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HomeMy WebLinkAboutFinance Comm. 01/18/2023Town of Mansfield 6 Park Bow, Man feld, Massachusetts 02048 RECEIVED Finance CommitteejOWN CLERKS OFFICE 11A..c.L:.... :1n:....F 1 10 onoa ?a4 FEB 20 P i' 39 Present: Ms. Sara Walsh, Chair, Mr. Scott Feely, Vice Chair, Clerk, Mr.Ob�wc-ob �Ytelinda Tarsi; Ms. Greta Thurston and Mr. Michael Flaherty Not Present: Mr. Walter Wilk Guests: Mr. Matthew Violette, Assistant Town Manager Minutes: Sharon Varricchione Open Meeting 1. Call The Meeting To Order: Mr. Violette, Assistant Town Manager, called the meeting to order at 7:00pm. 2. Reorganize: Chair Nominee: Motion: To nominate Ms. Walsh for the Chair position. Passes: 6:0 (Feely/Flaherty) Vice Chair Nominee: Motion: To nominate Mr. Feely for the Vice Chair position. Passes: 6:0 (Cooney/Flaherty) Clerk Nominee: Motion: To nominate Ms. Thurston for the Clerk position. Passes: 6:0 (Flaherty/Feely) Committee representatives The group discussed the various committees that needed Finance Committee member representatives, those committees included: Budget Sub Committee, CIP, Downtown, Audit, School and School Town Facilities. Ms. Walsh also mentioned that Mr. Wilk was not in attendance and that they could continue the conversation at the next meeting. • CIP: Mr. Feely and Mr. Flaherty requested to be a Finance Committee representative. • School Town Facilities: Mr. Feely and Ms. Tarsi requested to be a Finance Committee representative. • School: Ms. Tarsi and Mr. Cooney requested to be a Finance Committee representative. • Audit: Mr. Cooney requested to be a Finance Committee representative. • Budget Sub — Ms. Thurston requested to be a Finance Committee representative. Ms. Walsh noted that she and Mr. Wilk share a history of being past representatives and would like to discuss when Mr. Wilk is present. • Downtown - Ms. Thurston said she would be the Finance Committee representative. 3. Approval Of Minutes: 12.21.2023 Motion: To adopt the meeting minutes 12.21.2023 Passes: 4:0:2 (Feely/Tarsi) Mr. Flaherty and Ms. Thurston abstained. Financial Updates and Discussions: 4. Update on FY 24 Financials and Impact of State Announced FY 24 Budget 9C Cuts: Mr. Violette stated that 9C cuts occurred when the projected revenue is less then the projected spending. He mentioned that we have two ear marks that were going to be affected and that the good news was that it would not impact Municipal or School aid and that we did not need to worry about the It impacting the FY24 budget. Mr. Feely inquired on what the 9C cuts were. Mr. Violette said the $50k Beautification fagade project will now be done by mini grants for local businesses and that they may not be able to give out that many. The other one was the parkway improvement project and we are making up the difference for this by using the $12,500 Town Road bond money FY24 Mr. Violette gave the following FY24 updates. General Fund Revenue: The three excises are comparable and are consistent. Cannabis tax is $110k vs $146k last year and he's not concerned that it's less and that the number may be leveling out. Licenses and permits were up $243,000 which is driven by the volume of building permits related to the Chocolate Factory and that people are actually moving in. Investment Income: is looking great at $443,000 and $700,000 budgeted for the year. We may have room to increase our local receipts estimates for FY25. The Federal Government is talking about cutting rates in FY24 so we don't want to get overly aggressive with it but it's good to see we are doing well. Misc. Non -Reoccurring Revenue: Is at $670,000 which includes the sale of the North Main Street Fire Station and the Community Host Agreements. We don't budget for our Misc. Non -Reoccurring Local Receipts but there may be certain items that we can. Enterprise Revenue: Water, Sewer and Airport are all 52% collected through December, 2023. Water has rebounded but there are larger commitments coming in and we are starting to collect on them. Parking is continuing to rebound since the pandemic, we are 77% collected. Mr. Feely asked if we have any communication with the MBTA Foxboro pilot program where the parking is free. If this does not work, we may see parking pick up in Mansfield. Mr. Violette did say that parking is up and down depending on the day of the week. Mr. Cooney questioned if we would lose any parking spots due to the new TOD project and Mr. Feely didn't think we were going to especially with the new parking garage. Ms. Walsh asked if the garage would be privately owned and Mr. Violette mentioned that there are many moving parts. General Fund Expenditures: The Town side Is 54% expended and the Schools are 35% through December. The 54% is not concerning due to the front -loaded insurance costs and bigger contracts. The benefits however are tough to budget for and can fluxgate. The Town benefits are 54% expended and the Schools are 49% expended and he felt they are tracking nicely. Storm Tracking: Mr. Violette stated that we are two snow storms in, January 71h was about a $90,000 hit and the costs are not finalized but right now we are down to $235,000 for the snow and ice budget and depending on how the winter goes we may need to borrow from free cash. The average storm costs close to $100,000. Ms. Walsh asked if there had been any budget transfers over $50 and Mr. Violette said no and that there had not been any. Update on FY25 Budget and Process: Mr. Violette said the budget it's looking good compared to the 5 million they started with last year. Mr. Violette mentioned he wanted to discuss a few revenue data point estimates. The Cherry sheets that were posted shows a 2.5% increase which he thought was optimistic, previous years wasjust over 1%. The Governors report is expected at the end of the month so we will start to see how the Cherry Sheets are taking off. On the Tax levy side, new growth is one area that he would like to dig into a little with the Town Assessor. We budgeted $750,000 and last year it was over a million dollars. This is a tough one to estimate. Local Receipts: 7.1% over last years estimate which is higher but it's reasonable and he will dig into it more to see if there is more capacity. Mr. Feely offered that things are coming back after the pandemic and are leveling off. We are budgeting $725,000 as he wants to be conservative but they also need to balance the budget. Local receipts are a really the big opportunity for us to work with the revenue side of the budget as there can be some assumptions that could be made there. Interfund transfers: Health Care Stabilization, the 2.5% state aid is a little optimistic. If we lower that to 1.5%, that's $250,000 less of new money. Last year we did a transfer of $400,000. He felt that this year they could increase it up to $400,000 since the rate increase Is going to be higher then last year when we used $400,000. This will help close help the gap of using State Aid. Mr. Violette said he was happy to speak about expenses any time. Ms. Walsh asked about the process and noted that they have their first Budget Sub meeting on February 81' and a TO Board meeting later that month. Mr. Violette explained the next step would be to meet with all the Department Heads with their preliminary budgets including Police, Fire, and DPW that have the larger budgets. Ms. Walsh stated that they did not want to get too crazy until they know what they are getting from the State. Mr. Violette stated that the MMA conference was being held now and after that they might have a better idea of what they would begetting. Mr. Violette also mentioned that something to consider was last year when working with the budget there were two factors, ARPA money for the schools and ARPA money directly allocated as a revenue source and now we are living post ARPA money now. 6. Reserve Fund Transfer Request: Mr. Violette met with the Police Dept and read their request explaining the need for a new 2024 Dodge Durango PPV (Police) SUV due to their older 2016 Dodge PPV sedan being in an accident and was totaled. The request is for $46,062.67 to be used towards a 2024 Dodge Durango PPV (Police) SUV replacement cruiser. Ms. Walsh asked how this impacts future CIP requests. Mr. Violette noted that the Police had a M3 Cruiser as a FY25 $80,000 CIP item and thought that doing this replacement now would alleviate that request, he will look into this. Mr. Violette also noted that the pricing falls in line with other estimates and that they have not had a sedan request since 2017. Per Deputy Chief Archer, the cruisers are better in inclement weather and there's more space for cones and other equipment. Mr. Feely added that they last longer and they are more robust. Ms. Thurston questioned If the insurance was covering the cost of the old cruiser. Mr. Violette stated the value of the 2016 sedan Is equal to the cost of the $27,000. Ms. Thurston said due to the value of the new SUV, would insurance costs increase significantly? Mr. Violette did not know of the specifics, and he thought it would be higher. Ms. Thurston then asked if there would be an additional charge that would come their way that they were not expecting for insurance. Mr. Flaherty said it would most likely not be too much and Mr. Feely agreed. Mr. Cooney offered that now we have storage for these vehicles and Mr. Feely added that it's huge impact as the cars may not need to be warmed up as much and this helps with less overtime. Motion: to approve the FY24-07 transfer of $46,062.67 from the General Fund Reserve Fund to the General Fund, Police Capital— Vehicles/Vehicular Equipment. Passes: 6:0 (Feely/Flaherty) IRS Appeal: Mr. Violette read a statement explaining that their appeal for their 1099 tax filing for FY2021 was denied. Claimed by the IRS, the Munis file that was uploaded to the IRS reporting website did not include the tax identification numbers of all 138, 1009 recipients. He stated that this is not accurate and the fine for this was a total of $38,640. We have begun working with a Tax Attorney that was recommended by Town Counsel and approved by the Town Manager, and they are working on a higher level of appeal. Mr. Violette mentioned that he is also working with Congressman Auchincloss office as they have a team that deals with IRS issues like this one. He felt that this will take time but would be resolved at some point. Mr. Violette also offered that this was frustrating as Munis is a 1099 program, when we have a new vendor, they provide us with their W9 form and they are then set up as a vendor in Munis and a box is checked off If they qualify as a 1099 recipient. At the end of the calendar year, Munis generates a report that shows any vendors that are $600 or more. It's a text file and the 1099 that gets uploaded to the IRS. This text file is the same layout as most of the previous files they have uploaded. In addition, they got a receipt from the IRS stating that the file was good. Years ago, he had a scenario where there was a bad file and Munis needed to make a patch so a good file could be uploaded to the IRS. In the appeal we showed all the information that the IRS said they were missing, shared the actual file and the 1099s and they still denied it. Mr. Violette also mentioned that there is no human being to speak with at the IRS. He stated that he is at a complete loss as to why the IRS is saying that their upload was incorrect and it seems like it would be an easy problem to fix but there is no one to speak with. Mr. Auchincloss' IRS person said it seems like there is some kind of glitch. There has been at least one other Town that is having an Issue and there may be other towns that are having this issue. The IRS also stated in their denial that Mansfield should have issued B notices to all the vendors stating that if they don't get the correct updated 1099 forms, they will begin backup withholdings. We won't send B notices as all the information on the 1099 is correct. Ms. Greta asked if the Town was paying for the lawyer and for how long. If other Towns are experiencing this, is it worth us hiring our own lawyer. Mr. Violette is not sure just yet. Ms. Walsh asked if there are fees as time goes by and Mr. Violette stated yes and the first one was due January 29". He spoke with the Tax Attorney and he was working on that appeal. Once that's filed he was unsure if that would buy them more time. Ms. Walsh asked if this is systemic what can the Congressmen's office do to help the Town be reimbursed. She then asked if Munis was involved at all. Mr. Violette did speak with our Munis sales rep and she had not heard anything but she was going to reach out to the tech people who may have a better idea then she did. He said he would keep everyone posted. 8. Requested Analysis/Data: Ms. Walsh stated they would keep this agenda item going forward and they could request any data that they would like to see. At the last meeting, Mr. Wilks requested to see the turn backs from the Water Department in which Mr. Violette sent the reporting to the Committee after the meeting. Mr. Cooney asked what the turn back reporting was and Mr. Violette said it was a request from Mr. Wilk and that it represented all the money that was unexpended over the last few years. Ms. Walsh added that it was requested because the Department requested money. Mr. Violette reached out to other Towns to see what they do regarding best practices and it did vary. You could make a solid argument either way. Ms. Walsh said consistency would be nice and that she would rather know what was unbudgeted then not know. Going forward, Ms. Tarsi requested to see updated reserve fund balance during these reserve fund transfer requests. Mr. Violette said he would do that going forward and they are roughly at $560,000 after today's transfer request. Ms. Walsh then bought up the request to revisit Trash and Recycling expenses and revenue so they could discuss this in the future and Mr. Violette agree. Mr. Violette left at 8:16pm Questions form the Community: 9. Questions from Community: None Committee Business: 10. Survey Discussion: Ms. Tarsi shared the survey with the Committee and stated that the first page was a consent form which notes that this may impact future decision making in the Town and it also included a phone number in case someone wants to confirm that this is a real survey. She then stated there was a question about Department and uses which could be adjusted. If we want to see how people are interacting with the different parts of Town Government that might be helpful. If we want to see how people are interacting with different parts of Town Government that would be useful. We could see what services are important to people. She then mentioned that the recycling and waste management question could be broken out into a few questions based up their earlier conversation. Ms. Walsh would like to add some awareness into the bill questions and she mentioned that she thought people may like our trash program but that it is expensive. Ms. Tarsi recommended that they could set it up a little differently and that they could include some education into the questions. Ms. Tarsi then spoke about the Master Plan question to see If the residents are aware of it and have they reviewed it. Ms. Thurston stated that she would rather know what the top three things that are important to the resident vs asking them what the most important thing is to them. The Committee agreed that was a good idea. Ms. Tarsi added that if they have an "other' answer, a line would populate for the person to fill in so they could capture that information. Ms. Tarsi said they could also provide branching depending on how they answer questions the next appropriate question that related to that would appear. Ms. Thurston asked what they would do with the answers for the first two questions, what would we do for example knowing how much they interact with Animal Control? Ms. Tarsi said for example if they said they never interacted with the Airport before and then they answered a different question stating to defund the Airport, they could show here's how people felt about the Airport when they do interact with and here's how they felt when they don't have interaction with it. This will also help with other questions like ranking the COA and trying to understand the answers like is this a group of younger people thinking forward or is it because they don't have a facility that is responsive? The Committee discussed the timing of the survey and that the survey could be done on all different devices including your phone. Mr. Flaherty asked what none of the questions had a "prefer not to answer' Ms. Tarsi informed him and the Committee that they don't have to answer any questions just the first one consenting to do the survey. She can add it but it does not need to be there. Mr. Cooney asked to have questions regarding attending Town Meetings and Ms. Tarsi said yes and we could also ask other questions like have they ever donated to other campaigns. Ms. Tarsi said we are ready and could start the survey when ever we want to after the next round of changes. She asked the Committee when do we want the info. Ms. Walsh said we will put it on the website and Ms. Tarsi said we could do QR postcards. Ms. Walsh suggested sending out the survey in March, through the Town Meeting and a little after. She then asked Ms. Tarsi if this survey could take the survey more then once and she said no. She then mentioned that this survey could also be a tool to advertise other things including asking the residents if they would be interested in doing a focus group. Ms. Walsh recommended we made the edits and share with the Town for their approval. Mr. Feely added that if they get people to do it then going forward they may be able to get more and more people to do it. The Committee discussed promoting the QR code and Ms. Thurston was concerned regarding people not taking it if you are under the age of 18. Ms. Tarsi said we could work with the schools to help with this and could also work with the questions to not have people under the age of 18. 11. Committee Updates: Ms. Walsh said that the Budget Sub Committee will be held on February 81h and the TO Board will be meeting on February 28'h regarding the Budget. Mr. Feely offered that CIP meetings would be coming up and that he did not know the dates yet. Ms. Thurston asked when the next Finance Committee meeting would be held and Ms. Walsh stated February 15th. 12. Items Not Known in 48 Hours: none 13, Fin Com Member Comments: The Committee congratulated Ms. Walsh on her continued role as the Chair of the Finance Committee. Ms. Walsh then added that she will take care of the Annual Town Report Finance Committee page which is due February 1511 and she will share with the Committee for review. Ms. Walsh then congratulated Ms. Varricchione on her new job. Ms. Varricchione said she is moving down to the Conservation Department and the Committee congratulated her and said they would miss her. 14. Adjournment: Motion: To adjourn the meeting at 8:45pm. Passes:6:0 (Feely/Cooney) ;! 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