 |
Finance Committee Meeting Minutes
January 9, 2014
10 – 11:15am
Present: Stanley Ross, Donald Clawson and Dan Moriarty
- M. Noe provided the Committee with copies of the FY15 budget spreadsheet with budget requests that have been received to date. She also provided the Committee with an updated capital expense spreadsheet.
- Don would like to set up a protocol for all departments to follow regarding the purchasing of items and a department’s remaining budget. The most critical person in this protocol will be the Town Accountant to notify all departments what is remaining in their expense budget. The Finance Committee feels that instituting this protocol will help prevent a vast majority of departments from making purchases when they do not have enough in their budgets for these purchases. If a department doesn’t have enough in their budget for a purchase, Finance Committee approval would be necessary. The Town Accountant is supposed to be emailing/sending out these reports to all departments at the beginning of each month. The Finance Committee is going to bring this to the Select Board’s attention and
request that they inform all departments of this new protocol.
- The Finance Committee stated that the books from last year still have not been closed because there were/are so many overages and mistakes that still need to be corrected/dealt with. The Committee would like to see the books closed within 30 days, if not sooner.
- The Committee discussed ways to create a simplified document to be distributed or displayed at town meeting that would inform the voters how the warrant items affect the budget. For example if the voters approve XYZ it will mean this with regards to your tax bill, it should also state what the town can spend without going over our levy limit.
- The Committee discussed whether or not additional stabilization accounts shouldn’t be set up for things like Highway and/or fire department capital purchases. The Committee was divided on this.
- Dan stated that he has an ECAC meeting later today and wanted to know if the Finance Committee has any opinions on the salary increases for the Police Chief and Sergeant that were to be done in two installments (one last year and one this year) and if the Committee was currently in favor of approving any increases or if they are taking the stance that things should be level funded. Stan felt that the Committee should be discussing really hard numbers this year and didn’t have an opinion one way or the other on increases without having seen what each department will be requesting. Nothing is finalized and the budget is a work in progress.
- The next meeting will be February 6th at 10am.
Submitted by,
Melissa Noe, Executive Secretary
Via audio recording
| |
