North Yarmouth Budget Committee reviews annual report, eyes audit access

[4:53] Chair: Good evening. Calling the Budget Committee meeting of Thursday, October 8th to order, and we'll begin with Pledge of Allegiance. I [5:05] Speaker B (unidentified): pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. [5:21] Chair: Thank you. I had sent out materials last week so people could see in advance of things we'll talk about and the included materials, and the first item for business here is approval of our meeting minutes from July 9th. I will make a motion to accept the minutes as presented. Do we have a second? Discussion? Is there any suggested edits or comments on the minutes? Beautiful. Then we'll take a vote. All in favor? Thank you very much. Next item of business is new member appointment update. On Tuesday night the Select Board appointed Rick Ben Dixon to join the committee. There will be a process, will he'll have to be sworn in by the town clerk or someone from town admin, and then he will join us. So I would expect he'll join us at our next meeting. Moving on, Budget Committee Annual Report for fiscal year end June 30, 2026. I learned through another committee that, in fact, this was due September 30th, otherwise I would have brought it to the meeting to discuss, but I drafted a report and I submitted it to town office, looking for it here if I've got it printed right. Yeah, I think we'll go through our agenda quite quickly, so I'd like to just read it, give a refresher for us and maybe anyone listening so they know what's in it, although it was posted in the materials as well. I wrote the Budget Committee had a productive year focused on strengthening long-term planning, improving transparency, and addressing rising cost pressures. It began with the July 2025 organizational meeting to select the committee chair and secretary. The committee voted for Mr. Parento to continue as chair and Mr. Merrill to continue as secretary. Discussion included intention to use actual results when analyzing future budgets. The committee agreed to the annual review of the Budget Committee guidelines and procedures, which had been updated last year. The October meeting included review of prior year, July 1-24 through 6-30-25, actual expenses and revenues as compared to budget. The November meeting continued discussions of cost-saving opportunities related to energy costs and Cumberland-North Yarmouth Recreation Program expense and revenue sharing. sharing. Q1 actual expense and revenue reports were distributed. The December meeting included review of the town audit report for July 1, 24 through 6, 30, 25. Current bonding for West Custico Hall Community Center and Fire and Rescue were noted. Unassigned fund balance was at target prior to the $900,000 transfer approved for July 1, 2025. During the January Annuary meeting scheduled dates for the February capital asset site visits were confirmed. These included DPW, Fire and Rescue, Town Office, and West Coast West Cusco Hall and Community Center. Responses to the committee questions from the annual audit were also reviewed. The February meeting included observations from the completed capital asset site visits. Q2 expense and revenue reports were distributed. questions were formulated for the town manager on several expense and revenue items. the decision to host a Q&A forum in April was made and planning began to take shape with members taking various assignments. the March and April meetings included review of q2 actual expense and revenue detail and responses to the committee questions from the town manager. planning for the 416 26 budget committee Q&A forum were finalized. the upcoming budget meetings schedule was reviewed. on april 16th the budget committee held an open forum at west gustico hall. an introductory presentation was given followed by a q a session with attendees. the forum was considered a success by those in attendance and the budget committee will consider making it an annual event. on saturday may 2nd the proposed budget was presented to the budget committee by the town manager and department heads. each department was reviewed and discussed. on may On May 14, the Budget Committee met and conducted an in-depth review of the proposed budget. The Committee agreed with the budgeted 3% COLA wage increase and no change to employee benefits. Staffing levels were noted as remaining steady. The Committee was in agreement with the Capital Reserve's recommendation of $600,000. On May 19, the Select Board and Budget Committee held a joint meeting to finalize budget recommendations, which were formalized into annual town meeting warrants. At annual town meeting on June 15th, 2026, all budget warrant articles were passed without any changes. Materials of agendas, minutes and meeting packets can be found on the town website via the agenda and minutes link on the homepage. Recordings of budget committee meetings and annual town meeting can be viewed from the townhallstreams.com website. site. Looking ahead, the committee remains concerned about significant budget pressures, the largest of which is the MSAD 51 school budget. The new school and turf field bond costs and increased operational costs for the new school will be ramping up over the next several years. North Yarmouth Capital Equipment for Fire Rescue and DPW will also require significant annual funding. Increased levels of wages and benefits from prior year changes also need to be funded. Long-term projections and planning to control property tax increases continues to be a focus of the Committee. The Committee appreciates the efforts of Jay Fulton and Jeff Kandura, whose terms expired June 30, 2026, and the Committee will welcome new members Rene Morin and Kevin Robinson. Respectfully submitted, Richard Parenteau, Budget Committee Chair. Any discussion on the report? [12:14] Speaker C (unidentified): Question about the no change to employee benefits. Are employee benefits reviewed annually by the town manager? [12:31] Speaker B (unidentified): I'm not sure we know. Okay. [12:35] Speaker C (unidentified): I would think a business of this size would have that review annually, just as a matter of course. So I mean, I'm not disputing the you know the report, I'm just wondering is it something that our committee should be involved with, is it something that select board should be involved with, certainly the Town manager should be involved with on an annual basis. [12:59] Speaker B (unidentified): By my opinion is every good business checks the wages and benefits for their competitors, and that should be our practice. We should have a representative group of towns who are similar to us, and we should be checking every year and making decisions based on that. I don't know that we do, but I think we should. [13:24] Speaker C (unidentified): And in a year where the stock market goes down and we get a bill from Maine PERS that our required contribution is up, that's really not in our control. That's something that we must do. So just as a new member, I would love to know more about our employee benefits. And I'm not sure how to go about getting information, but I would love to get the official plan documents on the retirement plan, maybe take a look at the health insurance as well, and maybe do an analysis and come back to this committee with what I see and you know so [14:19] Speaker B (unidentified): I'll suggest based on that the chair is trying to schedule regular meetings with the new town manager and I'm not positive but I'm of the impression that she might be receptive to having some assistance this may be something that we can offer that we could we could do all the groundwork for her and prepare the analysis and then provide it to her as part of the process and given the background that we know you have in that particular area that I think that would be welcome to and then we'd have Solid numbers to work with last year we kind of ran around after the fact Rich did a lot of work to try to figure out what was going on in the towns around us but it felt like it was too late in the process it would be better if we could offer that we would we would help her with that I don't [15:08] Chair: Know Rich what you think about that but yeah we've talked as a committee about that's one of the major cost drivers of the budget you know personnel costs is a big thing and the report that I just read said there weren't any changes in benefits well there were significant changes the year before that and as far as the share that of expense that the town was going to absorb we went from an 80-20 split to a 90-10 split, which is dramatic. And then I think it was two years prior we went to the main PERS retirement plan, which has significantly increased our long-term expenses of retirement costs for employees. So I do think it's worth looking into. And so I like, Renny, your idea of starting with the documents. So I've written down here official plan documents on the retirement plan. what was the other documentation that you suggested would be helpful the [16:08] Speaker C (unidentified): Summary plan description it's the acronym is SPD it's it's it's supposed to be that the document that reads in English language so it's not too difficult for a layperson for an employee to read it and understand it [16:24] Chair: And that's in relation to the retirement plan that's in relation to the retirement plan. [16:30] Speaker C (unidentified): It's not the legal plan document. The legal plan document is signed by whoever the authorized party is, and it binds the town of North Yarmouth with whoever the retirement provider is. I guess we have two different ones, right? Yes. So those legal documents would be really nice to have. Okay, I'd be happy to request that from [17:01] Chair: the town manager. So it's main person, it goes by ICMA I think. I think the majority of our employees have now gotten on main pers. I don't know how what the split is, but I think it's heavily weighted towards main pers now. Yep. When it initially rolled out, I don't think, I think more people stayed on ICMA than are currently on it now. Right. And, of course, we've had a little bit of employee turnover, so that could change the mix also. Was there a benefit package that we should ask for? [17:36] Speaker C (unidentified): Yeah, I think whatever the health insurance and whatever other benefits are out there, I don't know if we have group-term life insurance or short- and long-term disability, et cetera. I don't, I don't know what we have, but all of it would be very helpful. Okay, I'll make that [17:59] Chair: more generic in my request to ask for benefit information. That's great, thank you. Any other comments on the report? Good. All right, we'll move on to review of the budget committee procedures and guidelines. My hope is that we continue to use this each year. It's dated, so I'd like to update document that's on the website with any changes that we come up with. I thought I printed that out, but I don't have my print out. Here we go. I got it. Yeah. I guess I'll read it again just to give us context. So the North Yarmouth Budget Committee is responsible to review, comment, and vote on budgets presented by the Select Board. In this capacity, the Budget Committee is acting as the eyes and ears of the community. These procedures and guidelines are designed to ensure consistent committee practices are followed each year, ensure efficient and productive operations of the Budget Committee, ensure that the committee complements review by the Select Board, ensure the smooth transitions for changes and budget committee membership and ensure that institutional memory is preserved. Are there any other aspects that anybody thinks need to be added to the design of our procedures and guidelines? Are we comfortable? With those as stated, beautiful. Then we've got a category said annual tasks review the annual audit report, review year-to-year changes, discuss audit recommendations and identify which ones have been implemented. Number two is review and compare previous year actual amounts to previous year budget data for consistency and accuracy. Number three is to review current year budget data with comparison to prior year budget and actual for reasonableness. Number four perform physical annual review of all capital assets by budget subcommittees [Speaker D (unidentified): review] capital asset number five review capital asset results from budget subcommittees including condition consistent with replacement schedule asset performing as intended and cost estimate for replacement number six meet with town manager for presentations from department heads on department expenses. Number seven, review recurring budget items, question assumptions made. Number eight, review budgeted capital reserve accounts. Number nine, review budgeted revenue accounts. Number 10, review prior year actual fund balance and new fund balance calculations. Number 11, review TIF revenue, TIF appropriations and TIF balances. Number 12 discuss and make recommendations for each warrant article for town meeting and number 13 here we are today review and update budget committee guidelines and procedures document any [21:46] Speaker C (unidentified): suggestions for 1 through 13 is listed got a question more than a comment on the very first item, the annual audit report, what I'd like to know is who turned the lights off. [22:06] Chair: Well, the timer went off. [22:11] Speaker C (unidentified): Wow, magic. [22:13] Speaker E (unidentified): How often do we have to do that? Every five minutes? [22:18] Chair: We don't want Randy to get self-conscious. [22:22] Speaker C (unidentified): So who meets with the auditor? Auditor? Is it the town manager? Is it the select board? Do the budget committee members get involved with that meeting? Where it's financial in nature, I would think that our committee would be involved in some respect. It's a fantastic opportunity for us to find out directly from the auditor, not second-hand but first-hand, about areas of concern, segregation of duties, making sure that everything is happening without any possibility of collusion, procedures, recommendations. I think it's a wonderful opportunity. I've been on the receiving end of those meetings as the CFO of a former company, and it's invaluable. It's amazing how much you can glean from that interchange. So I'm just curious to find out. Again, I'm new. I don't know who is sitting in on those meetings, and I know you're going to talk about it soon on the agenda. Rich? [23:42] Chair: well I'll talk about it now so past practice has been that the town manager meets with the auditor the Budget Committee has not been part of that meeting in the past the past practice has been that the auditor gets invited to a select board meeting following release of the audit report and gives a short presentation on highlights of what's in his report and then he takes questions so that is an opportunity for the general public and budget committee members i guess to ask questions at that point if there's another meeting that would be valuable that we would want to schedule. I mean, that's a possibility. In my view, we would want to wait for the audit report to come out, the audit done, right, get the document. Maybe at the next budget committee meeting, we then look at it, could formulate questions, and then somehow relay those to the auditor and have a meeting scheduled if needed I don't know how flexible the auditor is going to be about meetings separately with the Budget Committee and how that would go over with the town manager but something we could discuss or if we could use the opportunity of the auditor presentation at the select board meeting to be that where the dialogue happens so I'm open to in the conversation about what people think about that. I [25:42] Speaker D (unidentified): agree that I think it would be involved in some way. I agree with you though that we should get the report first. I think, anyway, I don't have as much. It'd be nice to see and be able to calculate questions to get them, but I do think it would be nice if it actually is happening. A lot of it seems to me that after we can really. [26:42] Speaker C (unidentified): I would wonder if there's a management report in addition to the audit report the management report is it's sort of a helpful tool that the auditor is giving whoever runs the organization and this fantastic you know information in that report I don't believe there is a [27:09] Chair: Management report element to it. Yeah, I know what you're talking about, that you can get suggestions and observations that are really helpful to help you streamline your, you know, your company or whatever, implement some new stuff. I'm not sure there's much of that in the town's annual audit report, but I'm also thinking that it might be nice if we could coordinate the meeting with the auditor with the town manager. Not make a, an incremental request, but when she has her discussion with the auditor, could we be present, or could we have some representation at that? [27:49] Speaker E (unidentified): And she may want that. You know, she's new and young. She may appreciate having some other brains there. And [28:01] Speaker C (unidentified): I would think that we would have, as a budget committee, maybe more questions than she would have, or more insight, because what we're charged with here is really financial in nature. And she is too, but she's, she's running the whole town. We are sort of like myopically picking on the numbers, the financial piece of it, and I would think she would benefit from us being at the meeting, and we would benefit as well, because now we're hearing it firsthand, we're not getting a secondhand report. There [28:49] Speaker E (unidentified): might be a clarifying question you would have that she may not have. You could ask a clarifying question to the auditor that nobody would even be aware of that may make a big difference. [29:01] Speaker C (unidentified): Just as an example, let's say there's an issue with processing car registration or tax bills or something. and the auditor has found out about it through digging in the books and doing you know samples and of all the audit work they do but if it's not material in nature and it doesn't affect the actual audit report we would never find out about it would go undetected unnoticed and unasked so again I think I think it's vital to have an interaction with the auditor. I understand he's been doing it for a long time. He knows our town pretty well, even better, because he's got a lot of history with us. [29:59] Speaker B (unidentified): Just a clarification, he's only been our auditor for three years, two years, but he does live in town. So yeah, we had the other auditor for a long time, but they, well, you know, we might have known about this if the Budget Committee was meeting with the town, but what we discovered after the fact was that accounts are not being tied out at the end of the year, and when the auditor came in, they had to do a lot of closing of accounts and finishing a lot of that work before they could perform the audit. I suppose if we had known about that, we might have put pressure on the office some years ago to say, look, you can't have the auditor come out here and have him close out your accounts. I mean, what's he supposed to audit? The old audit firm apparently was doing a lot of work that should have been done by the town, and then there were some financial difficulties, I guess, that were discovered, and I don't know if we could have known about that earlier if we had been attending, but I agree with Chrissy and you and what you just said that I think if when the town manager is receiving the report from the audit auditor if we were there then we could ask questions and even if there weren't anything that we were concerned about we would be in the loop a lot quicker rather than down the road waiting and waiting and waiting for the report to find out. I 'm on some audit committees and that 's the way it's always worked. When the audit comes in to report it to the management team, the audit committee members are there, and then there's a they meet, and then we have a private session with the auditor who has the opportunity to tell us things that they don't want to say in front of the staff, if you will, and that's a private executive session, and you know, most of the time there aren't issues, but sometimes that's where the auditor will tell you your controls are weak, you've got a person who's trying real hard but they need to go to some classes, or you know, you don't know what they're going to tell you, but they might not want to say it in front of the person who's kind of hired them to do the audit. So i agree if and i don't i don't know the new town manager, but it sounds like she's very receptive. That's how i take it, and if she is, i think this would be something we could suggest, that we have the opportunity to meet when the auditor comes in. Yeah, and even the select board [32:30] Speaker C (unidentified): board may have interest in being part of that meeting, so rather than have it be two or three separate meetings, it could be one. It could still be executive session, right, if it's just a town manager and the select board and the budget committee, but now you've got all the people basically that are responsible for the numbers in one meeting, but that's my thought, what I would [33:03] Chair: Suggest is that I have a conversation with the town manager. I think that's nuanced and you want to talk about. I'm gonna try to put it in an email and get the right tone, and you know, we want a cooperative environment. You know, we're here to assist and we won't want to be overbearing, but we also want to add value and we've got some great talent here that could see some things possibly that, like you say, a town manager wouldn't necessarily have the perspective that we would have having either looked at these audits for businesses or, you know, through our life work. So my suggestion is I have a conversation with her about that. I like the idea also of opening it up to the select board members maybe, and so I don't know what form that will take and will be flexible with wishes of both the town manager and the select board. You know, maybe it's not all the full boards. Might be a lot of people to have the full budget committee, the full select board, town manager and auditor might be a bit too big of maybe what's going on in And currently, you know, I'm not sure how formal the meeting is of the auditor with the town manager. It could be a half-hour, you know, briefing or something. I don't even know what happens. So we have to feel that out. So maybe we'd have budget committee representatives, select board representatives, maybe two from the select board, two from the budget committee and the town manager and the auditor, something like that. [34:34] Speaker E (unidentified): Yeah, because I think that then you're introducing quorums, which means you have to have a public meeting. Right, then you've got to give notice. It's hard to do that in public. Yeah,, I think you have to split up and do less than quorum. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah [34:47] Chair: Because you want to keep it private and like you were saying like if something comes up in it Something you would want in an executive session about employees or something like that might be sensitive that you don't want to broadcast to the public right off the top Would be considerate of that [35:04] Speaker C (unidentified): when I was on the bank board they had a Supervisory Committee and the auditor would meet with the Supervisory Committee alone no other Not the CEO of the organization not the board of directors just a supervisory committee And it was a good interchange every time and then Pursuant to that it would it would end up going to the board of directors So you know I kind of view similarities. It's not the same thing. We're not a bank. We're a bank, we're a town, but we have stewardship responsibilities and, you know, the budget committee is, I would think the audit is a big part of what we do, so. [35:52] Chair: Great conversation. I think that this is very productive. Given that, I was thinking that we would finalize this procedures and guidelines tonight, but I think maybe number one might need some massaging that we might formalize the fact that the budget committee would meet with the auditor or there'd be some mechanism of conversation and feedback from the auditor. So maybe we'll keep this document not finalized for now. We'll push it to a future meeting, see how this goes as far as meeting with the auditor and how the town manager feels about it. If we would coordinate with select board that kind of stuff and then we could document that in here and I think that would strengthen for future years and future boards can I can I bring [36:45] Speaker B (unidentified): up one other possible thing please I don't see it in here I don't know if it should be in here but when we get to number 12 it says you know discuss and make recommendation for each warrant article for the town meeting should we have something in here that says that the budget committee should attend the town meeting to be prepared to answer questions or something I don't want to make it make it sound like you know everybody better give up their vacation to come but I mean there is an expectation that it's actually [37:15] Chair: documented I'm trying to think what document oh it's not in this in it 's not in our oh is it in the is it in the Charter might be in the Charter that the I represented it from the Budget Committee and it may even say chair attends the annual town meeting to answer possible questions. [37:33] Speaker B (unidentified): Okay, so you don't think it needs to be in here because you think it's somewhere else. [37:36] Chair: I mean, it wouldn't hurt to put it in here too, but it is also stated in another document that I've seen. So do you ever want to brainstorm how we might rephrase number 12, discuss, make recommendations for each warrant article, and attend town and have representative attendance at town meeting? [37:58] Speaker B (unidentified): So, I'm just going through my brain. If it is someplace else, is anybody going to look anyplace else to find out what our duties are? Well, they only look at this. You know what I mean? I think you're right. I think it probably is someplace else, because that sounds familiar to me. This is posted, right? Yes. So, people can see this. And you said we're going to update it every year. So, if it is an expectation, if it was here, they'd only have to go to one place to see what the Budget Committee does, rather than go to this and the bylaws or the charter or [38:30] Chair: whatever it was charter just a thought so what I hear you saying is we should add it to this document is it is that what you're saying like you want to add it to this document because I'm fully on board with that I think yeah that's what I'm saying okay well I don't know I'm just [38:46] Speaker B (unidentified): thinking that going to one document is easier than going to multiple so even if it's someplace else if that was a responsibility and you were looking at this to see what you're you know what you're required to do if you know on this committee if it did say that then it would be [39:02] Chair: it would just be part of it fully on board with that so all we need to do is draft some language that would incorporate that in item number 12. Do we want to do that right now or yeah so I'm going to say to keep it as we have right now discuss and make recommendations for each warrant article for town meeting and have a budget member that committee member attend annual town meeting do we want to say the chair [Speaker B (unidentified): and] have but well it doesn't say Rich Parental thankfully says Budget Committee chair and have [39:54] Speaker E (unidentified): Budget Committee chair I would think that all invested enough that we're probably all going to be at town meeting yeah I can't imagine that we wouldn't be right who [40:10] Speaker C (unidentified): approves this document the Budget Committee or the Select Board this is our document so we get to decide what we put in it yes so for back to number one if we're meeting with the auditor but we'd we'd want to have the town manager okay that first right yes offline yes yeah okay [40:33] Speaker F (unidentified): how [40:35] Chair: does this sound I'll draft some language that adds that to it and present another draft at a future meeting that would include that, unless Link wants to provide language to me. [40:49] Speaker B (unidentified): I was just trying to open the chart over here. [40:53] Chair: Okay, all right, but that's good. I'm really glad that this should be a living document that we continue to build on it year to year, so I'm happy to make changes. I think that's the right direction. [41:05] Speaker E (unidentified): Though if you draft it that way, even though it's a given, you're not saying that the person is prepared to engage and have the information with them to be engaged in the town meeting discussion. If you just attend doesn't mean I see so you think it doesn't mean that you're prepared right the reason we would attend would be to answer questions or some type of type of critique like that. I mean I don't think you'd have to say they had to be prepared but maybe you do have to say that and [41:46] Chair: have budget committee members in attendance at any town meeting to answer questions okay we can hammer that out when we go to finalize the document if everybody's good with that we have a next section is called quarterly tasks review current year budget to actual on quarterly basis to observe and note trends and discrepancies issues with that statement it's in the Charter you want to read it to us there's [42:31] Speaker B (unidentified): a lot of reading going on today under the section 4 of the charter. I assume I have the newest edition, but I'm sure this hasn't changed. Budget committee, and it says the tasks that we have and tasks number three, the budget committee shall attend the annual town meeting to answer questions about said recommendations. [42:57] Chair: Yep. We will have it in our guidelines and procedures as well. So we won't be in conflict anyway. Right. All right. And then finally, it says this document to be maintained by budget committee posts on the budget committee website page and reviewed annually. Who's he? He's a member of the public. Yeah. All right. Thank you for that. [43:27] Speaker B (unidentified): Did I put down in the notes that the lights kept going out? Is that something we should record? [43:35] Speaker E (unidentified): Nobody was scared. [43:40] Chair: Item six on our agenda, annual audit report for 7-1-25 through 6-30-26 update. So I did meet with the town manager on tuesday we're having monthly meetings which is fantastic and she said that the auditor had requested some more support for some purchase orders wasn't specific on what but that they're still looking at documents to complete their work she didn't have an eta but in later discussions with her i said well we'd have it by the end of the year right she's oh yeah by the end of the year so by 1231 so it's being worked on and we keep i'll keep you apprised is what i learn when it comes out item seven senior tax program update town manager had given me preliminary numbers which i think i shared at a meeting it was 58 applicants and $31,000. Those were the preliminary and those are the final. It didn't change. There was no one status that changed. So she confirmed that to me. It was $31,000. Yes. I think that hit the sweet spot of what some people were thinking because we had been paying between 14 and 15,000 a year, but we had been funding it 20 to 25,000 a year, and it had been growing. I think we had a kitty of 50,000. So we used 31,000 of the 50,000 kitty, so we still have 20 in there. And we didn't fund it this year. That's one of the items that we had a discussion, kind of a lively discussion at our joint meeting about whether to fund it or not fund it. And not funding was the choice. So it will need to be funded in the future if we now have 20,000 left and we had a run rate of 30,000. My gut tells me that it may even grow without any changes to the program. As word gets out more widely that it's easier to apply these days because if you do the state you just tell the town office I did the state tax relief program and we'll they'll get the town then gets the information from the state so they don't have to file their tax return with the town office you know there's still the criteria I think it's a it's still age 70 they did move the residency down to five years from ten 10 years, and then it's 50% of the state's benefit. And the state caps out with this odd exception at 2,000. So generally the town cap is 1,000. It's simplified calculation of the benefit. [46:51] Speaker B (unidentified): I know I had spoken with you once before because one of the folks who had told me they were going to apply doesn't actually have any state tax liability so they don't file their tax returns anymore and I don't know how many people are in that situation because I know there are other state programs that they're based on your tax returns and if you're a certain age and you don't meet the income thresholds you don't file so do we have any exceptions or is it at 100 percent. If you don't file for the state, there is no other way to get any money. [47:27] Chair: I do not know of any exceptions. It's predicated on the state return. But you could encourage certainly we talked about maybe some public education about the benefits that are out there for seniors and encourage people to do the state filing because that opens the door. [47:47] Speaker C (unidentified): So, Link, I dabble with tax returns. I file my mom and dad's, and they don't have income to require them to file. But the only reason I file it is because of this credit that they get from the state. So it's like all zeros, and then you have to say what you paid for rent or what you pay for, I guess it's rent, and also sales taxes, two different credits. And the state processes those easily. So I know what you're saying. You're saying that if somebody chooses not to take advantage of those credits, then they don't file, and we're not going to know about those people. [48:35] Speaker B (unidentified): Well, that's what I wonder. You still do taxes for other people. So do you think there are more people who, they know they don't owe taxes, so they just don't file? [48:47] Speaker C (unidentified): Yeah, you know, sometimes it's easier for people if they don't file, because they don't realize how big the credit is going to be and that it would result in a refund. But, I mean, it can be a few hundred dollars. You know, it can be something for, it can be a nice surprise for somebody. [49:07] Chair: It'd be nice to know what that population is, what you're getting. That, I think, like, how many people is that? Is that, you know, ten percent of our senior population, or is it one percent of our senior population? There's no way to know. No, I don't think so. I mean, I don't know how you'd know. [49:20] Speaker B (unidentified): Right, you wouldn't. I mean, they have to be, I mean, I don't know, but I'm assuming that they maybe their only income is Social Security and maybe a little bit of other stuff, right? Because I can't remember what the threshold is, but like I used to file for my in-laws, they didn't ever owe anything, but I always did file for them anyway, just to make sure. So I don't know how many people there are that fit in that bucket. And I'm not suggesting that we do anything different, because I think this is nice and simple. You know, all the obligations should not be on the town to try to get people who might qualify for the program to qualify. If they could simply file their main return, which would allow them to be eligible for whatever programs might be income-based, they should do it. And in Maine is really good. I mean, filing tax return with Maine is not a big deal, and they're very prompt, you know, not like the feds, or you could wait six months to hear from, but the state is really quick. So I think, I think education might be the key kind [50:34] Chair: of make a note of that. It might be a future topic for a town newsletter or, you know. [50:44] Speaker B (unidentified): Yeah, I mean, it would be tough if, let's say, we had 10 residents in town who really would qualify and might even qualify instead of some of these other folks. It would be kind of too bad if they didn't realize that they needed to do this in order to get their break. And if they do qualify, they probably really need it, so. [51:03] Speaker F (unidentified): Yeah, right. All right. [51:07] Chair: Anything else on the senior tax program? We'll move on. Shared services with Cumberland update. My update that I learned from my meeting with Britt this week is she's meeting with the Cumberland town manager to talk about shared services. So discussions are going to happen. So that's a great place to start. So I don't think there's any to-do for us at this point other than to keep in touch and see how that goes. TIF funding of hydrant expense update. I mentioned that to Britt on Tuesday that in next year's budget we should include hydrant cost and take advantage of TIF funding for a cost that would otherwise go to the general budget. Capital planning and capital reserves update. She has already tasked department heads to start looking at their capital needs. She asked that we do our site visits in January as opposed to February, to get ahead of it one extra month, to be earlier in the schedule. I said I would ask the committee what they thought about that. So committee, what do you think about that? [52:36] Speaker C (unidentified): The sooner the better. I'm okay with it too, but what does that mean, site visit? We're going to go to the various departments? [52:43] Chair: So we have broken into teams, and there are four locations. So, Link, who did you team with last year? Public Works. [52:59] Speaker B (unidentified): Public Works. Yes, we did Public Works, yeah. [53:05] Chair: So Link, Paul, and one other person. [53:07] Speaker B (unidentified): No, we can only do two, so we don't have them. [53:10] Chair: We only did two, okay. So they did Public Works. So we'll talk about it. I think there's two schools of thought. One is they did it last year, so they're up to speed on what's there. So it would be good to send back the same team. That would be one approach. Or if we wanted to mix it up to give a fresh look, I don't know how much benefit there is to that. [53:31] Speaker E (unidentified): I'd be willing to be part of Public Works' team. I'm pretty diversified in that department, so maybe I could be some help. Yeah. [53:40] Chair: I think you'd be good with any equipment stuff. And maybe if there's a hole in the fire department, I would do that too. That might be a good place for you too, cause Kevin knows equipment. So any equipment heavy site visit is good. So we'll develop our teams in a next future meeting. And we didn't talk about capital reserves. I think the capital plan that we have had, I had done a 10 year totaling of how much it was and it was 10 million dollars which is over 10 years is a million dollars a year it depends what's in there and what's not in there were some big things in there that maybe would get deferred so my view is you look at your 10-year run rate and that's the appropriate funding level that you want to do you want to spread things out over years and there are some In four or five years from now, there's a couple of light years, I think. But then after that, it gets heavy again. We've kind of actually gone through a heavy period with a lot of fire equipment in the past few years, which you hopefully replace every 20 years. So we might get a little reprieve from some of that. But there's facility stuff, I think, which is kind of the big picture. And I think that's one thing that I'd like the budget committee to add value is step back in 10 years, what do our facilities look like? Are we in that town office formally house building, or are we in a more municipal structure maybe as part of West Cusco Hall? Or do you know, do our staff needs outgrow that to then have another facility? We have the sharp rental house. Is that a long-term asset that we want to keep, or is that something that we think best to turn over and get out of the rental business? So those are big discussions, and that has a big impact on what capital needs are gonna be when you're looking at a two million or a three million or a five million dollar project and how you plan for that. And maybe those would be in combination with bonding. Maybe you do some bonding, but you wanna phase your bonding. We've got, I think, two more years on the fire truck, and we've got how many more years on the hall? It's quite a while, another 20 years maybe, right? I don't know if it was 25 or 30, but we got a good long. We got another decade plus on this hall, which was, I think, I don't want to quote it. I was going to say 3 million, but I don't remember. Paul [56:46] Speaker B (unidentified): and Kevin were on the committee. I can't remember. [56:52] Chair: It's in our work papers in the budget committee stuff. [56:55] Speaker B (unidentified): I don't know if Kevin remembers, but said members of the budget committee are supposed to have institutional knowledge. [57:06] Chair: That's a nice segue into number 11, which is current bonding and future planning to limit bonding. So that's basically what I was just kind of sharing my view of. Any further discussion on capital planning, capital reserves, or bonding? [57:26] Speaker C (unidentified): Rich, on capital reserves, not to beat the drum into the ground here, but if the auditor was here I'd ask you know how do we compare how does our town compare to other towns our size when it comes to capital reserves and I realize that we're all individual and we all have different needs but are we are we in great shape are we in middle of the road shape or are we below average shape you know that just because I understand this auditor does a lot of towns isn't and is in a good position to answer that question, I think. [58:05] Speaker F (unidentified): Didn't he say we were in great shape? [58:07] Chair: Yes, that question has been asked, and I don't have it documented anywhere, but my recollection is that we are in great shape and that we do less bonding than a lot of surrounding towns, and that's one of the strengths of our financial statements is we don't have a lot of debt, and that has made life cheaper for our tax base because we don't have the bonding costs and we're not locked into those month you know yearly payments so I think between the two the West Custico Hall is 300 ish thousand and the fire truck is 200 ish thousand it's about five hundred thousand that we pay in bond payments a year and that's on a five point five million dollar budget so it's you know ten percent quote getting close to ten percent so that's a good metric that we could certainly get more data on for surrounding towns but the anecdotal word is that north yarmouth is very strong in that regard that we have limited debt and our note on the fire truck was very short [59:18] Speaker B (unidentified): number of years five years yeah was it was it even five years yeah onto [59:26] Chair: 12 energy audit update I did bring this up with Britt. She is open to that concept. She thinks it probably would have to be a bid scenario where we would bid to have someone. I was thinking something less formal than that, like does CMP do anything? Does these providers do anything? [59:55] Speaker E (unidentified): CMP does offer auditing, at least they do it personal. I would assume they would business and municipal. That would be really interesting information to get a look at. Yeah. [1:00:04] Chair: Yeah. So maybe there's a middle place to go. It wouldn't happen this year because it's not in the budget. So an energy audit that would go out to bid would have to be put into the budget, you [1:00:17] Speaker E (unidentified): know. I'm not sure the CMP would charge for it. [1:00:20] Chair: Right. So maybe there's... It wouldn't have to be a budget item. Maybe there's opportunity there in this year to get more information on that. Do I have any volunteers that want to try and gather some information on what energy audits look like at either a low or no cost? I'll [1:00:49] Speaker C (unidentified): volunteer for that. Chat GPT has a lot of answers. All right. [1:00:55] Speaker E (unidentified): Yeah. Wouldn't that involve getting some type of documentation from the town? I mean, are we allowed to go to CMP and ask for an audit of the? [1:01:06] Chair: No, we're not allowed to go to CMP, but we're. Some authorization. This is, I think this is conceptual. Yeah, more. Right? This is informational. We're not engaging anybody to do anything. Okay. And what I thought I heard you kind of lean to is, well, they're going to have, if it's conceptual, you say, well, how many buildings do you have? How many square feet do you have? There are some stats that we might need to gather. That we might otherwise the information is right, how many light bulbs do you have, you know, that kind of stuff that we might have to gather that. But if Renny could come back with the requirements of information that's needed, then we can run that by the town manager and see if we can get any traction on that. Sounds reasonable. Have you ever done one at your, sorry. Yeah,, yeah. All right, I can keep that on the agenda for next month. Waste and recycling costs and initiatives update. The only thing I have is at the select board meeting Tuesday night, there is a program to have the producers of materials like packaging bear the cost of that waste stream or recycling stream that they're putting into the system to cover. It was called EPR, I think. [1:02:57] Speaker F (unidentified): I think that's what it was, yeah. [1:02:58] Chair: And there's someone from the recycling committee that spoke on it, and that there's someone from Cumberland who actually was involved in this rulemaking that's becoming law that was available to come speak to the select board at a future meeting so they are kind of digging into that to offset some of the costs taking care of your wastes. That was interesting to hear about. 14 property assessment strategic reval update. I don't have any update to share. Does anybody have any observations or concerns about us having gone through that strategic reval? [1:03:50] Speaker B (unidentified): It depends if your taxes went up or down. [1:03:53] Chair: Yeah, right. It does. [1:03:56] Speaker F (unidentified): Well, I went through the process, and they did get back to me, and part of mine was the way I was assessed. My house needs a lot of work, and so when I brought it forward, they knocked like $23,000 off. Okay. Myself, I felt it should have been higher. Yeah, right. I mean, it's a 40-year-old house and, you know, windows, siding, deck, garage, siding on that, barn, same thing. But I was glad to get something, and it did help. Yeah. [1:04:29] Speaker E (unidentified): I did that also. Mine was more wrong information. They didn't have the right information about the property, and they did solve that somewhat. Not quite to my liking, but... [1:04:42] Speaker B (unidentified): Do we know if there were a lot of appeals, any idea? I mean, I know a lot of people made phone calls. Well, probably all of us did, but I don't know if they had any formal appeals. [1:04:54] Chair: I don't know the results of that, how many actually. [1:04:59] Speaker F (unidentified): I think it was a lot because I heard from a lot of people, you know, just talking. Yeah. Down at Toddy Brook. No, I just heard from other people when someone reached out just the other day asking me if I heard anything back from them because they hadn't. [1:05:16] Speaker E (unidentified): And I don't know that they were consistent because I got a letter in return after my initial conversation, and some people didn't get a letter. I did not. I had a... [1:05:27] Chair: It was incorrect information they had on my card. They said they would fix it. I didn't get a letter following up that it was fixed, and then it wasn't fixed, and then I actually had to contact the assessor, and there was a disconnect in information from the fellow that I talked to the supervisor of the firm that then relayed to the assessor. [1:05:52] Speaker B (unidentified): So did it get fixed? It got fixed. You didn't have to go to a hearing or anything? [1:05:55] Chair: I didn't have to go to a hearing, no. I provided the information. I provided a picture, and that took care of it. [1:06:01] Speaker B (unidentified): Chrissy, did you have to talk to them at all? [1:06:03] Speaker D (unidentified): I didn't talk to them at all. Okay. Right. [1:06:09] Chair: Yeah. I think land went up significantly. Yeah, open [1:06:24] Speaker D (unidentified): land, I love it. I don't want to have to sell it at the end of my dead-end road, and especially if I sell to a developer, it could mean about as much as another. Yeah, but I'm in a lot better shape than a lot of other people, causing a snowball effect that this is going to. I mean, more houses, more kids, more schools, more, by not allowing people that have had open land for years and years and years to keep it that way. [1:07:01] Chair: Yeah, it's a squeeze. [1:07:03] Speaker D (unidentified): I'm very nervous of where North Yonah's headed. [1:07:04] Speaker E (unidentified): And through the extended tax rate, you're actually paying to keep your open land. It's costing you money to keep it. [1:07:10] Speaker D (unidentified): $5,000 for 26 acres of open land. Five years ago, it was $800. Wow. [1:07:33] Speaker B (unidentified): I guess I never paid close enough attention, but when the new assessment came and I looked at the specifics and I reached out to the assessor and asked, you know, people are concerned. What are the things, what are the simple things that I should know that affect the value so I can tell people. And to my surprise, I mean, maybe I should have known, but he said, well, one of the things is they charge a flat value per bathroom. And I said, oh, my card says I have three bathrooms, I only have two, that makes a difference. He says, yeah, 12,000 bucks. Okay, well, so that eliminated that. And my daughters, well, my daughter lives across the street. I own the house, so I called and I said, I said, I'm looking at ranches in town, and I said, it looks like there's a difference between ranches and raised ranches, even if they're the same size. And that happens to have a daylight basement on one side. It's a regular ranch, farmer's home ranch. He said, well, that's a $12,000 difference, same size house. So all these years, those have been wrong, and I didn't realize they made any difference until we went through the revaluation. But I did have a number of people that I shared with them how to go into the farmland, open land tax thing. And I hope for next year some of them will apply because it makes a big difference. [1:09:10] Chair: Is that something that can help Chrissy? I shared it with Chrissy. [1:09:12] Speaker B (unidentified): Yeah, if she can generate $2,000 a year and even if she uses it for self and farmland, then the tax valuation falls tremendously. [1:09:23] Speaker D (unidentified): Tremendously like I mean I have someone hate it right and they take the hat I have no idea of how much probably squeezed it and maybe you would get to but when I've looked into the form it's not as just easy as filling out the form they want tax forms that show you've been making this money for so many years nobody will ask nobody will ask I've been in the I haven't applied [1:09:53] Speaker B (unidentified): Yeah. And you can't apply until April 1st. [1:09:59] Speaker D (unidentified): And I went in and I asked, this was a couple years ago when I went in and talked to the assessors about the land. I said, have you been out and walked my land? No, that more than half of that acreage is ledge, water, non-buildable land. Gullies, yeah. Gullies. No, they don't. Right. And they won't take that into consideration at all. So, you know, I have one little flat field of nine acres that, yeah, you can slam a lot of houses in there, but yeah. [1:10:31] Speaker B (unidentified): When Jay Fulton was going off to committee, he put together this cool video. I think I might have sent it to you, but Jay actually realized that the farmland open land law can help support the town's comprehensive vision of keeping open space because it reduces the tax burden on the people who have that land by a lot and so you don't feel the pressure to sell and so he being a computer guy he put together this really cool little video which it's really well done so I shared it with him with a number of people and said hey I'm pretty sure you qualify for this program and you should get it in place for next year because it will have a significant impact on your taxes. So I know over the last few years, most of the people I think who have butted against my property are in the farmland. So I know they won't feel the pressure to have to sell. And I'm trying to get more people to do it because I think it is a way to keep the land open in town. And that's what people want. They want places they can walk and have views and things like that. And so you don't want to tax them out. The last time that we made a big change in our zoning when we changed the lot size back in, I don't know, 87 or 88, I can't remember when it was, but the minimum lot size in the rural area increased, and you had people who had held on to pieces of land in case they ever came back to town, and the taxes went up tremendously, and the people had to make a decision whether they wanted them to be a house lot or not so some people sold out then and houses got built and when you talk about it that's What it reminds me of, that you can, you bring that tax bill up quite a bit and force them out, but the farmland is really, it's, it's a good program because you have to produce two thousand dollars worth of value from your land. You don't have to use it, you don't sell it, you don't, you can use it personally, and it can be hay, crops, honey, wool, vegetables, you know, anything that's in there. And there's even, I think you can even include, would you cut off your property for yourself, as long as it makes $2,000. So Dick Wood from Gray was one who originally got me in the program, and he said, you, hey, your fields every year, there's at least two thousand dollars worth of hay there, and go to the town hall after you'd file, go to the town hall every year, give them a statement how many bales are cut this year, how many they're worth, get them to stamp it, put a date on it, put it in your file, give you a copy, put it in your file, so you always have it. And Dick says that's what I do every year with the town of Gray, and he was on the conservation district for the county. So that's what I've been doing, and it is a big relief on your tax bill. So you need to have at least five acres that's not your house lot in order to qualify. So what I hear Link saying, [1:13:24] Chair: Chrissy, is that as long as it produces 2,000, yep, doesn't mean you have to sell it for 2,000. No. It's the value that's derived from it. [1:13:33] Speaker D (unidentified): What happened to me was when I got into it and I started looking at it, they asked for tax forms to prove that you were bringing income for a farm. Oh, I see. Yeah. I asked for tax forms. Yeah. But I... And I can't produce tax forms. So, to me, that was a dead end. [1:13:53] Speaker B (unidentified): And I couldn't produce tax forms because... [1:13:57] Speaker D (unidentified): I mean, you're a working farm, so you can. [1:13:59] Speaker B (unidentified): Well, in theory, I guess, but I don't, I let the person who hayes it take the hay, so I don't receive any benefit. I consider the benefit that I get to be the tax reduction I get. [1:14:13] Speaker D (unidentified): Well, I get that, but if I have to prove I don't. [1:14:18] Speaker C (unidentified): Yeah, nobody asks. [1:14:20] Speaker B (unidentified): I'll tell you, nobody asks. Anybody online, don't listen. [1:14:28] Speaker D (unidentified): Yeah. But then also, if I die within five years, they're going to pay back all the taxes. No, somebody else will. That's right. [1:14:35] Chair: Why do you care? Jess will pay it. That's not your problem. Well, [1:14:44] Speaker B (unidentified): That's a good thing. It's only a five-year look back. We're Timberland or Forestry. That's a 30-year deal. This is only five years. No, it's a really good program, and I think it really does help to support the comprehensive plan, so I don't feel bad about it. I let people use my land. If they want to snowshoe or run their dogs, I don't care. But I will admit I just put up signs that said hunting with permission only because I'm getting a lot of pressure from people I don't know, and my land is not big enough for crowds of people to come down, so I want to make sure they ask me first. They can hunt. I don't care. But I need to make sure there's not too many people there at one time. All right. Oh, so go ahead. [1:15:28] Speaker C (unidentified): I have a question. First of all, I commiserate with you, Chrissy. I'm sorry you're having to go through that. But what I hear on this table is like four, out of the six had, do you call it an appeal? Right. And a reduction in your tax bill, which means a reduction in the revenue to the town. Obviously, we budget for something in that regard. Do you know what that is off the top? They call it overlay. [1:15:57] Chair: Yeah. We budget about $150,000. These appeals that we had, though, wouldn't really go to overlay because it hadn't been a finalized assessed value. It was a work in progress. So these numbers that the Vision Government Solutions was putting together were preliminaries. It's the assessor who set the final valuation after people had their conversations with Vision Government. So technically they weren't appeals. They were conversations. [1:16:39] Speaker C (unidentified): So is this after you got your tax bill or before you got your tax bill? [1:16:44] Chair: Before I got my tax bill. Okay. Yeah, these are all before people got their tax bills. All right. This was the preliminary assessed value. Okay. [1:16:51] Speaker B (unidentified): And if it makes you feel better, even with all that, one of the houses went up over 600. One of my pieces of land went up over 1,000. So that was 1,600 or 1,700, and one of them stayed flat. So I still paid a lot more, even after talking to them and straightening a few things out. It's still a ton. One of my daughters went up over 500, and one of my daughters went up over 600. So there was plenty of people getting increases, for sure. [1:17:17] Speaker E (unidentified): Geez, I got a lot more than that. How'd you rate? [1:17:20] Speaker B (unidentified): I don't know you've been skating through I guess for all these years 13 on my [1:17:26] Chair: house and nine on the rental under charge for years Kevin oh thank you well [1:17:32] Speaker B (unidentified): it's because you retired now we're gonna take advantage of you 're older and now I don't have any money well you can go back to work like the other 78 nine-year-olds who got eighteen hundred dollar increase plan right rich I hate [1:17:48] Speaker C (unidentified): I hate to do this, but I have another question while we're talking about tax bills, and I briefly talked to you about this earlier, but I sort of, I brought my own tax bill with me tonight, and I take objection to the middle part where it says to pay by credit card, you can log in to whatever, there will be a nominal fee charge for this service. Well, I paid by check, so I didn't have to pay that nominal fee, but I wanted, I was very curious about it. And so I went online and it's two and a half percent. And you can use your debit card as well. You can use either one, credit card or debit card, they're going to charge you two and a half percent. So in my case, the nominal fee for the year for both semiannual payments came up to be $302.76. I think it's disingenuous to call it a nominal fee. I mean, it's bad enough that we're having to pay 9% increases or whatever the increase was from the prior year and, you know, compounded over all the other years. But I just thought that wording was not right and also it goes to the state website as soon as you click on that link it takes you out to the state website you're no longer on the town of North Yarmouth website and I think you've had a discussion maybe with Britt about the possibility of bringing that in-house. Some towns, a lot of towns, do it themselves, bypassing the state completely, making their own deals with the credit card companies or the banks. So [1:19:49] Chair: I have had a conversation with Britt on two occasions now. I brought it up again on Tuesday and she has moved forward with implementing an e-check process it still is going to take some time to set up but then this electronic payment would come out of your checking account and there the nominal fee would be like three dollars so that is still the intention I don't want to get out in front of her great news when she rolls it out but that could be in for the beginning of next year, possibly. So then that would make that statement more accurate. But absolutely, you know, 300 isn't just a nominal fee. That's a big fee. [1:20:41] Speaker C (unidentified): And I would think that we'd want to review the wording on the tax bill long before it goes out, you know, in next August or September. [1:20:55] Chair: I don't think that's anything any budget committee had ever looked at and nor thought of, but I think that's a great suggestion, you know. Yeah, right. [1:21:07] Speaker C (unidentified): Yeah, be more transparent about it. Yeah, yep, I think it's a good suggestion. [1:21:18] Speaker B (unidentified): Too, because my daughter, who's obviously younger, says I don't pay anything by check, you know. It's like that doesn't happen, everything is electronics, so you know her thing is I have to remember to pay this by check, which I don't pay anything by check, or if I forget then I have to pay and have that fee. And she and I said, well, I pay by check, but she says no one I know, they also don't have any cash, so I think if it's only three bucks, I think that's, that's great. Yeah. [1:21:54] Speaker C (unidentified): As I think about how many taxpayers do we have, or 1,400 homes, roughly. How many are in a position where they don't have the cash to pay, and they use their credit card? Well, by all means, we should be transparent about saying what that is. They'll find out, but I had to do the math. I got the number, the dollar amount, and I divided it by the amount due, and it came out exactly to 2.5 percent. Then I went on chat GPT and I asked the question and I got verification that it is indeed two and a half percent, but why don't we say it? That's my point. I [1:22:47] Chair: want to honor your statement. I'm not sure if, do you want me to pass along any information to Britt or with this e-check [1:22:55] Speaker C (unidentified): rollout possible, maybe this all goes away. Well, if the, if the credit card option is still going to be used at the state level, then we should still make a change on the, on the actual tax bill. I can note that in a meeting with her. Yep, I don't think it's a big ask, it's, I would think she would welcome it. Will [1:23:27] Chair: do, thank you. Ready, mill rate update is number 15. I don't have any mill rate update other than that it got finalized and we all paid our tax bills. Number 16, select board request for budget committee chair updates. So the select board had sent out requests to all committee chairs to come periodically to report to the select board what they're working on, and I think that's a great concept, and so the proposed schedule was to come every two months. I thought that was unnecessary, necessary for us. I saw two, so I committed to October 20th and February 16th. So October 20th, which is in two weeks, I'll let them know what we started on working on and some of the things we've got in motion. And then the February meeting, it'll be after our capital asset site visit that I can give them an update on that and have a little meet to the [1:24:37] Speaker E (unidentified): A report on that. Well, they do have our approved minutes in their possession, which really tells them everything we talk about as an overview. [1:24:47] Chair: Absolutely. And I think that's one thing our committee is good at, is being transparent and posting all our materials timely. So it's there. They deal with a lot of committees. So just a quick back and forth, you know, keep lines of communication open, and it's nice to have the relationship that makes a big difference. Yep, so happy to do that. On to number 17, other business. Does anybody have other business? [1:25:18] Speaker F (unidentified): Well, I want to thank Chrissy for pulling together the budget. Thank you. That is, yes, Chrissy made [1:25:25] Chair: binders. Excellent. That's fantastic. Who wants to take possession of that? I'll take that. Yeah, thank you. Chrissy volunteered to make up copies of the binders, and it probably wasn't easy because I was going to do one at work, and it's like, some of it was two-sided, some of it was one-sided, not fun, so [1:25:50] Speaker D (unidentified): I, it took longer than I thought. Yeah, double cursing in there. Yeah, then when I hit the 11 by 17, that was like, oh really? Yeah, right. [1:25:59] Chair: Right, that almost put her over the edge. Yeah, so I know it wasn't an easy job, so thank you very much. I just said one thing. [1:26:08] Speaker B (unidentified): I know, I think I talked to you about it, but I'm concerned whether the general assistance budget will be enough for the winter, given the price of fuel oil and so forth. For the last few years, the amount that we've spent has been negligible, $1,000, $1,500. Well, it's going to cost that to fill a fuel tank. And I'm wondering if there will be folks who will have pressure and qualify and need assistance. So that's the only thought I had, was as long as we were aware of that, and if the town manager found out she was generating some surplus in an account, she probably ought to hang on to it, because at least we'll get through the winter, because we might have some need that's not expected. And I know that, you know, the church groups and the North Yarmouth Men's Club and so forth all get money that they, you know, set aside and raise for folks who have a need. And the town is good, I think, about letting folks know that there might be need that might not technically fall under any program. But it's just a concern they have, you know, that particularly the price of heating oil and kerosene is so high that we may have more need. And one tank of fuel will use up all we've got in our budget. So I just wanted to bring that up. [1:27:28] Chair: In my meeting on Tuesday with the town mayor, she did mention that the budget is tight. She doesn't have much wiggle room. She's finding that things are pretty slim. So when things come up, it's challenging to afford what she needs to do based on what's been budgeted. It's been a concern of hers. We don't have any public attendance tonight, so we'll pass through number 18 and on to number 19, which is our upcoming schedule, which we will meet the second Thursday of the month in November, which is November 12th at 6 p.m., and continue that cadence through the year, unless we have some conflicts. [1:28:21] Speaker F (unidentified): I have a conflict. Trivia. [1:28:25] Speaker B (unidentified): Oh, that's trivia night. That's no good. [1:28:28] Speaker D (unidentified): Every Thursday night's trivia. Link's usually there, too. [1:28:31] Chair: On the 12th? Yeah. [1:28:33] Speaker B (unidentified): I'm so sorry. Rich, you should come down. Every Thursday. Every Thursday. Maybe we can have it at trivia night. We'll just go to Toddy Brook, and we'll do the budget committee in between the questions. There you go. [1:28:45] Chair: Judy will head it up. What times does trivia start, Paul? Six. [1:28:49] Speaker B (unidentified): Six to seven. It's very prompt. Six to seven. Six to seven. Is that way the young kids can get to go home before they get ready for school? We [1:28:58] Chair: could talk about making our time earlier or later, if it becomes an issue. No, it's okay. Okay. All [1:29:06] Speaker E (unidentified): right. I think you have to set priorities, Paul. [1:29:10] Speaker F (unidentified): Well, if I was better at it, I'd probably say, okay, we'll change the time. Right. [1:29:15] Chair: Maybe it's a good out for you to not have to lose that week. [1:29:19] Speaker B (unidentified): You're good at the car questions. [1:29:24] Chair: Well, then, if there's nothing else from anybody, I will make a motion to adjourn. Second. All in favor? Meeting's adjourned.