2004-11-04-AC-min - Laserfiche WebLink

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November 4, 2004 the data collection and report generation process. Water meters on outside of house, data read by wand/gun and uploaded into MUNIS, MUNIS generates bills from this input. MUNIS has a bug in case where a meter hits 999 and turns over to 000, MUNIS calculates water use incorrectly. So now a bad number gets into the MUNIS system. The revenue office, which we visited on Monday, recognizes that this is a problem and has been working on it. JB's hypothesis is that there were manual corrections of this based on high/low report, and a corrected bill was sent out, but the original number in the system wasn't fixed, so when revenue office generates an accounts receivable report, the numbers are wrong. Next important question is whether we have confidence in the revenue numbers. JB walked committee through Bill Hadley's memo and the spreadsheet of appropriation vs. expended. Commitments (billings minus abatements) are recorded as $6,996,623. The memo reports "actual receipts" of $7,074,376 (payment of current and prior years' commitments). This suggests that we can have confidence in the $7M revenue figure provided by Bill Hadley. At this point JB doesn't believe there is a collections problem, but not all questions answered yet and still awaiting further information. Hopes to clear this up soon and feels we're narrowing in on a computer error. AC agrees that JB should continue to pursue this and report back to the committee. Some discussion of MUNIS problems and Nov. 1 meeting with Revenue Office (at their invitation). MUNIS meter rollover problem described at that meeting. RC described receiving a negative w/s bill because he had received someone else's abatement. 4. Philosophy of FY06 budget: Continuation of discussion begun at last meeting. Lengthy discussion among AC members about purpose/utility of proposed budget preparation guidelines (Linda Vine's intent to produce two budgets: a level-service budget and a needs-based budget). AC members came to some agreement that level- service should be best defined as level-staffing, that is, staffing at current (FY05) levels, and that this level-staffing budget is simply a benchmark to indicate what it would cost to do business in FY06 more or less the way we're doing it in FY05. There may be ways in which this staffing level is imperfect and it is expected that there will be proposals to change/improve/add/re-organize. These should be represented in the needs- based/recommended budget submission, with deltas to indicate changes from FY05 staffing levels (up or down). But with common benchmark of "level-staffing" budget, the boards and committees can together consider the competing priorities and where to deploy limited resources. DB reported from her meeting with T. Griffiths (School Committee [SC] liaison to AC) that SC hasn't given a particular instruction to interim superintendent re budget preparation, but expect to see something based roughly on the same distribution of revenues as FY05 budget and assuming something close to a 2% increase in revenues. AC members expressed concerned with this approach, and general agreement that it is important for both the municipal and the school budgets to be presented in same way (a level-staffing budget and a needs-based/recommended budget), with no prior assumptions about how resources will be distributed.