2022-06-23-AC-min - Laserfiche WebLink

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06/23/2022 AC Minutes 2 • Salary Reserve account adjustments: The budget includes funds for contracted salaries plus the most recent contracted salaries for contracts that are being negotiated. Projected increases for those future contracts are put into the Salary Reserve account. After the contracts are finalized, the new rates go into effect for future fiscal years. The Salary Reserve account is used for retroactive payments, i.e., when there are salary adjustments, including vacation buybacks, for years when the new rates were not included in the budgets. • End-of-year Line Item Transfers: Each department has a line item for salaries and a line item for expenses; transfers between line items can be made when a line item’s expenditures exceeded the appropriated amount and there are available funds in another line item to cover them. • Reserve Fund transfers: These can be requested any time of the year for an “unexpected and extraordinary expense” and must be approved by this Committee. In FY2022, $750,000 was allocated to the fund. • Revolving Fund Increase: Lexington has approximately 10 revolving funds, which are outside the general fund. Each year, Town Meeting places a spending cap on each revolving fund based on projected revenue for that year. The Town cannot allow the balance in a revolving fund to become negative. Ms. Kosnoff reviewed the purposes and amounts associated with requests for one revolving fund increase, two end-of-year line item transfers, three salary adjustment transfers from the Salary Reserve account, and a potential Reserve Fund request. She explained that there is a line-Item Transfer request, a Salary Reserve Transfer request, and a potential Reserve Fund transfer request associated with the Fire Department to address unexpected overtime expenses (often related to Covid-19 illness and quarantines but also to cover for situations where overtime was used when there were injuries, etc.), vacation buyback requests, and payouts for accrued leave at retirement. The requests were as follows: • Revolving Fund Increase, which must be approved by the SB and this Committee: Ø A $50,000 increase in the spending cap of the Public Works-Compost Revolving Fund: The original spending cap approved by Town Meeting was for $790,000, based on expected revenue. Expenses are expected to reach $840,000 by the end of the year--$50,000 more than the spending cap. The increase resulted from the Town’s expenses (e.g., sales tax, overtime) associated with increased product sales, which exceeded $890,000 (about $100,000 more than expected). With this approval, the end of year balance will be equivalent to the $504,232 brought in from FY2021. • End-of-Year Line-Item Transfers: Ø $89,274 to be transferred from snow removal expenses to snow removal personal services. The timing of storms impacts overtime. Snow removal expenses can be carried over to the next fiscal year if there were a deficit that could not be addressed by a transfer. Ø $75,000 to be transferred from Fire Expenses to Fire Personal Services because the Fire Department’s expenses were less than budgeted and salaries were greater than expected as discussed above. • Salary Reserve Transfers: Specific requests were as follows: Ø $44,812 to be transferred to the Fire Department, Personal Services; this is related to contract settlements as described above. Ø $8,200 to be transferred to the Human Services Department, Personal Services; this is related to contract settlements as described above.