NOTTINGHAM BUDGET COMMITTEE MINUTES
OCTOBER 23, 2008
PUBLIC SESSION
APPROVED BY THE COMMITTEE NOVEMBER 13, 2008
PRESENT: ABSENT:
Mr. John Decker, Chair
Ms. Amy Plante, School Board Representative
Mr. Peter Bock, BOS Representative
Ms. Donna Danis
Ms. Charlene Andersen
Ms. Gail Powell
Mr. Kyle Barry
Mr. Chet Batchelder
Mr. Gene Reed
Mr. Scott Curry (Arrived 7:20)
Mr. Michael Koester (Arrived 7:30)
The Chair called the meeting to order at 7:05pm.
APPROVAL OF MINUTES:
Mr. Batchelder made a motion that the Budget Committee approve their minutes from the meeting of October 9, 2008. Mr. Barry seconded the motion.
Mr. Bock noted a couple of clarifications that he would like to see in the minutes. The other members did not have any objections.
Mr. Reed made a motion that the Budget Committee approve their minutes from the meeting of October 9, 2008 as amended. Ms. Danis seconded the motion. Mr. Decker, Mr. Bock, Ms. Danis, Ms. Powell, Mr. Batchelder and Mr. Reed voted in favor of the motion. Ms. Andersen, Ms. Plante Mr. Barry abstained from the motion. The motion passed 6-0 with 3 abstentions.
SCHOOL DISTRICT FINANCIAL REPORTS:
Ms. Plante said that she had spoken with the SAU Interim Business Administrator. She said that he had thought it would be interesting for the Budget Committee to see copies of the reports which were sent to the state. She said that she had brought copies of the MS24 and the MS25 for the Budget Committee to see. She explained that the MS24 was the revenue report and the MS25 was an abbreviated version of the report they sent to the Department of Education. She said that the MS25 gave information on the budget. She briefly explained the information in each report. She also said that most of the difference between the money budgeted and the money spent was usually due to staff changes, where one staff member left and was replaced by one at either a much higher or much lower step on the pay scale. She
said that the other big difference was usually with Dover High School tuition. She said that when kids changed schools or dropped out the tuition figures were constantly changing. Mr. Decker asked if the Budget Committee could have electronic copies of these reports and he said that he would prefer it if those could be in the Excel format. Ms. Plante said that she would speak with the Business Administrator regarding that request. Mr. Reed asked what the closing date was for the numbers on the reports. Ms. Plante said that it was June 30, 2008. Mr. Reed asked about the audit numbers. Ms. Plante said that the School District contracted with a company to do their audits. She said that the company was done with their field audit and they were writing their report. She said that they had a finish deadline of sometime in December. Mr. Reed asked what happened to money that the school district had left over at the end of the
year. Ms. Plante said that it all comes back to the community.
Ms. Plante said that the School Librarian had left and had been replaced by someone who was higher on the salary schedule. She said that the School Board had also added five hours per week to the budget for the bookkeeper. Mr. Reed asked who would know all the information about every line in the budget. Ms. Plante said that she assumed the School District Treasurer would know the most about the budget. Mr. Decker asked if it would be possible for the Budget Committee to get a report where the numbers matched what was on the state report. Ms. Plante said that the Budget Committee could get reports but the numbers might not completely match. Mr. Curry asked about revenue for the school lunch program. Ms. Plante said that they were doing ok. She noted that they were selling more hot lunches and
breakfasts than they had in the past.
Mr. Reed asked why the bookkeeper budget looked like it had already been overspent when it was still so early in the year. Ms. Plante said that some of the payments were projected for the entire year. Mr. Bock asked whether the Business Administrator had supplied all the information to the Department of Revenue Administration. Ms. Plante said that she had talked to the Business Administrator about that. She said it was her understanding that the Department of Revenue Administration had been missing a cover sheet from the district but that they now had everything they needed.
QUESTIONS ABOUT SCHOOL POPULATION AND GROWTH:
Ms. Plante said that at a previous meeting the members of the Budget Committee had questions about Dr. Joyce's report to the School Board. She said that she had contacted Dr. Joyce regarding those questions. She said that she had brought the Budget Committee copies of a revised report based on the answers.
Ms. Plante said that there had been more live births in Nottingham than had been previously included in the report so the report had been revised to reflect them. She noted that circumstances for families often changed in the years between the birth of a child and when the child was scheduled to attend Kindergarten. She said that during those years many families moved into town and many families moved out so the live birth count was not necessarily an accurate indicator of how many children would later be attending the elementary school. Nevertheless she stated that Dr. Joyce had revised his report to reflect the larger number of live births in town and it had increased his projections for the future population of the school.
Ms. Plante said that according to Dr. Joyce the document he had done for the school district was copyrighted and owned by the Nottingham School District and the New Hampshire School Administrators Association.
Ms. Powell asked about the current elementary (K-8) school population. Ms. Plante said that it was approximately 512 students. Mr. Curry asked about the actual enrollment for the year 1998. Ms. Plante said that a previous study had been done on this topic and she had copies of the results of that previous study. Ms. Danis asked what the population increase might be and whether there were any red flags. Ms. Plante said that the school had space concerns. Ms. Danis said that it had been her understanding that the classroom space would be ok but the office and support space might be limited. Ms. Plante said that the School Board was still talking about that conclusion. She said that the new projections were being forwarded to the company who had done the study on building space. She said
that the School Board was going to start advertising to find people interested in being on a building committee to talk about possible school expansion in the future. She said that currently they had enough classroom space. She said that they did have a split grade because there were too many kids for two classes but not enough for three classes. She said that the younger classes were smaller than that and she felt their split class was working at this time. Mr. Curry said that from 1998-2008 there had been a 4% growth rate in the school population of grades K-8. He said that from 2008-2017 there was a 44% projected growth rate for the school population of grades K-8. Ms. Andersen said that she was interested in the demographics of the town population. She wondered whether the majority of Nottingham population was younger, child bearing age or whether they were older and their kids were grown.
Mr. Bock said that he was looking for more information about the Building Committee that the School District wanted to form. Ms. Plante said that the idea was very preliminary. She said that she would get more information on what they planned for the next Budget Committee meeting.
SCHOOL BUDGET:
Ms. Andersen asked how things were going with drafting the school district budget. Ms. Plante said that the school officials and SAU staff were working on it. She said that the School Board should see their first draft of the budget in early November. She said that the Secretary to the Superintendent normally got copies of the budget ready for distribution. She said that the Secretary to the Superintendent had resigned and her replacement would not start in the position for two weeks. She said that another problem was that they were looking into changing some of their software and there was going to be a learning curve with doing that.
RSA 32:5 V-a:
Mr. Decker said that he would like for the Budget Committee to discuss RSA 32:5 V-a. He said that the RSA referred to Budget Committees being able to record their vote tallies on the warrant if the public voted in favor of the move. He read the exact text of the RSA out loud. He said that the vote tally could state approves, recommends or whatever terminology was appropriate. He said that if the Budget Committee wanted to be able to exercise this in 2010, they needed to have the public vote on it in March of 2009. He said that the Budget Committee could ask the Board of Selectmen to put this measure on the warrant. Mr. Koester said that he thought this measure would be helpful to voters. Mr. Batchelder warned that such a move would eventually lead to a need for the Budget Committee to create majority
and minority opinion reports after important votes. He noted that these would be a lot of work for someone. He said that majority and minority opinion reports were how the legislature dealt with the questions that would inevitably come from publicizing vote tallies. He said that this was something the Budget Committee should consider in their decision on this. Ms. Danis said that she was in favor of the idea of putting the Budget Committee vote tally on the warrant. She said that the purpose of the Budget Committee was to give a recommendation to the voters in town. She said that vote tallies would tell the voters how strong of a recommendation they were getting. Ms. Powell said that in her opinion there were sometimes some badly written articles on the warrants. She noted that the Budget Committee did not have control over how the warrant articles were written. Ms. Andersen asked what would happen if the Budget Committee
proposed this article and the voters voted in favor of it and then Nottingham became an SB2 town. Mr. Decker said that nothing would happen. Mr. Bock asked how many other towns allowed the Budget Committee tallies to appear on the warrant. Ms. Danis said that there were not very many towns that were doing this yet but Mr. Decker pointed out that the RSA giving them the option was a very new one.
Mr. Curry made a motion that the Budget Committee ask the Board of Selectmen to put an article regarding RSA 32:5 V-a on the town warrant. Mr. Koester seconded the motion.
Ms. Powell said that the public did not know how hard the Budget Committee worked on the budgets. Mr. Curry said that there were up and down sides to this idea but he said that he thought more information for the voters would be a good thing. Mr. Batchelder said that he would try to get the minutes from the legislative hearing when this RSA had been approved. He said that he thought knowing the intent of the legislation might be helpful to the Budget Committee. Mr. Koester asked if the public would need to vote on this twice so the Budget Committee vote tallies could appear on both the School District ballot and the Town Warrant. Mr. Bock said that he would abstain from this motion. He said that it sounded like a great idea but he felt there were still questions about it.
Mr. Koester made a motion to table the motion on the floor.
Mr. Decker noted that the Budget Committee could always change their mind on this before Town Meeting even if they did ask the Board of Selectmen to put the question on the warrant. Mr. Koester said that he felt the Budget Committee needed clarification on whether or not the voters would need to approve this twice before they voted on it. Mr. Decker took an action item to contact the Local Government Center about this.
Mr. Curry withdrew the motion on the floor.
Mr. Decker said that this issue would be on the next Budget Committee agenda.
HCPP GRANT COMMITTEE UPDATE:
Mr. Batchelder gave an update on the HCPP (Housing and Conservation Planning) Committee. He said that three firms who had been interested in bidding on the first phase of the grant project had come before the committee. He said that the work basically involved information gathering on housing and conservation issues in town. He said that one of the companies had brought a complete proposal for the committee to review and the other two companies had presented their qualifying credentials to the committee. He said that the other two companies planned to give proposals to the committee in advance of their next meeting. He said that on November 10th the committee would evaluate all three of the proposals, rank them and give their documented opinion to the Board of Selectmen. He said that the companies involved
felt that as a worst case scenario this work could be completed in nine months so the committee felt they had plenty of time within the allotted time period of the grant to get this work done and get it done well. He said that in his view all three of the vendors which had presented to the committee had been very qualified. Mr. Bock briefly reviewed what the HCPP grant entailed and gave a summary of the project. Mr. Curry said that it would be great for the town to get the data described because the Master Plan needed a cover to cover update.
CAPITAL IMPROVEMENT PLAN COMMITTEE UPDATE:
Ms. Andersen said that the Capital Improvement Plan Committee had met twice so far. She said that part of the meetings had been about catching up. She also said that the committee had met with the Fire Department and the Highway Department. She said that the Capital Improvement Plan had been changed as a result of those meetings. She said that the Fire Department wanted heavy duty laptops so those had been added to the plan. She said that there was room for improvement of the Capital Improvement Plan Committee. She said that she would stay quiet for a while and listen and learn and then she would probably make some recommendations to change the process. She said that the committee was interesting and she was glad that she had volunteered for it.
GOOGLE DOCS:
Mr. Curry said that Mr. Bock had mentioned getting a letter from the Local Government Center regarding Google Docs. He asked if Mr. Bock could let him see that letter. Mr. Bock said that he would bring it to the next meeting for Mr. Curry to see.
OTHER:
Mr. Koester said that he was sorry he had arrived late.
Mr. Curry commented that he had watched a television program about a town in Arizona which was experiencing 50% growth per year.
Ms. Andersen asked if Mr. Decker could email her a copy of the updated Budget Committee meeting schedule. Mr. Decker agreed.
Mr. Decker said that the next Budget Committee meeting was scheduled for November 13, 2008 at 7:00pm. He said that the agenda for that meeting would include draft 1 of the town budget, the RSA about putting the Budget Committee vote tallies on the warrant, various subcommittee reports and an update on the status of the school budget. Ms. Powell asked when the Budget Committee planned to schedule the Library Trustees. Mr. Decker said that the Library Trustees had not been scheduled yet. He said that if the Budget Committee needed to have a meeting on November 20, 2008, they could decide that at their meeting on November 13, 2008.
Mr. Curry made a motion to adjourn the meeting at 8:45pm. Mr. Koester seconded the motion. The Budget Committee voted unanimously in favor of the motion. The motion passed 11-0.
Respectfully submitted,
Kelly Tivnan
Budget Committee Secretary
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