Judge Welsh Hearing Room
FINAL
Members
Present: Frederick Biddle, Thomas Coen, Gary Delius,
Edward Gage, Ruth
Members Absent: David Bedard,
Alice Foley, Tom Thurston,
and
Walt Winnowski.
Others: Keith Bergman, Beau Jackett, and Sandy Turner
Meeting Agenda
136
Information Systems Department
MIS
Director, Beau Jackett said that he had requested a
few changes for fiscal 08 which wouldn't affect the size of the budget. He requested a continuation of the permanent
technicians hired in FY ‘07.
Ruth
Gilbert asked about a stipend listed and wondered who received it. Beau received it for supervising and it’s not
built into the base pay. The contract
figure for the schools is $68,865 dollars and that is paying for 75% of the 2 technicians salaries
and their benefits and the $7,500 Stipend for Mr. Jackett
Ruth
remembers this discussion from last year.
Mr. Bergman said that this is the first year this sharing of the
technicians has come about. As Mr.
Bergman stated, this
contract was not negotiated to have the schools pay for the two techs.
Mr.
Delius wants clarification on the amounts. Mr. Bergman said that all we want you to
approve is the total budget. Mr. Bergman
said it was a
personnel matter negotiated by the employees.
Beau said the general idea is to save the town money. Having a shared department between the two
entities is more economical.
“The
schools pay for 75% of the tech” Mr. Delius
said, " I think we understand that.Where does
the remaining 25% come from? Where is it in the budget?”
Tom
Coen clarified by saying that you’re not providing
bodies but services. Mr. Delius responded, “That is fine but which line item carries
this cost?
Fred
Biddle asked if this were just a verbal agreement? Who’s idea was
this? Fred says it sounds like more than
just a verbal agreement.
Mr.
Bergman said that we know that any other configuration will mean redundancy and
a lot more money. Three years ago the
schools hired someone on their own. Mr. Jackett said that the addendum was agreed to
in the spring and these two full time people began in the summer.
Mr.
Jackett suggested maybe we should just
restructure the payments and maybe we can introduce this to the school
committee. If we restructure the verbal
arrangement – then we can change. Tom Coen advised that it is better that the schools are paying
for services and not for specific employees.
Robert Vetrick wondered,
"Are we going to see a line item on the school budget?"
Mr.
Bergman suggested - why don’t we prepare that and get it back to you at
Tuesday's meeting. Ruth Gilbert
suggested getting it prepared and seeing it after the school budget. It was agreed that the above would take
place after the school budget was presented.
Centralization
of MIS Supplies
Ruth
Gilbert told Mr. Jackett that we had a lot of dialogue
with the Town Accountant on printer supplies, etc. All these costs were centralized in your budget last
year. Ruth wanted to centralize all MIS
purchases for economy reasons.
Beau
Jackett said that not every department goes through
us for toner (consumable supplies). Our
problem is it is expensive and because departments are not aware of the costs,
they just print, print, print! Mr. Jackett further felt that they might be more responsible
for their supplies if their Department had to pay for them. Also, the Departments want MIS available at
all times to immediately replace ink & toner. He feels office supplies are not centralized
anywhere – he doesn’t see toner as any different. The amount he allocates in the MIS budget
doesn’t even cover it.
Ruth
Gilbert stated she understood but was this communicated to the other
Departments?” Mr. Jackett was not sure the change in
policy had been fully disseminated.
Mr. Delius, who was
the previous MIS Director, said that when he took over the Department in 2000
there was printer toner inventory sitting in every office of the building. Centralizing the inventory had made
Department budgets available for their central function and placed the costs of
computing and printing in the MIS Department where it could be better
controlled. As an example, Mr. Delius said in 2002 the DPW bought a brand new laser
printer on their own with no communication with the MIS Department. When asked about the consumables, they were
unaware that it took 4 color cartridges at $250/cartridge, and they all had to
be installed at the same time. So every time they ran out of toner it cost $1K
to replenish the laser printer.
Mr.
Jackett stated that many times printers are
discontinued and there are many different kinds of printer cartridges. If the FinCom feels
it should be the burden of the MIS – I’ll need a lot more money to cover the
printer supplies.
Ruth
agrees with what Mr. Delius just said and if you’re
going to decentralize this, the Department heads should know about it. Mr. Delius
suggested that Mr. Jackett get a quote from vendors and
one of the conditions of the RFQ is that the vendor holds the inventory until
required by the Town. Under guidelines established by the MIS Department, the
Departments can order as they need product and have shipped directly to the
Department
Mr.
Delius asked about redoing the web-site and it was
decided that it would be preferable to wait for the new Town Manager to come on
board. Mr. Jackett
agreed. Mr. Delius
said, “ We’ve come to accept a high quality
web-site. We have a lot of web-site
developers in this community and $1,500 for training purposes to instruct
people how to update the web-site would be a better use of the Department's
budget rather than subscribing to a cookie-cutter web site that had to be
re-subscribed to year after year.” Mr. Jackett said, “We have been fortunate that our Town Manager
and Town Clerk can update pages - but we don’t know about the incoming Town
Manager.”
We’re
all very pleased with the overall working of the MIS Department and we need to
see a program for upgrades the Town’s front line computers. Mr. Jackett said he
would most likely recommend leasing.
Motion: Approve Budget 136 (MIS) in the amount of
$139,478.
Motion: Robert Vetrick Seconded: Ed Gage
Vote: 7-0-0.
131 Finance Committee
Mr.
Delius said that the increase in the budget is due to
more members attending MMA and the Association of Town Finance Committee
training. Mr. Delius
would like to support our FinCom by covering the cost
of the hotel room at these conferences since the members give graciously of
their own time and transportation to attend these functions.
Motion: Approve Budget 131 (FinCom)
in the amount of $38,665.
Motion: Robert Vetrick Seconded: Virginia Ross Vote:
7-0-0.
710 Debt
Service
Last
year was the first payment that the Library’s long term debt paymenst was paid by the Library’s gift fund. According to Mr. Bergamn,
we have about 3 years of Library debt service payments collected thus far. Ms. Gilbert thinks it is important to point
out that the library is making their Long term debt payments as they had
promised Town Meeting when funding for the Library was approved. Robert Vetrick wants to advise the BoS
that in the future perhaps the Town should not buy what it can not afford.
Motion: Approve Budget 710 (Debt Service) in the
amount of $1,868,872.
Motion: Ed Gage Seconded: Fred Biddle Vote:
7-0-0.
910
Retirement/Benefits/Insurance
Mr.
Bergman explained that we get an assessment based on what our employee
population was as of one year ago. We
will not see any further benefit from the Cape End Manor transfer until 2008.
The
principal increase is in group health.
Those rates haven’t been set yet but will be in the next month. Cape Cod Municipal Health has a surplus in
the fund. They may choose to have some
policy objectives, i.e., to subsidize only the PPOs
and the HMOs.
Ruth
Gilbert asked where we stood with people switching out of the more expensive
Master Medical plan?
Mr. Bergman said that he was not aware of many shifts at this time. Legally we don’t have to offer it to the
retirees. It would only take a vote of
the BoS to make this happen. We could just not offer this option any
more. Ms. Gilbert asked if we have lost
our momentum with this, i.e., health fairs, etc. Mr. Bergman said it only takes effect on July
1st so a health fair is probably in the works.
Tom
Coen said that most large corporations have cafeteria
plans. The employees are given a dollar
amount of benefits that are available to them and then they choose - dental,
health, life insurance, disability, etc.
Motion: Approve Budget 910
Retirement/Benefits/Insurance in the amount of $4,190,508.
Motion: Robert Vetrick Seconded:
Virginia Ross Vote: motion withdrawn
Motion: Adjourn the morning session of the FinCom meeting at
Motion was made, seconded,
and unanimously approved by vote of 7-0-0.
Respectfully submitted,
Approved by ____________________________on
______________, 2007
Mr. Gary Delius, Chair