of receipts in the financial accounting system the results of retraining will be addressed separately and this really  properly the other side spend a lot of time reconstructing that a lot of that is due to inexperience and lack of training a lot of this is almost a year old and she has received a lot more training it has a lot more experience so i can i can tell you that things have improved that may not be enough to satisfy you to this point and that's why we're looking forward to go either to his coming in and doing some spot checks to give you an independent of really where we're at with this that was primarily a training experience issue which has led to the mistakes and more training experience led to the and i think it's important to say that when we talked to john that it this is not the time to change the position when you're coming into another aisle because it could create more issues for a scene in the under is recommending that we get t taking advantage of us one nother thing that done done much of recommended is that that we actually bring them back and i guess they provide consulting as well as software you know in the specific use of their product and that might be something for more than more than just financial director to do to people who are using the system generally to use our version of the program is is that something that's lot of questions that we have can be answered over the phone but if there is something that can bring in more people it did work cost effective i think a lot of the number of capability issues and been solved many many were done incorrectly this is been corrected with training experience and a more systematic review of entries by the treasurer has been partially developed and i expected to be finalized soon what i'm talking about there a printing copies of the journal entries had to be refuted approved by myself in the trade and we're doing that now but i'm not sure it's really under percent where it needs to be but it's a much more effective system that these continue to be done by myself and are up to date i believe this is a beneficial range where the town administrator is able to have an in depth monthly view of account activity if the ten minutes greater longer performs its function do i have to be assigned to another staff member director was hired to do the bank reconciliations i was one behind in two i was making adjustments to get the ballots were never doing correcting injuries to get rid of the adjustments the auditors buddy in receipts checking the checks and things of that nature so that you you can go in for a month a month and see exactly what happened there's no guess this was a pretty big issue that we had a painful time working through it like to say that it's resolved this point but i know there's been some discussions somebody else sees me doing the bank works what do open up that for discussion really is what's the solution person signing the checks and the reason being is as you're looking at checks you're most likely to see that someone who may be written a check like mary walsh and beginning that jack where treasure is just signing checks and making sure that they're getting out i think that you can then review the checks and make sure that the payments that are going out are going out to be need to go out too and they're not necessarily going out twice so and then and then all the other control internal control pieces are the same nothing else changes part time so all the old trader duties are assigned to the financial director he's a staff person but we never really defined what we wanted a part time trader or to do it sort of whatever skills the person hands when they were electives what they write to the job but he never had anything to say we want to trade or to just sign checks we want the treasurer for a financial statements nobody knows what the treasurer are supposed to do it's really whatever independent of the responsibility of signing checks what i want to see is a is a robust and flexible system because i'm like i i like what you said about reconciling the accounts you know  certainly appreciate june's point and i also i'm looking at a situation now where you've been able to get back up to speed because we don't have irene we don't have you know some other thing that is requiring the town to minist  especially of limited full time staff that are there any day i'd like to sort of engage in a discussion do you see any ways that we could resolve that  at least in the short term rather than just taking somebody to do the pause or take to the back i have the reality is you are small and there are going to be segregation of duty issues if you have someone randomly do a deposit so that you know maybe eight percent of your deposits are done by your financial person deposits who's also preparing the deposit and if you have someone initialing the deposit before it leaves here and then and then revealing the deposit and  deposit receipt when it gets back then you will eliminate any you know potential issue that's another interim control which is an easy easy easy thing to do but that would mean you know sign and it can be anyone who initials the deposit but it's probably you should be initialing a deposit slip and a deposit receipt they're kept together when they're when they come back  the way we report our deposits and checks in these forms is by manually adjusting the balance whereas for the other parts of the financial system we have revenue wattles and accounts payable modules that track the revenues and expenses so the the big deficiency or the system is not reporting revenues and expenditures for these funds the only way to determine what you've got is to look at our manual adjust this is been set up this way since two thousand and three it was brought to the town's attention for the past couple of years in the sun to that is to alter the internal structure of these funds to add revenue accounts and things like it's not a complicated fix the complicated part comes when you first do it you have to go in and recreate all the past years transactions in the revenue expense lines so all essentially all the fixes we have to go in and add more account numbers to make the system report the way it should  i don't know how to put it in a more of a basic way it's sort of everything's been recorded is just not reported by the financial system so for the auditor's going on and our revenues and expenses we have to go in and look at what look at what we've done transaction pressure so simply by making it more complex it solves the authors concerns because the system now properly report what is have discussions that stray into the human resource employee domain we are going to be as like board addressing the issues that are raised during the report in executive session at the end of this meeting and just as we're going to be repeating this this review during open session will be repeating the executive session in future meetings as necessary as well if you have concerns about reforms of t trust funds particularly funds borrowed from one trust to another trust to pay a bill can we actually say that or do we how or because if there is one thing to be incompetent there's one thing young lady went and sat in a meeting where they talked about that sort of thing and if there's a liability here it's if there's money it's been transferred between the trust funds not whether or not the fun for more in the little league field tak you find out of the tree and one of the reasons that sensitive the cemetery a cemetery trust ones my guess has been my guess is have a very very tight and dangerous as to where they're allowed to invest ok probably just government bonds and with government bonds now being you know artificially oppressed the rate of return you're getting on those trust fund is it adequate to do the the millions and a lot of cases so there's a temptation to pack other funds so i  think that is something that we should consider a special order going back i don't know who would have to do it but the issues that have come up steadily for years in the army corps this is one of them but then there are but i think with the greater level of scrutiny that came from the journal entry issue it in front of other ones such as the  one of the law for that and there is a variety of training that can be provided part of that can be seminars and conferences as part of that can be on the phone with never work which they provide free of talk about one of the one for technical issues there most of this is low cost but i think for some of the more complicated parts of government finance  celebrity couple where you just are in the bank reconciliations we could talk around and stuff and he volunteered and was great and everything else neither one of us are perfectly capable of doing i have no problem doing it but i would caution us on just becoming a sign or on the account because he does sign off on so many of the bills and so many of those march march bills under his current job description and if you have somebody sign up from the bills and they're going to have a permanent check r and then have a sign of that if i was doing the check reconciliation that was an awful lot of power and an awful lot of opportunity and one person's hand and no offense to job i'm just saying the position itself you want a signer and a check reconciliation but again i don't know the statute to one that you might know offhand but it's also in school you gotta keep that in mind too i don't reconcile the school accounts for the checks but i am the signer on the school accounts and i do sign off on all  documents and stuff so just kind of keep those things in mind whenever you guys decide i'm fine whatever way you decide to do it so just keep all those things in mind and i would definitely run it by the auditors to make sure that they're good with whatever we're doing and we're not  backwards so we'll sounds like there may be there be a good job for subcommittee sort of looking at the checks and balances here maybe bring in a little bit of expertise fr because what you're doing is you're proving what you've just signed off on that there i've been involved in on it for the last fifteen years that has never been a question the question is when you're having someone who's doing  xcept doing regular checks or whatever doing the bank deposit taking the deposit and coming back in attaching that receipt and no one else reviews that and you have to have multiple checks to make sure that everyone's you know th ere are some checks and balance but if you're having someone approve the sale and then signing the check for that bill there is no internal control issue there because there are too many other pieces there are  and run it by the auditor so whatever you guys decide i don't care i will support your decision just be make sure everybody's ok that you told us what was available but we don't know what has been completed as far as of training for a report on on on how that you know proceeding ok so that we know exactly what was being yes the is there is there no tutorial tutorials on this because it sounds like for a very long how long how long have you had this system since two thousand and three and seems like a very long time that a lot of people still don't know how to use it or or or put in this the financial information that is required that's the that's the way it seems to be what i'm hearing ok i may be wrong but that's that's what i'm hearing so i would think on most software you know there's always software tutorials that you get with with your system you know when you buy a system there's usually  financial director we expected her to be able to reach out to them or were to do very right but you're saying that the other people already had experience with it and it still wasn't being done correctly putting it it's it's the input it's not necessarily what the system will do it's making sure you know how it's supposed to be put in the split that chin that we include it is a tutorials know so much of what you put into it a system is is based on some this is the management team ok and everything we're talking about here some time is some member of the management team stepping up to the side do something that is not in their new job description to make up for i'll tell you that i'm not a financial professional but the the thing that i took away from reading the audit report and and other materials but the issues yes there was an issue just in functionality of of  learning number where we fell down was not providing the the richmond specific training to how the the council been kept in the past and and you know and then the ability to tell if there were issues there but also to make sure that there was consistency of that when the auditors came and it was going to it was going to track properly so there was i think your your point about what is the ability to actually operate the software but then there's the other one which i think going to these oh you have what i think in this case it was more that we hadn't we had ensured that there was continuity between the former financial basically you want to you want the departed person to train the person and i don't think that there is sometimes you know for me it seems logical but not everybody always sees it that way and things can be put in an area where you could say especially when you have to make adjusting increase if you have accounts receivable and then you have to take it out of there and put capital asset accounting and long term get debt accounting naturally when we acquire or get rid of capital assets we should record the change in values in our system and also with long stop this for tonight we will come back to this next time and pick up where we dropped off but when we move on to the next gen items before before we do i just want to personally acknowledge george  that what is the process actually for adopting new policies on this like there is so i think the process should be that your review would be first and then the doctor subsequent meeting t they and they will be we can make these drafts available to the public and then we come back next time we can have more open public discussion but after everybody said chance to read the just a little bit sure  manage the challenger going forward the first as a fuel usage policy which covers two comments in the audit report the use of the gas card system and also the reporting of diesel fuel we have an energy defined by whether it's a gallon or a cold the water rose to give us a better idea of really not just what we spend on energy how much energy do we actually use  east's contribution to the school resource officer that we make sure that we keep documentation most complicated of these is the fuel usage policy i think that's generated the most comments and i can go through that essentially we have about a two deficiencies are on it one is the use of  vehicle but but it's got to be used by a human being example we don't we have no way of knowing whether or not somebody was using it for personal right and also we have no way of independently tracked there's nobody turning in the receipts and i think the receipt issue is really the biggest thing everywhere you go you get a receipt for gasoline and they're requiring through this policy that it won it helps track the energy usage and it also can help you track maintenance because if you reach a certain main unsettles and your warning says hey you're coming up on the five thousand or or whatever and and yes you can there's a guess if you're creative and tracking diesel usage we've been relying on fire for richard rescue to tell us how much fuel to use and not on the monthly basis of what were the required now is a receipt we have never used receipt books or really a financial receipt but there's ability to track it by number and they can write down all the information they need to such a especially i'm doing it i don't profit independent benefit from dave purchases of the town but that's that was just something that and i recognize i might get some payment but you know i mean burden and i like a work management but it's a burden on the town and clearly in the other so i think something different is to be done and if they're not going to it if they're not going to be held accountable when they're in that then i don't town of richmond is committed to reducing the amount of energy required to provide public services this includes energy used for heating and cooling of buildings an operation of vehicles that  effective and efficient use of energy reduces the town government's impact on the environment environment helps control the tax impact on residents therefore essential for the slughorn to understand the town government's energy usage and the delivery of services  nly what this will require is the financial director to maintain a spreadsheet of energy consumption invoice to the town of periodic li the finest director will convert units of consumption such as gallons kilowatt hours etc the units of energy  section under see any proposed expansion or contraction of government services must identify the possible impact on the town's continued use of energy any increases or decreases to employees  i suggested and the idea is for this to be essentially a fairly simple add on to the financial accounting for energy expenditures sort of keeping track of volumes of specific fuels as in the production of these of these spreadsheets i mean financial director i mean i don't i know it's a full time position and you know you don't want to stretch too far and it seems that a lot of our data positions don't necessarily have a lot of responsibilities so i thought that maybe if the court needed was interested and willing then that he or potentially she in the future if it turns out that way could coordinate instead of provided to others this policy establishes a procedure to maintain copies of these records for inspection a later date this really puts into policy toward of your we we don't do it in the full sense  the optical character recognition software that it would be just as easy to scan this this thing and then have it as a one payroll warrant that much and then it can be o c ardan in the future if there's an audit question you can just search the doc the the payroll document for a variety of things that you want to look for and that way we don't have to have to have all this paper copy set around and then you have especially if there is i don't know a manson tried to bring people together i think when i last checked it rather was going to do a survey of their members there that's on hold because they're busy with other things at least t to happen maybe in june to look at kind of both short term issues and long term goals as a way to it's really as a way to engage the business community and bring him to the table to hash out some of that where we see various that seem to be challenging so that's where that is to kind of follow up on that when rather came to the table  and so we haven't really gone too far except just continuing to talk and keeping an eye on the schedule for selling updates do you see the the reconstitution of the economic development comm kind of a focus on downtown and where there are opportunities in places that are on the water system would be a good priority so that doesn't involve kind of both so and as i talk to people i think a lot we part of what we did two years ago was try to develop a mission which sounds like it was doing that survey and we want to change it just from a general purpose economic development commission to more of a we have some goals as to people's going to come together saw it didn't really work out very well for the past but i think we've got energy to get that story welcome so can we can we talk a little bit about all these commissions and how i think some of them are ridiculous and given the number you can use we have could we eliminate some of them or combine some of the i know this is probably some that it goes back to like seventeen ninety two no no i was actually more referring to i mean yeah those are some of those are kind of silly but i just found it shocking that the only committee that that's like fully populated is the fireworks committee and the fourth of july parade and then all then like all the other ones are there and they're not populated so i just thought that maybe some of them could be could could look especially the committees and i know maybe maybe we need to maybe i need to table my comments until we're talking about committees and appointments but because there's there's the there's the appointments in those top ones the ones you just mentioned and then there's this the next couple of pages which are the commissions and the committee great assures you that you can see ok so it was just something that i thought that maybe some of these could that that if we eliminate that way or cold that and the end for that matter inspector of lumber shingles and would you know that jeff yeah i wouldn't necessarily go to somebody else i guarantee the next day they've got some time on their hands potentially to look at the lumber shingles and it's i'm just this is just from a low income a real estate point that you know i actually have the exact opposite just like oh and that's because in in towns people people who are involved in different degrees and it's a way for people who don't have time or or don't have energy to to to be involved dollars or is it taking something away from something else not clear that it is i don't think it's taking away anything because i don't think there's much to do for some and i don't know where the rest of it i think where they call is not doing much and i had to chuckle read some of keeper animal control issue and i feel like we maybe said something talked about this at some point but but the town the town highway be the garage being the place to keep animals and the animal control officer and there was some so i think it probably happened on page four line forty nine to fifty there was some discussion of timing and preparation that's probably why my comment yes it's ok yes it's a result it to them for five thousand dollars there is a mass care training being held here for the heads of first responders and social service organizations that work in richmond both in huntington on may twenty third twenty fourth it's two all day training sessions this is a pilot program being put on by fema it's very similar to what red cross does but i think fee was trying to  take what the red cross does and tailor it to towns for training for people other than first responders there something called national incident management system which is a uniform role in pushing that through to get the second half of that nation system in place so you don't just have police fire you investigating what to do you got other officials they can do things or not do there's a nationwide disconnect with the training so they're trying to do a pilot program here and see how well their training agenda the original plan called for two parts to have a junction there they weren't connected once the work has been stalled and we're looking at our form to raise them performing the way it needs  were eighty five percent complete a deficiencies yes we'll be providing documentation essentially what it is is grading on parts of the upper section of the roadway the lower section of the road which we all know there are some undulating spots and also certain sections of the sidewalk which are either pitched the wrong way where they're not love with the top of the curb and really when you look at that some some of that we've made it but they're conceding that in several sections things do change which is why we really need to go out there and say this we agree to that ok it's almost impractical for the four were to do that without having tow straws and here we shifted the road over two feet it's almost impractical to have one street parking in that other occasion it can be done we can take that rock out of the place of the smaller stuff you could have on street parking area would be tight but there would be a cost to do that i couldn't tell you how much for essentially removing the stone that's there and i think we could keep that because we paid for it already because put it in the ditch on state road that satisfies the word seek a motion to approve for the purchase that they had before these were opened sealed bids were opened friday morning i was present for the opening of the bits we really would only receive one was from milton kept for the price it was a two thousand five caterpillar in three sixteen c under thirty three thousand minus trade in of twenty three thousand for our current caterpillar and that price is a hundred ten thousand dollars they number purchase order number two nine seven five