04/08/2024 CHARTER REVIEW COMMITTEE Minutes

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*CHARTER REVIEW COMMITTEE MINUTES Monday, April 8, 2024* 6 Carol Sherman added with the deadline it says it starts August 31st. Budget guidelines distributed to department heads and then boom deadline for submissions of fiscal year budgets in and Munis in September 29th, and then request forwarded to the select board in the Finance for review in December. Then school budget adopted by the school committee due to the town manager January 18th. Cathy Lewis said it should not be finalized prior to any reviews. I would rather have the town manager and the Fin Com weigh in and then have us vote than vote. Have it go for review, have it come back, have us be deliberate, like what we're going to do. It's inefficient and this would make more sense. Mary Waygan suggested maybe that first sentence in the beginning should say the proposed budget drafted by the school committee. And then we'll have to add another sentence in there as to when you submit. The topic was tabled until input from the Town Manager. In 6.3, the proposed budget should also published on the town website. In addition to being published in the local paper. Don Myers said so this is my pet peeve, particularly like on the omnibus budget or on CIP where funds are being appropriated from. Various accounts. Those accounts are not identified in the blue book. Cathy Lewis added they should really be part of the explanation. The article and the motion are what are normally said and done, but then the explanation says the purpose of these revolving funds is to segregate revenues generated by each of these operations and to restrict the use of those revenues to the purpose for which they are collected, as required by state statute. The following is an account of these funds for the prior fiscal year.And then it gives in the explanation Don's point starting balance, what's been appropriated and spent, appropriated and not spent, and what's the balance and it's and it's all here. Whenever the town manager's budget is posted, it needs to be included in the town manager's budget. Mary Waygan referred to the last sentence the notice shall further indicate the times and places at which complete copies of the proposed operating budget for the town were available for public examination. So maybe we should put add into there the proposed operating budget and full budget message. Cathy Lewis said I wouldn't be amenable to that, and I think again, if it's the proposed, it starts with the draft and we just are clear that this is a living document. And what you're reading today check in another couple days, it could have been changed and updated based on the conversations. Between. The town manager and the department heads the select board and there you know, whoever has already started whittling down to get to the final budget. But I think for transparency sake and I'm always going to go to, I think it's important that we all see to Don's point. So we can understand.