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<br /> February 8, 2007 <br />Minutes <br />Town of Lexington Appropriation Committee <br />February 8, 2007 <br /> <br />Place and time: Town Hall, room 111, 7:38 p.m. <br /> <br />Members present: Alan Levine (Chair), Deborah Brown (Vice Chair), John Bartenstein <br />(Secretary), Mike Kennealy, David Kanter, Richard Eurich, Rod Cole, Pam Hoffman, <br />Eric Michelson, Rob Addelson (ex officio, non-voting). <br /> <br />Also present: Mary Ellen Dunn, Tom Griffiths, Tom Diaz, George Burnell <br /> <br /> <br />The meeting was called to order at 7:40 p.m. with a quorum present. <br /> <br />1. The first order of business was a discussion with Mary Ellen Dunn, <br />Assistant Superintendent for Business and Finance, to discuss School <br />financial issues. We received background information on changes <br />anticipated in the developing school budget. Mary Ellen is looking to <br />update the budget book based on many of the questions she has received <br />from the various boards and citizens. This will hopefully improve the <br />usefulness of the information in the budget book. One area of difficulty for <br />her due to her short tenure in her position is having confidence in staffing <br />and FTE numbers. <br /> <br />Mary Ellen welcomes a financial review committee. She hopes to build <br />better procedures and policies, and this would help that effort. One thing <br />in particular she hopes to do is better train others, such as secretaries and <br />department heads, in using the Munis software system to enable better <br />financial tracking and reporting. She is currently working on better <br />segregation of people vs. accounts. <br /> <br />The time to get all the accounting matters in hand could be as short as <br />several months to as long as a couple of years. This requires a transition <br />from a system of going back and forth between using Excel and Munis, to <br />the exclusive use of Munis. Mary Ellen has lots of experience in using <br />Munis and understands what needs to be done, but needs to bring the other <br />users along too. <br /> <br />Mary Ellen gave a list of some examples of problems that arose last year. <br />For example, vendors sending invoices without purchase orders, wrong <br />bills being sent, and mishandled encumbrances. <br /> <br />SPED cost estimation was also discussed. The financial secretary does the <br />projections. The difficulty of estimating costs for unknown students was <br />discussed. How the circuit breaker money is budgeted was covered. <br /> <br /> - 1 - <br /> <br />