October 27, 2025 – Audit Committee – Video & Transcript
October 27, 2025 - Audit Committee
call the meeting to order at 502. I'll go ahead and share my screen with the agenda.
I don't think we have anyone from the public, do we? Okay. Anyways, for the agenda first, and probably the main item we're going to be talking about is in our 2025 annual report about the RFP for the town's external auditor. Michael, I think you got to assign somebody to take minutes. I volunteer. Okay. Thank you. So what I'm going to try to do is I'm going to try to figure out how to use AI to take the minutes. And then if it works, I'm going to hand it off to Uteon. Yeah, you need to teach me. That's always my difficult part. Even me, like my company, I never take minutes. That's a difficult part. So if I figure out how to use AI, then we work together. That's my objective. You could have some help, but I feel so sorry that I am not. I don't know. That's my objective. If I can figure this out, then I'm going to hand it off. Okay. Sounds like a good approach. So after discussing the RFP, which is probably the main item, quickly touch on the other two recommendations in our annual report, look to approve the minutes from our prior meeting on June 2nd, and then talk about trying to fill the other two positions that we have. I don't think there's anyone from the public here to comment. So I could probably just move on to the discussion for the RFP. Let me pull up the annual report here. We recommended that CBiz continues for one more year and then initiates a RFP for FY26 through FY29 in September. So I think that's kind of the main point of discussion we're going to have. I know that it's about the end of October now, but figured it'd be good to kind of resume this recommendation and see how we can try to push forward with recommending this RFP. I agree. I would like to hear from Brian whether like the last time we did the RFP, the deadline for submission of proposals was December 31. And in view of the timeframe, if you adopt the same, give the responders the same amount of time, we would have, by my reckoning, the deadline would get pushed to February 28. And if we did, if we asked for RFP this year, and I want to know from Brian whether that works or whether, you know, whether we can accelerate the deadline for an RFP or whether we need one more cycle of a one-year contract and then ask for a three-year contract. So I'm not really familiar with what sort of time constraints the completion of a response to an RFP would have, whether it's still viable for us to go through with asking for a three-year contract at this point in the calendar. Yeah. So I think there's plenty of time left in this calendar if you wanted to do a three-year RFP. I mean, it's sort of the end of October right now. So you would basically complete the RFP draft with the help of Kelsey in the town manager's office who would then post the RFP, but you would clean it up a little bit and make sure it was legal and whatnot. But I think if you sort of put this together in the next three weeks and then had a deadline when it would be submitted, you would then have to leave a room if you wanted to talk to the respondents to the RFP. So you want to give yourself some room. You'd want to make a definite decision and award a contract, I would hope, by Christmas. And I know that's 60 days away, but it's still all doable as long as you put together an RFP and get it going. If you wanted to do a one-year, I believe we're on a one-year contract right now with CBiz, we'd have to issue another one-year contract with them. So either one works in terms of timing. It just depends upon what you want to do. If you want to go for three-year, you probably really need to get the ball rolling quicker than later. Because you already have a draft RFP. I think we used that a few years back. It does have to work with Kelsey. She would clean it up a little bit and post it. And then you just set up your times when to review it. And then if you wanted to, you could talk to the respondents and make a decision. The way it worked, you'd make a recommendation to the board of selectmen on making a change. They would ultimately make that decision. Well, that's kind of what I needed to hear, that there still is time. And that my other question is going to be who at the town manager's office would help clean it up. For example, I noticed that the draft still has Louise's name. And then I was going to ask, there are some numbers in there, like for liability, you know, bodily injury at a million. This document was done, was probably what, 19, 2000 and 21, maybe? I forget. Anyways, if Kelsey does, revises this thing, is she going to clean it up? Not only clean it up, but revise numbers if necessary? Is she going to take care of all of the, you know, and maybe there's even a more up-to-date version of this thing? This kind of feels a little clunky, like it might have been, you know, rehashed four years ago from something done five years ago, which makes it effectively 10 years old. I'm just wondering if there's a best, if there is a way to get something that's, you know, more modern by, by asking the account, the auditors to see if they have a best in class version of this thing. And we use that instead of this. Well, we can have Kelsey pursue that. She's part of the, you know, the purchasing group. So she can reach out to CBiz or CLA and ask them if they have a more up-to-date draft where she can even ask other municipalities what they've done. Uh, it's not every day we do an RP and change auditors, but there is still a lot of resources out there that she can, she can reach out to and clean this up, including town council. Perfect. So there's a lot that can be done on that end. Yeah, that would be my suggestion. And then if you could ask her to, to, to, to sort of expedite the process so we can move this thing forward ASAP. Okay. So you want me to send the draft to her and actually expedite it and get moving on and set up dates and timelines when to complete it? That would be my suggestion. And, uh, I'm not sure if we need a vote for that. Yeah, I'm good with that. Okay. So that's good. As far as it comes to reviewing the proposals, Brian, were you saying that the audit committee would review the proposals and then tell the select board, which, which company we, we think. I think the way it works is that the proposals are written. I'm sorry. The proposals are opened internally by the town manager's office. You don't see what people have bid. You actually do get their proposal and read it. And then you would provide a recommendation to the town manager who then refers back to the pricing and makes a determination of what would be recommended to the select board. So for example, if you wanted to pick audit firm A and audit firm B was comparable, but at a much lower price, the town manager could push to have, um, you know, uh, audit firm B selected simply on price. You will not know the price at all during this process until it's awarded. Tom manager keeps that, um, in private and makes a recommendation to select board based on a review of price in a recommendation at the very end. I see. So we'd probably be seeing the technical proposal and not the price proposal. That's right. Typically what happens is the audit firm will send in two packages, one with the technical proposal and the second one with the price proposal. So they're distinguishably different. Okay. That makes sense. And then we would be able to review those over email or would it generally be best to kind of have a meeting to talk through. Probably we would have, have hard copies. We can typically ask for the, uh, the amount of copies to be delivered. We could say five copies of your technical one copy of your price. You folks would just show up at time meeting and you'd pick up a packet and have each one of the respondents packets that you would just pick up. Email is difficult because these things sometimes come in a book is they're very well put together presentations and to create it, unless they want to produce a PDF on their own. It's difficult for us to take their high copy book and make a PDF out of it, but you could always just show up at town hall and pick up the PDFs. I mean, sorry, the presentations, um, when you have time. Yeah. So Brian, were you going to keep us informed as to, uh, when, when, uh, when, uh, when, when Kelsey, uh, is finished so that I don't know that we need to see, do we need to see what she comes up with? Yeah, most likely she'll put together a draft and she'll send it out to you. You can always respond to, uh, individually directly to her, not as a group. So you would get probably a draft of the RFP. It would be sent to you. You can discuss issues back and forth with her directly in email or by the telephone without copying the other two members. You cannot copy the other two members in your correspondence. And then, uh, we leave her to, uh, accept or reject or whatever and, and come up with a final copy and just send it out. Right. Okay. And you'll keep us informed as to the date, you know, the progress and the date that she does send them out. Yeah. Kelsey will be with you along the ride. She'll be updating you and when it's done, when it was submitted, how many people did submit, when the copies can be available. So really the purchasing office takes over this process as opposed to, you know, I'm obviously going to be involved, but she will coordinate the, you know, delivery of the bids from the different respondents. And they would, they will deal directly with her, not me. Okay. Sounds good. And then we stick with a Christmas deadline.
Yeah. And that's realistic, right, Brian? Sticking with a Christmas deadline? I think so. If you're, if you're going to keep with the same auditor, then, you know, they're going to be here in May. If you end up switching with them to another auditor, it's, we have to be fit into their schedule. I got it. For preliminary. Okay. That makes sense. I think with the new RFP, would that present us an opportunity to potentially broaden the scope a little bit to try to include maybe like a review over internal controls or, or something kind of small to the scope of the review? I think something like that would draw a lot of questions from the respondents is exactly what are you talking about? How many hours are involved? What do you want us to do this? They may come back and say, you know, reviewing the internal controls and the software isn't their forte. It's more geared to an IT firm. So if you put in something that's outside the normal scope of a governmental financial audit, it will draw a lot of questions on their end as to what this really means and how much it's going to cost them to execute the RFP. Makes sense. I think I remember Alina saying that like last year that CBiz isn't really too specialized in internal control reviews. And that's why they didn't really look into it too much. That's possible. But Ryan, I think what you just said makes sense to me that this will just slow things down, but that that would put it on next year's agenda for the audit committee to try and identify something where we would be looking for a single issue audit and or review of internal controls. And someone had suggested IT. So it sounds like we might be deferring this particular bullet point to next year. That makes sense? Yeah, for a recommendation. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that would make more sense than trying to throw it in. Because we're already time constrained. And Brian is saying that this would probably generate a lot of questions. Yeah. Probably best to not pursue broadening the scope.
So Brian, one more time. I don't understand why the audit doesn't do internal controls. That was a big issue last year. Well, it's a financial audit to do. All the internal controls will be very costly. Audit firms don't do that unless you specifically write it into the engagement. All right. They may do some testing. They do testing with accounts payable, payroll, journal entries. They do walkthroughs to certain procedures. But to flat out do an internal control review would be very costly. And you probably want to go to some other firm that specializes in that because they don't have the staff that would that would do that. And I don't think they'd be interested in it. All right. And the other thing is that when you do ask for an internal control, you you isolate that request to a a smaller area, right? As opposed to the entire town. Right. You could do you could ask them to do a second audit. It's called a strange name. It's called a agree to prompt procedure. But you could say something like we want to review how the transfer station sets their rates on trash pickup, something like that. So it's a specific audit for a specific, you know, segment of the town. It's called an agreed upon procedure. And they would you would we would have to pay for that separately. OK.
From it. Would that be from a different firm? Well, you would do an RFP. You could ask them to do it and they may say, well, yeah, we can do that. Now, you don't always have to do an RFP for an audit services. You could say to them, you know, you could go to SCBiz. We wanted to review on the historical raising of rates and the transfer station. And now they're covering their cost. They may say, yeah, we can do that. Or they'll say, we just don't have the bandwidth to do that right now. And then the town would issue an RFP to get general responses from the public to do that.
Could you could you also just pick a consultant that you think could do that job and just. Well, it would be it would be the same thing, Klaus. You would have the RFPs would come in. The pricing would be separate. The audit firm would pick which firm they want to do it. And then there would be an analysis made on on cost. And then ultimately, the town manager would go along with you guys to the select board and make a recommendation. It follows the exact same procedure as what we're talking about with this audit RFP. All right. I think we're good then. Just same scope and try to get it out, confirmed by Christmas. Brian, there's also one thing in the RFP, the end of year compliance supplement. Is that something that's still provided? Right. So they'll the RFP that you'll do. It'll be for the end of the after will be done. The single audit in the end of year report will all be part of that. That's the package. Okay. Okay. That makes sense. Does anyone else have any thing on this? I think your second bullet, two proposed timeline and process, I think we've covered that, right? We're going to have Kelsey start the process and she's going to just go ASAP and keep us informed. And then next steps will depend on when these proposals start coming in. And then we'll, or we react to these, these proposals as they, no, we react to her RFP as it's being created. And then as the proposals come in, we can, we can, we can, we can, I mean, do we need, you know, do we need to discuss those things, Brian, when, when these proposals, if any, come in? Oh yeah. You would, you would each get your own packet of the different proposals. You would study them. And then you would each speak as to which one, which firm you support and which ones don't you support. If there's three, you can rank, rank them one through three, but you as a group have to select a audit firm out of the group that has, you know, submitted a, in their proposal. So, so the, the way this would work is that the deadline is Christmas. We would then read or whenever they come in, we read them. The deadline is Christmas. So we would have a meeting after Christmas to discuss our, our rankings. No, I think it would be brought forward more than that. You know, it's almost November. I think Kelsey could probably issue an RFP within say 10 days. I think the recipients need to respond by the, by Thanksgiving-ish. Do you have to go through and make a decision that, that could involve meeting with these audit firms? But I think this needs to go to the selection before Christmas to make a decision on which audit firm. I don't think you can go past Christmas. I misunderstood. I thought the, the, the proposals had a deadline of the, of Christmas. No, I know. Maybe I just heard it wrong. I think the proposals should be like Thanksgiving, the end of Thanksgiving, the end of November. Okay. Okay. So that doesn't give them a lot of time. Well, they're used to doing this. They can bang it up pretty quickly. Okay. They know how many hours it takes. They take a look at the budget, the tax recap. You know, they, they can ask for pride. I mean, our, our finances are on the website so they can get an idea of the work involved. Um, so it's not, it's, it is work on their end, but you know, they will position to put one together quickly. All right. Fair enough. So that would mean we have a meeting after Thanksgiving, uh, ASAP after Thanksgiving and, and, and discuss our respective rankings. Right. And make a, and then from your three, you would make a recommendation to the town manager. Okay. Without knowing the prices. Right. All right. I'm good. So that would be like a report, maybe one or two pages to the town manager, probably. Yeah. Most likely you would have another meeting. He'd be on the zone or you'd have it here and we would go through it and, you know, he would open up the bids and see where they came in and then just go from there. And he may or may not agree with your recommendation. Yeah, Michael. So our job is actually a quantitative job, I think, because the, the, um, uh, the, the RFP has, has these categories, highly, highly advantageous, advantageous, and not, and not advantageous, unacceptable, yada, yada, yada. So they each get a score of one, two, three. And then that's what we, each of us puts together. We, we, we rank these things on, on those dimensions that we meet. And, uh, and I would guess that our, the, the proposal gets the highest, uh, the highest ranking is what we propose. And for, for those reasons.
Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. We may disagree on advantageous, not advantageous, but that we'll have that discussion. So we'll, we'll at least be discussing things around those dimensions. Yep. That sounds good. If they're due by Thanksgiving, we might want to try to give ourselves a week or two, I guess, mid December to regroup. I would, I would guess two weeks would, would, that would work. I think we'd have two weeks to read maybe, I don't know how much material. Brian thinks some of it could be long. So we'd probably need at least two weeks before we set that meeting. And then we write a report and that report goes to the TM.
Yep. Sounds good. Are we good to move to the next item? UTL, are you good with the approach for the RFP? Yeah. Yeah. It's normally, I think my experience before, they, they have the templates. I don't know how many we can get. Probably it's the only one is out form and just renew if, if they, if they do a fair, good job. And for us to reveal couple, which is not real and applicable. So on the market, just a few form, I know, and they familiar with it. I don't know how much work we need to do to, to give some suggestions. Usually just, they just renew automatically. If we have to change, we have to, there's nothing wrong. We don't need to change. Okay. It's just a pricing, you know, we, I don't know, we're not recommended about the pricing, but hopefully not increase a lot. That's an issue. And they already know all the situations. If you change a new firm, that can be really costly. And I don't know how they work with that time. Hmm. Yeah. I think that's definitely something to consider since CBiz probably is very familiar with the processes. They probably know people from the town. They have contacts. They've already done it before. So it could be more challenging for a new, new firm to kind of step into that, that role. And, and Brian, uh, just to confirm, um, the, the current auditor has been around for almost 10 years. That's, that's not, I mean, that's, it's okay for them to be, there's no automatic getting fired after 10 years. That's correct. Okay. I think we're good with this item. The next item is kind of just regrouping on the two recommendations that we had, the other two recommendations from our annual report, which were engaging a third party to perform agreed upon procedures over internal controls and engaging a third party to review the vendor contracts. Uh, so, uh, Michael, I, I made a note to myself, I said, I don't really know what that number one bullet means. I said, define that engaging with a third party to perform agreed upon procedures over internal controls. I don't know what that means. Yeah. I think this is similar to what Brian was talking about earlier, having some other firm that's not CBiz come in and look at internal controls over a very specific area. It could be like cash reconciliations or any specific area. I I'd say, I think it's very broad and probably could have been better defined. No, I, I, I, I'm not just asking. And, and, and, and what you've just said is that we basically said we were going to defer this. What do you mean? Um, it's not part of the RFP. Yeah. So, so the, yeah. So, um, we didn't make a specific recommendation to the town, right? Maybe the town took this into consideration and did something, uh, but I'm not exactly sure whether we're asking for an update on this. It says the committee made the recommendation, recommend the town consider. And so the town either did or didn't. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So I was just wondering if the town, if Brian, if you know, if the town has considered either of these recommendations and if they've decided to pursue either of them or didn't think that it works. Yeah. I haven't heard either way. Probably Michael, you could send Carol Martin an email asking her what the, uh, the current position is that the select boat on the recommendation that you made, I believe it was, what's the date on the letter? Was it like February, March? When did we do this? This is our annual report. And I think it gets submitted at the end of the year. It actually goes to the, uh, uh, it goes to the select board. Did, was Samantha, the last one that came before the, uh, the board with me? Yes. Okay. So I think that she may have, she would have given them this similar document. I think we'd have to go back to see what exactly Samantha gave them. Well, she has to have, yeah, she does a report, but this is the document that we, um, I think this is the document that we, uh, this is our deliverable to the select board is the annual. No, I'm not sure if it's deliverable to the, no, this is the deliverable to the annual report. Right. The town's report. I don't know what that maybe it was there a different deliverable to the select board. I know Samantha did provide a, some information. I'd have to, I can send it out to you guys. But, um, I'm not sure she gave them this document. I do remember her talking about number two, which really came from Dave Watkins, I believe. You're right. And I, I believe that she did provide them. If I remember right, we were kind of short on time with the select minute and when we were doing it. And I'm not sure she got into everything she wanted to talk about, but I think she did give this to them in writing. I'd have to go back and they got my emails, see if I can find it. Yeah. So bottom line, what we're, what, what, uh, what Michael is asking is, you know, has the town followed up on our, our recommendations? And I'm not sure what the, what the answer is. I have not seen that they did. The select board would have to take action on these and direct Michael McCall to do something on these. I have not seen anything on these. Wait a minute. Why, why would, if we make a recommendation to, for the town manager to do something, uh, like, um, does he need the, does he need, um, the, the select board to make him do it? Well, I think he needs to get direction from the select board that the select board agrees with this recommendation and that he needs to spend his time getting this particular request accomplished. All right. Well, that's, that helps. That would mean that, uh, that Samantha would, would, would have to make a very, would have to make a, a cogent case, a cogent enough case so that the, the selectman would buy into it and then, uh, ask the town manager to, to, to, to, um, to provide that report. And, and it doesn't sound like that's really what happened. New close. What was Samantha's last name? I'm drawing a blank. Shulo. Shulo. I'll try to find her documents as we're talking here. Really? I think all we really need to do is, uh, is, is, is get an update on whether any of this has happened. And if not, then we'll probably have to, you know, um, repeat if we, if we, if we, if we like these recommendations, we'll just have to, you know, um, you know, re reiterate them the next time we have a meeting with the select board or not. And, and then prior to our next meeting, we'll probably should get an update on what, if anything, uh, Samantha's, Samantha did or didn't go ahead and Michael, or I was just going to say, I think it would be good to kind of just hear their decision on whether or not they wanted to pursue it. And like, why, which could help us maybe give better recommendations in the future. All right. So she sent you guys an email on a June 3rd, 2025. So can you, can you tell us what it said or should we just looking, I'm looking for the language on the additional work and I'm not seeing it yet. I don't know if she verbally discussed it. And then I get a vague memory of her saying that she would follow up and send it in. I'd have to check with the town manager's office if she sent it into the select board. I thought that she was going to say that she was going to send more recommendations in to the select board. The document that she sent you guys in the third, she presented the select board prior to that. And if you look at the, um, I'm looking at the report now and I'm not seeing any language in there about doing what Dave Watkins suggested in terms of the purchasing review. Yeah. It's not here, but I do regularly remember her talking about it verbally. Yeah. Um, might be a good idea to follow up with Samantha just to see what her, what her take on this is. And then next time we have a meeting, I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm willing to do that just to see where she thinks we're at with respect to this or, or Michael, you're free to do so if you wish to follow it up. Yeah. I think if you want to follow up, that would be, that would be good. Okay. I'll follow up. Okay. And I'll try to remember what date she presented that it would be on Wacom, her whole presentation. So we'll review that and see what she said. That's fair. Yep. Good idea. And while, while we're on this, uh, um, I made a note to myself that, uh, uh, a couple, uh, in the 24 cycle, the committee recommended that the town consider sponsoring a study to evaluate the economics of contracting town-wide trash hauling services. Uh, and, and the report that the report said that study had since our report says that study has since been authorized. And I guess you, uh, Brian, you have a follow-up on that? Yeah. Apparently they're submitting the RFP or they receive, uh, responses to the RFP. And, uh, the director of public works is putting together a study group of residents to review that. And they've asked Klaus if he would join that group and review the recommendation of this consultant that's been hired to review the transfer station. Who's the consultant? That I don't know. Anyways, I'm glad to hear it. So that's a recommendation that we made two years ago. And at least it seems to be, there seems to be some follow-through on that. And that would be the objective in, in the recommendations that we made in 25 is that there'd be some kind of follow-through. Hopefully. Yes. Hopefully. I guess we'll see. Okay. Are we good to move on to the approval of the last meeting's minutes? Yeah. Um, I, I had no substantive, uh, changes to suggest. So I'm good. I'm good with those minutes. You, John, are you good with these minutes? Okay. Thank you. So I move we accept the minutes. I second. I vote yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. Approved. And the last item, we're short two members, one from the board of selectmen and one from the school committee. Like what exactly is that the process to try to fill these positions? Uh, I did reach out to the chair of the school committee about it, whether she has anyone that she, that their committee wants to designate and she has not responded, but I feel like it would be good if we get two more members. I think I agree. I, um, it, um, we should get two more members. I can, uh, I can offer one more, uh, insight here. And that is that the town manager does a, uh, um, a report, I think quarterly report, maybe more often than that. And in the, in the more, in the most recent, uh, in his most recent quarterly report, he, he, he really reached out and, and, and look for, uh, recruits to specifically for the audit committee. So he, he has not been asleep at the switch. It's just, it must be difficult to, to fill this, um, you know, to, to fill up this committee. Hmm. Okay. Now I will ask Brian, uh, does it make sense to fold the audit committee into the finance committee? And that way, at least you never have a lack of a quorum. I don't think so that they were voted at some meeting for, you know, two completely different purposes. Um, the finance committee is governed by the master in the law and town meeting voted the audit committee under certain town meeting article. I, I don't think so. I think the finance committee has struggled itself to find new members. Uh, one committee member wanted to leave in camp because they can't find a replacement. Another one, uh, was just, um, signed up, uh, for somebody who had left. We have a new capital committee, um, which took, also took a while to get five, five residents. So I think across the board, um, you know, we're looking for people to join these committees and you being one of them, you're down to finance committee was down to, and now that they're not down to, but technically the arc is one has agreed to say on, stay on for a seventh year when the individual was supposed to be leaving after the sixth year. So you're not alone in looking for our residents to join the groups. All right. Maybe I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll check out my neighbors, see if one of them wants to join. I'll talk to Debbie. If she's still interesting, introduce me to, to come to the community and she's really good. She, I met her once a week. We are in a BNI group. I'll ask her whether she would like to come back. Wonderful. Yeah. That would be great. I think we also had someone join our last meeting who. He audited the meeting or he, he, he attended our meeting from zoom, but we never heard back. Hmm. Okay. Well, we can keep trying to fill the positions besides that. I don't have too much else. Does anyone else have, have anything? So when is the next meeting going to be, I suppose?
Probably two weeks after Thanksgiving. Yeah. That's my, that's what my notes say. That's what my notes say. It says the, um, the deadline for the, for the RFP submission is Thanksgiving. And then we'll have two weeks time to review those submissions. And so Michael should be calling for a meeting, um, in, in, in that two week after that, roughly in that timeframe. And then we'll be submitting our, our, our, our score sheets and trying to come up with a recommendation on who to select.
Yeah. So maybe December 15th, Monday, December 15th or December 16th, probably be around that time period. Yeah. Well, you know, it might have to be coordinated with the select board. I don't know what, what their calendar is, but I don't know how long, uh, how far ahead of time they, they, they make their, their, their program, but we'll have to squeeze in. We'll have to, we'll have to make our meeting, uh, fit into their schedule so that we get to them before Christmas. Okay. And, and, and Brian can, or, you know, uh, one of us can figure out what their, what their schedule is and we can communicate with each other on what that schedule is. And our, our meeting would have to be set prior to that last week before their last meeting before Christmas. We have to proceed that meeting. Well, on top of that, we're trying to get back on our schedule, uh, with the audit that you would, uh, go before the select movie for Christmas. Historically, that's what happened is that the financial statements were issued around the end of November. Then, um, you know, they were finalized with a management letter or not. They would, the audit committee will go before the select men, usually by the last meeting in December. We're trying to get back on that schedule because we have to submit everything to GFOA by December 31st. And it's been a real, we've gotten a little better on the past, but because of the backup and cash reconciliations, we haven't met that, but we're trying to get back on that schedule. So, uh, I will be talking to CBIS to see if they can, you know, get the process going because we've already had the preliminary in May. They were already in here a week and a half ago for their final review. Uh, there are some, you know, open items, but there's not many. So I'm trying to close out this audit on a time frame that we, that we should be doing. And that would involve, uh, final drafts being done. You guys would review them with CBIS sometime in November, early December, and then getting in front of the select men in December. Now last year, I think because of the timing and everything, I don't think Samantha got to meet with the select until after the town meeting, which was like in May, which is very late. So we want to get this thing wrapped up by December. We want to get back on schedule like we have in many, many years prior. Wow. That's pretty, that's in December. Wow. Well, good luck with that because one of the things that you report to the select board is, is, well, let's see. Wow. What about the management letter? Is that part of a, uh, that December timeframe? Yeah. But keep in mind, they didn't issue a management letter on the last, or just something would have to be at a significant deficiency level. Yeah. Audit firms are not issuing a, you know, annual routine management letter for what they refer to as normal deficiencies. Something would have to be more serious. And then they would probably issue the management letter under a significant deficiency citing. We didn't get a management letter last year. So what is the purpose of the meeting with the select board? It would be the auditor would review the audit with the select board. The chair of the audit committee would, would also be there and do some general comments. And then we would issue the final reports, the GFOA. Now the, you folks could always meet with the select board at another time after December 31st to go over your recommendations on the audit. But I need to get, I'm trying to get CBiz in front of them prior to Christmas. Oh, here's a hard question for you, Brian. If the auditor reports to the select board, what is, what is the function of the audit committee? Well, technically the audit, the audit, the outside audit firm report reports to both the select board in the audit committee. They don't report to, they don't report to employees. So given that the auditor always historically will give a presentation to the select board, the audit committee would also do a presentation to the select board. They can be done in the same meeting. The difference here really is, it's the issue with GFOA, is that they want all the financial statements in to them by January 1st. And we have to keep coming up with reasons why we're late. And we're trying to come, we're trying to get back on track to where we should be.
Yeah, I understand why you want to get there. The audit, the auditors to get there in front in, by December. My question is, what does the audit committee, what value does the audit committee add if the auditor already makes a report directly to the select board? Well, before I left something else. So before the auditor would make a recommendation, select where they're going to make a recommend, they're going to give a presentation to you. So you're going to get that presentation first. And then based on that report or presentation from the auditor, you can make your own report to the select board based on what you heard from the outside auditor. Yeah. You want to get back on a schedule where the auditor reports to the select board.
Right. And, and we don't necessarily have to be at that meeting because, I mean, if we're going to do our job, we probably need, need a little more time than, as we're not going to get, well, when, when does the, the, the auditor generally report to the audit committee or when, when does that normally take place? Usually between now and Thanksgiving. Oh yeah. So is that likely to happen? I think so. Well, then we'll have to have another meeting. Yep. You'll probably have to have two meetings. Okay. That, that, now that makes sense.
And during that meeting you have, you may want to have Kelsey there. You probably wouldn't want to have a meeting in a couple of weeks to look at the draft RFP. Well, I haven't seen that draft. Does that already exist? Yeah. But in, in two weeks, you may have a revised draft. And I think at that point you can, Kelsey can be on the call and you can ask her questions as a group.
Okay. And why would Kelsey have to be there? She's the procurement officer. She's the one that procures the RFP. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Two, two different objectives. Right. Okay. So you're saying that the ACFR, the draft already exists? On the ACFR? No. They're still working on, they're still working on it. All right. But you think it'll be ready before Thanksgiving? Yes. We've done that before. So would you, would you give us a heads up so that he, that Michael can schedule a meeting? Yep. Yep. As soon as I hear from Alina on her schedule and her timing, I'll let you guys know right away. All right. We'll meet with Kelsey in about two weeks, talk about the RFP, and then hope to get on the select boards meeting cadence to talk to them about our RFP recommendation.
Yeah, Michael, we have three different meetings or, or we could all do them at the same time, but there's three different deliverables. We meet with Kelsey on the RFP. We, we meet with the auditor who gives us a draft of the financial report and we, we have, we, let's see, we deliver, yeah, we deliver a report either, either coincident with or at another date on our, on the audit recommendations. Did I, is that clear? I think. Yeah. Yeah. And, and the, the timing doesn't have to be on the same day. We could have like, you know, this, there's three deliverables and the timing of the report to the audit committee. No, I'm sorry. The timing of the report to the select board may be a function of when we, we meet with, with the auditor. We may or may not have enough time to, you know, to, yeah, I'm babbling, but I think there's, there's three different, there's three different deliverables. Well, the date for the select minimum in December, last I remember was December 15th. So assuming you get a presentation from CBiz on the audit in its final, CBiz will make a presentation to the select board on the 15th of December. After that presentation, you can make a recommendation. So your recommendation is to the town manager on the, on the RFP. The town manager would probably make a recommendation to the select board on the RFP after the auditor makes the presentation on the 15th. Depending upon where you are when you work, you may or may not want to make a separate presentation on the audit on the 15th as well. You can always do that at another time. All right. That's clear. That's very clear. Thank you. Um, that clears it up for me, Brian. Thanks. The re it's the report to the TM. It's another deliverable, which you'd probably want to do very early in December. Yeah. Right. And so we meet just to, just to repeat, we meet with, uh, with CBiz and we, that meeting generates a report to the select board. That's either at the same time that CBiz reports to the select board or at some other later time, depending on whether we can get our act together, uh, to prepare that report in time for that meeting. Is that, is that clear or not? Yeah. So just, just, you know, and then last year, the calendar last year, you know, it was, was, was way off of what we're just discussing right here. So what we're trying to do for December is what Samantha did in June. Is that right, Brian? That's correct. Yes. Yeah. Okay. All right. We, it sounds like we might have a busy, uh, November, December. Yeah. So first thing we'll do is meet with Kelsey in two weeks, then Alina,
then the town manager, and then maybe the select board. If we have a report ready in time.
That's to clarify, uh, Kelsey owes us a final version of the, of the, uh, RFP. Well, she's going to first give you a draft and then based upon your review, a final will come out of that.
And do we, but we don't need, do we need to meet or just? No, you can do it. You can do it by zoom. Okay.
I'm looking at the calendar now. I know the selectmen have a big meeting on the third and they have another one on the 17th. So maybe on November 10th, around five o'clock, we can do a zoom with Kelsey on the draft RFP. Okay. November, what? 10th, November 10. Okay. Kelsey draft RFP. Okay. And then she sends it out after that. Right. Then she'll publish it publicly with the dates when it would be due. Right. And then you think that's gonna, that due date is before Thanksgiving. Well, hopefully it's before Thanksgiving, if not early after Thanksgiving, because once the, once the, uh, once the reports come in, I mean, you guys just need one meeting. I mean, most of the work you've done outside the meeting, reviewing and reading the proposals, you'll come to the meeting with your recommendation of what you think is the best firm to go with. Okay. Okay. So one meeting to discuss the, to make the one, one meeting to do the rankings, discuss rankings. Okay. And then one meeting with the auditor and one meeting with the select board. All right. Right. Which would probably be December 15th. Right. Yeah. So I said one meeting, but it doesn't have to be different meetings. It's just that we need a meeting to A, B, C, and D or more meetings to do A, B, C, and D make the, make the recommendation on the RFP, meet to discuss our rankings, meet with the auditor to discuss the financial report, meet with the select board to, to discuss our take on the auditor, auditor's report. Fair. And that last one has to probably December 15th. Yeah. That sounds good. Anything else we should cover? No, I'm done. All right. I think I'm good too. So I make a motion to adjourn.
Second. I'm good. Okay. 606. Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. Meeting adjourned. Thank you.
I don't think we have anyone from the public, do we? Okay. Anyways, for the agenda first, and probably the main item we're going to be talking about is in our 2025 annual report about the RFP for the town's external auditor. Michael, I think you got to assign somebody to take minutes. I volunteer. Okay. Thank you. So what I'm going to try to do is I'm going to try to figure out how to use AI to take the minutes. And then if it works, I'm going to hand it off to Uteon. Yeah, you need to teach me. That's always my difficult part. Even me, like my company, I never take minutes. That's a difficult part. So if I figure out how to use AI, then we work together. That's my objective. You could have some help, but I feel so sorry that I am not. I don't know. That's my objective. If I can figure this out, then I'm going to hand it off. Okay. Sounds like a good approach. So after discussing the RFP, which is probably the main item, quickly touch on the other two recommendations in our annual report, look to approve the minutes from our prior meeting on June 2nd, and then talk about trying to fill the other two positions that we have. I don't think there's anyone from the public here to comment. So I could probably just move on to the discussion for the RFP. Let me pull up the annual report here. We recommended that CBiz continues for one more year and then initiates a RFP for FY26 through FY29 in September. So I think that's kind of the main point of discussion we're going to have. I know that it's about the end of October now, but figured it'd be good to kind of resume this recommendation and see how we can try to push forward with recommending this RFP. I agree. I would like to hear from Brian whether like the last time we did the RFP, the deadline for submission of proposals was December 31. And in view of the timeframe, if you adopt the same, give the responders the same amount of time, we would have, by my reckoning, the deadline would get pushed to February 28. And if we did, if we asked for RFP this year, and I want to know from Brian whether that works or whether, you know, whether we can accelerate the deadline for an RFP or whether we need one more cycle of a one-year contract and then ask for a three-year contract. So I'm not really familiar with what sort of time constraints the completion of a response to an RFP would have, whether it's still viable for us to go through with asking for a three-year contract at this point in the calendar. Yeah. So I think there's plenty of time left in this calendar if you wanted to do a three-year RFP. I mean, it's sort of the end of October right now. So you would basically complete the RFP draft with the help of Kelsey in the town manager's office who would then post the RFP, but you would clean it up a little bit and make sure it was legal and whatnot. But I think if you sort of put this together in the next three weeks and then had a deadline when it would be submitted, you would then have to leave a room if you wanted to talk to the respondents to the RFP. So you want to give yourself some room. You'd want to make a definite decision and award a contract, I would hope, by Christmas. And I know that's 60 days away, but it's still all doable as long as you put together an RFP and get it going. If you wanted to do a one-year, I believe we're on a one-year contract right now with CBiz, we'd have to issue another one-year contract with them. So either one works in terms of timing. It just depends upon what you want to do. If you want to go for three-year, you probably really need to get the ball rolling quicker than later. Because you already have a draft RFP. I think we used that a few years back. It does have to work with Kelsey. She would clean it up a little bit and post it. And then you just set up your times when to review it. And then if you wanted to, you could talk to the respondents and make a decision. The way it worked, you'd make a recommendation to the board of selectmen on making a change. They would ultimately make that decision. Well, that's kind of what I needed to hear, that there still is time. And that my other question is going to be who at the town manager's office would help clean it up. For example, I noticed that the draft still has Louise's name. And then I was going to ask, there are some numbers in there, like for liability, you know, bodily injury at a million. This document was done, was probably what, 19, 2000 and 21, maybe? I forget. Anyways, if Kelsey does, revises this thing, is she going to clean it up? Not only clean it up, but revise numbers if necessary? Is she going to take care of all of the, you know, and maybe there's even a more up-to-date version of this thing? This kind of feels a little clunky, like it might have been, you know, rehashed four years ago from something done five years ago, which makes it effectively 10 years old. I'm just wondering if there's a best, if there is a way to get something that's, you know, more modern by, by asking the account, the auditors to see if they have a best in class version of this thing. And we use that instead of this. Well, we can have Kelsey pursue that. She's part of the, you know, the purchasing group. So she can reach out to CBiz or CLA and ask them if they have a more up-to-date draft where she can even ask other municipalities what they've done. Uh, it's not every day we do an RP and change auditors, but there is still a lot of resources out there that she can, she can reach out to and clean this up, including town council. Perfect. So there's a lot that can be done on that end. Yeah, that would be my suggestion. And then if you could ask her to, to, to, to sort of expedite the process so we can move this thing forward ASAP. Okay. So you want me to send the draft to her and actually expedite it and get moving on and set up dates and timelines when to complete it? That would be my suggestion. And, uh, I'm not sure if we need a vote for that. Yeah, I'm good with that. Okay. So that's good. As far as it comes to reviewing the proposals, Brian, were you saying that the audit committee would review the proposals and then tell the select board, which, which company we, we think. I think the way it works is that the proposals are written. I'm sorry. The proposals are opened internally by the town manager's office. You don't see what people have bid. You actually do get their proposal and read it. And then you would provide a recommendation to the town manager who then refers back to the pricing and makes a determination of what would be recommended to the select board. So for example, if you wanted to pick audit firm A and audit firm B was comparable, but at a much lower price, the town manager could push to have, um, you know, uh, audit firm B selected simply on price. You will not know the price at all during this process until it's awarded. Tom manager keeps that, um, in private and makes a recommendation to select board based on a review of price in a recommendation at the very end. I see. So we'd probably be seeing the technical proposal and not the price proposal. That's right. Typically what happens is the audit firm will send in two packages, one with the technical proposal and the second one with the price proposal. So they're distinguishably different. Okay. That makes sense. And then we would be able to review those over email or would it generally be best to kind of have a meeting to talk through. Probably we would have, have hard copies. We can typically ask for the, uh, the amount of copies to be delivered. We could say five copies of your technical one copy of your price. You folks would just show up at time meeting and you'd pick up a packet and have each one of the respondents packets that you would just pick up. Email is difficult because these things sometimes come in a book is they're very well put together presentations and to create it, unless they want to produce a PDF on their own. It's difficult for us to take their high copy book and make a PDF out of it, but you could always just show up at town hall and pick up the PDFs. I mean, sorry, the presentations, um, when you have time. Yeah. So Brian, were you going to keep us informed as to, uh, when, when, uh, when, uh, when, when Kelsey, uh, is finished so that I don't know that we need to see, do we need to see what she comes up with? Yeah, most likely she'll put together a draft and she'll send it out to you. You can always respond to, uh, individually directly to her, not as a group. So you would get probably a draft of the RFP. It would be sent to you. You can discuss issues back and forth with her directly in email or by the telephone without copying the other two members. You cannot copy the other two members in your correspondence. And then, uh, we leave her to, uh, accept or reject or whatever and, and come up with a final copy and just send it out. Right. Okay. And you'll keep us informed as to the date, you know, the progress and the date that she does send them out. Yeah. Kelsey will be with you along the ride. She'll be updating you and when it's done, when it was submitted, how many people did submit, when the copies can be available. So really the purchasing office takes over this process as opposed to, you know, I'm obviously going to be involved, but she will coordinate the, you know, delivery of the bids from the different respondents. And they would, they will deal directly with her, not me. Okay. Sounds good. And then we stick with a Christmas deadline.
Yeah. And that's realistic, right, Brian? Sticking with a Christmas deadline? I think so. If you're, if you're going to keep with the same auditor, then, you know, they're going to be here in May. If you end up switching with them to another auditor, it's, we have to be fit into their schedule. I got it. For preliminary. Okay. That makes sense. I think with the new RFP, would that present us an opportunity to potentially broaden the scope a little bit to try to include maybe like a review over internal controls or, or something kind of small to the scope of the review? I think something like that would draw a lot of questions from the respondents is exactly what are you talking about? How many hours are involved? What do you want us to do this? They may come back and say, you know, reviewing the internal controls and the software isn't their forte. It's more geared to an IT firm. So if you put in something that's outside the normal scope of a governmental financial audit, it will draw a lot of questions on their end as to what this really means and how much it's going to cost them to execute the RFP. Makes sense. I think I remember Alina saying that like last year that CBiz isn't really too specialized in internal control reviews. And that's why they didn't really look into it too much. That's possible. But Ryan, I think what you just said makes sense to me that this will just slow things down, but that that would put it on next year's agenda for the audit committee to try and identify something where we would be looking for a single issue audit and or review of internal controls. And someone had suggested IT. So it sounds like we might be deferring this particular bullet point to next year. That makes sense? Yeah, for a recommendation. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that would make more sense than trying to throw it in. Because we're already time constrained. And Brian is saying that this would probably generate a lot of questions. Yeah. Probably best to not pursue broadening the scope.
So Brian, one more time. I don't understand why the audit doesn't do internal controls. That was a big issue last year. Well, it's a financial audit to do. All the internal controls will be very costly. Audit firms don't do that unless you specifically write it into the engagement. All right. They may do some testing. They do testing with accounts payable, payroll, journal entries. They do walkthroughs to certain procedures. But to flat out do an internal control review would be very costly. And you probably want to go to some other firm that specializes in that because they don't have the staff that would that would do that. And I don't think they'd be interested in it. All right. And the other thing is that when you do ask for an internal control, you you isolate that request to a a smaller area, right? As opposed to the entire town. Right. You could do you could ask them to do a second audit. It's called a strange name. It's called a agree to prompt procedure. But you could say something like we want to review how the transfer station sets their rates on trash pickup, something like that. So it's a specific audit for a specific, you know, segment of the town. It's called an agreed upon procedure. And they would you would we would have to pay for that separately. OK.
From it. Would that be from a different firm? Well, you would do an RFP. You could ask them to do it and they may say, well, yeah, we can do that. Now, you don't always have to do an RFP for an audit services. You could say to them, you know, you could go to SCBiz. We wanted to review on the historical raising of rates and the transfer station. And now they're covering their cost. They may say, yeah, we can do that. Or they'll say, we just don't have the bandwidth to do that right now. And then the town would issue an RFP to get general responses from the public to do that.
Could you could you also just pick a consultant that you think could do that job and just. Well, it would be it would be the same thing, Klaus. You would have the RFPs would come in. The pricing would be separate. The audit firm would pick which firm they want to do it. And then there would be an analysis made on on cost. And then ultimately, the town manager would go along with you guys to the select board and make a recommendation. It follows the exact same procedure as what we're talking about with this audit RFP. All right. I think we're good then. Just same scope and try to get it out, confirmed by Christmas. Brian, there's also one thing in the RFP, the end of year compliance supplement. Is that something that's still provided? Right. So they'll the RFP that you'll do. It'll be for the end of the after will be done. The single audit in the end of year report will all be part of that. That's the package. Okay. Okay. That makes sense. Does anyone else have any thing on this? I think your second bullet, two proposed timeline and process, I think we've covered that, right? We're going to have Kelsey start the process and she's going to just go ASAP and keep us informed. And then next steps will depend on when these proposals start coming in. And then we'll, or we react to these, these proposals as they, no, we react to her RFP as it's being created. And then as the proposals come in, we can, we can, we can, we can, I mean, do we need, you know, do we need to discuss those things, Brian, when, when these proposals, if any, come in? Oh yeah. You would, you would each get your own packet of the different proposals. You would study them. And then you would each speak as to which one, which firm you support and which ones don't you support. If there's three, you can rank, rank them one through three, but you as a group have to select a audit firm out of the group that has, you know, submitted a, in their proposal. So, so the, the way this would work is that the deadline is Christmas. We would then read or whenever they come in, we read them. The deadline is Christmas. So we would have a meeting after Christmas to discuss our, our rankings. No, I think it would be brought forward more than that. You know, it's almost November. I think Kelsey could probably issue an RFP within say 10 days. I think the recipients need to respond by the, by Thanksgiving-ish. Do you have to go through and make a decision that, that could involve meeting with these audit firms? But I think this needs to go to the selection before Christmas to make a decision on which audit firm. I don't think you can go past Christmas. I misunderstood. I thought the, the, the proposals had a deadline of the, of Christmas. No, I know. Maybe I just heard it wrong. I think the proposals should be like Thanksgiving, the end of Thanksgiving, the end of November. Okay. Okay. So that doesn't give them a lot of time. Well, they're used to doing this. They can bang it up pretty quickly. Okay. They know how many hours it takes. They take a look at the budget, the tax recap. You know, they, they can ask for pride. I mean, our, our finances are on the website so they can get an idea of the work involved. Um, so it's not, it's, it is work on their end, but you know, they will position to put one together quickly. All right. Fair enough. So that would mean we have a meeting after Thanksgiving, uh, ASAP after Thanksgiving and, and, and discuss our respective rankings. Right. And make a, and then from your three, you would make a recommendation to the town manager. Okay. Without knowing the prices. Right. All right. I'm good. So that would be like a report, maybe one or two pages to the town manager, probably. Yeah. Most likely you would have another meeting. He'd be on the zone or you'd have it here and we would go through it and, you know, he would open up the bids and see where they came in and then just go from there. And he may or may not agree with your recommendation. Yeah, Michael. So our job is actually a quantitative job, I think, because the, the, um, uh, the, the RFP has, has these categories, highly, highly advantageous, advantageous, and not, and not advantageous, unacceptable, yada, yada, yada. So they each get a score of one, two, three. And then that's what we, each of us puts together. We, we, we rank these things on, on those dimensions that we meet. And, uh, and I would guess that our, the, the proposal gets the highest, uh, the highest ranking is what we propose. And for, for those reasons.
Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. We may disagree on advantageous, not advantageous, but that we'll have that discussion. So we'll, we'll at least be discussing things around those dimensions. Yep. That sounds good. If they're due by Thanksgiving, we might want to try to give ourselves a week or two, I guess, mid December to regroup. I would, I would guess two weeks would, would, that would work. I think we'd have two weeks to read maybe, I don't know how much material. Brian thinks some of it could be long. So we'd probably need at least two weeks before we set that meeting. And then we write a report and that report goes to the TM.
Yep. Sounds good. Are we good to move to the next item? UTL, are you good with the approach for the RFP? Yeah. Yeah. It's normally, I think my experience before, they, they have the templates. I don't know how many we can get. Probably it's the only one is out form and just renew if, if they, if they do a fair, good job. And for us to reveal couple, which is not real and applicable. So on the market, just a few form, I know, and they familiar with it. I don't know how much work we need to do to, to give some suggestions. Usually just, they just renew automatically. If we have to change, we have to, there's nothing wrong. We don't need to change. Okay. It's just a pricing, you know, we, I don't know, we're not recommended about the pricing, but hopefully not increase a lot. That's an issue. And they already know all the situations. If you change a new firm, that can be really costly. And I don't know how they work with that time. Hmm. Yeah. I think that's definitely something to consider since CBiz probably is very familiar with the processes. They probably know people from the town. They have contacts. They've already done it before. So it could be more challenging for a new, new firm to kind of step into that, that role. And, and Brian, uh, just to confirm, um, the, the current auditor has been around for almost 10 years. That's, that's not, I mean, that's, it's okay for them to be, there's no automatic getting fired after 10 years. That's correct. Okay. I think we're good with this item. The next item is kind of just regrouping on the two recommendations that we had, the other two recommendations from our annual report, which were engaging a third party to perform agreed upon procedures over internal controls and engaging a third party to review the vendor contracts. Uh, so, uh, Michael, I, I made a note to myself, I said, I don't really know what that number one bullet means. I said, define that engaging with a third party to perform agreed upon procedures over internal controls. I don't know what that means. Yeah. I think this is similar to what Brian was talking about earlier, having some other firm that's not CBiz come in and look at internal controls over a very specific area. It could be like cash reconciliations or any specific area. I I'd say, I think it's very broad and probably could have been better defined. No, I, I, I, I'm not just asking. And, and, and, and what you've just said is that we basically said we were going to defer this. What do you mean? Um, it's not part of the RFP. Yeah. So, so the, yeah. So, um, we didn't make a specific recommendation to the town, right? Maybe the town took this into consideration and did something, uh, but I'm not exactly sure whether we're asking for an update on this. It says the committee made the recommendation, recommend the town consider. And so the town either did or didn't. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So I was just wondering if the town, if Brian, if you know, if the town has considered either of these recommendations and if they've decided to pursue either of them or didn't think that it works. Yeah. I haven't heard either way. Probably Michael, you could send Carol Martin an email asking her what the, uh, the current position is that the select boat on the recommendation that you made, I believe it was, what's the date on the letter? Was it like February, March? When did we do this? This is our annual report. And I think it gets submitted at the end of the year. It actually goes to the, uh, uh, it goes to the select board. Did, was Samantha, the last one that came before the, uh, the board with me? Yes. Okay. So I think that she may have, she would have given them this similar document. I think we'd have to go back to see what exactly Samantha gave them. Well, she has to have, yeah, she does a report, but this is the document that we, um, I think this is the document that we, uh, this is our deliverable to the select board is the annual. No, I'm not sure if it's deliverable to the, no, this is the deliverable to the annual report. Right. The town's report. I don't know what that maybe it was there a different deliverable to the select board. I know Samantha did provide a, some information. I'd have to, I can send it out to you guys. But, um, I'm not sure she gave them this document. I do remember her talking about number two, which really came from Dave Watkins, I believe. You're right. And I, I believe that she did provide them. If I remember right, we were kind of short on time with the select minute and when we were doing it. And I'm not sure she got into everything she wanted to talk about, but I think she did give this to them in writing. I'd have to go back and they got my emails, see if I can find it. Yeah. So bottom line, what we're, what, what, uh, what Michael is asking is, you know, has the town followed up on our, our recommendations? And I'm not sure what the, what the answer is. I have not seen that they did. The select board would have to take action on these and direct Michael McCall to do something on these. I have not seen anything on these. Wait a minute. Why, why would, if we make a recommendation to, for the town manager to do something, uh, like, um, does he need the, does he need, um, the, the select board to make him do it? Well, I think he needs to get direction from the select board that the select board agrees with this recommendation and that he needs to spend his time getting this particular request accomplished. All right. Well, that's, that helps. That would mean that, uh, that Samantha would, would, would have to make a very, would have to make a, a cogent case, a cogent enough case so that the, the selectman would buy into it and then, uh, ask the town manager to, to, to, to, um, to provide that report. And, and it doesn't sound like that's really what happened. New close. What was Samantha's last name? I'm drawing a blank. Shulo. Shulo. I'll try to find her documents as we're talking here. Really? I think all we really need to do is, uh, is, is, is get an update on whether any of this has happened. And if not, then we'll probably have to, you know, um, repeat if we, if we, if we, if we like these recommendations, we'll just have to, you know, um, you know, re reiterate them the next time we have a meeting with the select board or not. And, and then prior to our next meeting, we'll probably should get an update on what, if anything, uh, Samantha's, Samantha did or didn't go ahead and Michael, or I was just going to say, I think it would be good to kind of just hear their decision on whether or not they wanted to pursue it. And like, why, which could help us maybe give better recommendations in the future. All right. So she sent you guys an email on a June 3rd, 2025. So can you, can you tell us what it said or should we just looking, I'm looking for the language on the additional work and I'm not seeing it yet. I don't know if she verbally discussed it. And then I get a vague memory of her saying that she would follow up and send it in. I'd have to check with the town manager's office if she sent it into the select board. I thought that she was going to say that she was going to send more recommendations in to the select board. The document that she sent you guys in the third, she presented the select board prior to that. And if you look at the, um, I'm looking at the report now and I'm not seeing any language in there about doing what Dave Watkins suggested in terms of the purchasing review. Yeah. It's not here, but I do regularly remember her talking about it verbally. Yeah. Um, might be a good idea to follow up with Samantha just to see what her, what her take on this is. And then next time we have a meeting, I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm willing to do that just to see where she thinks we're at with respect to this or, or Michael, you're free to do so if you wish to follow it up. Yeah. I think if you want to follow up, that would be, that would be good. Okay. I'll follow up. Okay. And I'll try to remember what date she presented that it would be on Wacom, her whole presentation. So we'll review that and see what she said. That's fair. Yep. Good idea. And while, while we're on this, uh, um, I made a note to myself that, uh, uh, a couple, uh, in the 24 cycle, the committee recommended that the town consider sponsoring a study to evaluate the economics of contracting town-wide trash hauling services. Uh, and, and the report that the report said that study had since our report says that study has since been authorized. And I guess you, uh, Brian, you have a follow-up on that? Yeah. Apparently they're submitting the RFP or they receive, uh, responses to the RFP. And, uh, the director of public works is putting together a study group of residents to review that. And they've asked Klaus if he would join that group and review the recommendation of this consultant that's been hired to review the transfer station. Who's the consultant? That I don't know. Anyways, I'm glad to hear it. So that's a recommendation that we made two years ago. And at least it seems to be, there seems to be some follow-through on that. And that would be the objective in, in the recommendations that we made in 25 is that there'd be some kind of follow-through. Hopefully. Yes. Hopefully. I guess we'll see. Okay. Are we good to move on to the approval of the last meeting's minutes? Yeah. Um, I, I had no substantive, uh, changes to suggest. So I'm good. I'm good with those minutes. You, John, are you good with these minutes? Okay. Thank you. So I move we accept the minutes. I second. I vote yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. Approved. And the last item, we're short two members, one from the board of selectmen and one from the school committee. Like what exactly is that the process to try to fill these positions? Uh, I did reach out to the chair of the school committee about it, whether she has anyone that she, that their committee wants to designate and she has not responded, but I feel like it would be good if we get two more members. I think I agree. I, um, it, um, we should get two more members. I can, uh, I can offer one more, uh, insight here. And that is that the town manager does a, uh, um, a report, I think quarterly report, maybe more often than that. And in the, in the more, in the most recent, uh, in his most recent quarterly report, he, he, he really reached out and, and, and look for, uh, recruits to specifically for the audit committee. So he, he has not been asleep at the switch. It's just, it must be difficult to, to fill this, um, you know, to, to fill up this committee. Hmm. Okay. Now I will ask Brian, uh, does it make sense to fold the audit committee into the finance committee? And that way, at least you never have a lack of a quorum. I don't think so that they were voted at some meeting for, you know, two completely different purposes. Um, the finance committee is governed by the master in the law and town meeting voted the audit committee under certain town meeting article. I, I don't think so. I think the finance committee has struggled itself to find new members. Uh, one committee member wanted to leave in camp because they can't find a replacement. Another one, uh, was just, um, signed up, uh, for somebody who had left. We have a new capital committee, um, which took, also took a while to get five, five residents. So I think across the board, um, you know, we're looking for people to join these committees and you being one of them, you're down to finance committee was down to, and now that they're not down to, but technically the arc is one has agreed to say on, stay on for a seventh year when the individual was supposed to be leaving after the sixth year. So you're not alone in looking for our residents to join the groups. All right. Maybe I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll check out my neighbors, see if one of them wants to join. I'll talk to Debbie. If she's still interesting, introduce me to, to come to the community and she's really good. She, I met her once a week. We are in a BNI group. I'll ask her whether she would like to come back. Wonderful. Yeah. That would be great. I think we also had someone join our last meeting who. He audited the meeting or he, he, he attended our meeting from zoom, but we never heard back. Hmm. Okay. Well, we can keep trying to fill the positions besides that. I don't have too much else. Does anyone else have, have anything? So when is the next meeting going to be, I suppose?
Probably two weeks after Thanksgiving. Yeah. That's my, that's what my notes say. That's what my notes say. It says the, um, the deadline for the, for the RFP submission is Thanksgiving. And then we'll have two weeks time to review those submissions. And so Michael should be calling for a meeting, um, in, in, in that two week after that, roughly in that timeframe. And then we'll be submitting our, our, our, our score sheets and trying to come up with a recommendation on who to select.
Yeah. So maybe December 15th, Monday, December 15th or December 16th, probably be around that time period. Yeah. Well, you know, it might have to be coordinated with the select board. I don't know what, what their calendar is, but I don't know how long, uh, how far ahead of time they, they, they make their, their, their program, but we'll have to squeeze in. We'll have to, we'll have to make our meeting, uh, fit into their schedule so that we get to them before Christmas. Okay. And, and, and Brian can, or, you know, uh, one of us can figure out what their, what their schedule is and we can communicate with each other on what that schedule is. And our, our meeting would have to be set prior to that last week before their last meeting before Christmas. We have to proceed that meeting. Well, on top of that, we're trying to get back on our schedule, uh, with the audit that you would, uh, go before the select movie for Christmas. Historically, that's what happened is that the financial statements were issued around the end of November. Then, um, you know, they were finalized with a management letter or not. They would, the audit committee will go before the select men, usually by the last meeting in December. We're trying to get back on that schedule because we have to submit everything to GFOA by December 31st. And it's been a real, we've gotten a little better on the past, but because of the backup and cash reconciliations, we haven't met that, but we're trying to get back on that schedule. So, uh, I will be talking to CBIS to see if they can, you know, get the process going because we've already had the preliminary in May. They were already in here a week and a half ago for their final review. Uh, there are some, you know, open items, but there's not many. So I'm trying to close out this audit on a time frame that we, that we should be doing. And that would involve, uh, final drafts being done. You guys would review them with CBIS sometime in November, early December, and then getting in front of the select men in December. Now last year, I think because of the timing and everything, I don't think Samantha got to meet with the select until after the town meeting, which was like in May, which is very late. So we want to get this thing wrapped up by December. We want to get back on schedule like we have in many, many years prior. Wow. That's pretty, that's in December. Wow. Well, good luck with that because one of the things that you report to the select board is, is, well, let's see. Wow. What about the management letter? Is that part of a, uh, that December timeframe? Yeah. But keep in mind, they didn't issue a management letter on the last, or just something would have to be at a significant deficiency level. Yeah. Audit firms are not issuing a, you know, annual routine management letter for what they refer to as normal deficiencies. Something would have to be more serious. And then they would probably issue the management letter under a significant deficiency citing. We didn't get a management letter last year. So what is the purpose of the meeting with the select board? It would be the auditor would review the audit with the select board. The chair of the audit committee would, would also be there and do some general comments. And then we would issue the final reports, the GFOA. Now the, you folks could always meet with the select board at another time after December 31st to go over your recommendations on the audit. But I need to get, I'm trying to get CBiz in front of them prior to Christmas. Oh, here's a hard question for you, Brian. If the auditor reports to the select board, what is, what is the function of the audit committee? Well, technically the audit, the audit, the outside audit firm report reports to both the select board in the audit committee. They don't report to, they don't report to employees. So given that the auditor always historically will give a presentation to the select board, the audit committee would also do a presentation to the select board. They can be done in the same meeting. The difference here really is, it's the issue with GFOA, is that they want all the financial statements in to them by January 1st. And we have to keep coming up with reasons why we're late. And we're trying to come, we're trying to get back on track to where we should be.
Yeah, I understand why you want to get there. The audit, the auditors to get there in front in, by December. My question is, what does the audit committee, what value does the audit committee add if the auditor already makes a report directly to the select board? Well, before I left something else. So before the auditor would make a recommendation, select where they're going to make a recommend, they're going to give a presentation to you. So you're going to get that presentation first. And then based on that report or presentation from the auditor, you can make your own report to the select board based on what you heard from the outside auditor. Yeah. You want to get back on a schedule where the auditor reports to the select board.
Right. And, and we don't necessarily have to be at that meeting because, I mean, if we're going to do our job, we probably need, need a little more time than, as we're not going to get, well, when, when does the, the, the auditor generally report to the audit committee or when, when does that normally take place? Usually between now and Thanksgiving. Oh yeah. So is that likely to happen? I think so. Well, then we'll have to have another meeting. Yep. You'll probably have to have two meetings. Okay. That, that, now that makes sense.
And during that meeting you have, you may want to have Kelsey there. You probably wouldn't want to have a meeting in a couple of weeks to look at the draft RFP. Well, I haven't seen that draft. Does that already exist? Yeah. But in, in two weeks, you may have a revised draft. And I think at that point you can, Kelsey can be on the call and you can ask her questions as a group.
Okay. And why would Kelsey have to be there? She's the procurement officer. She's the one that procures the RFP. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Two, two different objectives. Right. Okay. So you're saying that the ACFR, the draft already exists? On the ACFR? No. They're still working on, they're still working on it. All right. But you think it'll be ready before Thanksgiving? Yes. We've done that before. So would you, would you give us a heads up so that he, that Michael can schedule a meeting? Yep. Yep. As soon as I hear from Alina on her schedule and her timing, I'll let you guys know right away. All right. We'll meet with Kelsey in about two weeks, talk about the RFP, and then hope to get on the select boards meeting cadence to talk to them about our RFP recommendation.
Yeah, Michael, we have three different meetings or, or we could all do them at the same time, but there's three different deliverables. We meet with Kelsey on the RFP. We, we meet with the auditor who gives us a draft of the financial report and we, we have, we, let's see, we deliver, yeah, we deliver a report either, either coincident with or at another date on our, on the audit recommendations. Did I, is that clear? I think. Yeah. Yeah. And, and the, the timing doesn't have to be on the same day. We could have like, you know, this, there's three deliverables and the timing of the report to the audit committee. No, I'm sorry. The timing of the report to the select board may be a function of when we, we meet with, with the auditor. We may or may not have enough time to, you know, to, yeah, I'm babbling, but I think there's, there's three different, there's three different deliverables. Well, the date for the select minimum in December, last I remember was December 15th. So assuming you get a presentation from CBiz on the audit in its final, CBiz will make a presentation to the select board on the 15th of December. After that presentation, you can make a recommendation. So your recommendation is to the town manager on the, on the RFP. The town manager would probably make a recommendation to the select board on the RFP after the auditor makes the presentation on the 15th. Depending upon where you are when you work, you may or may not want to make a separate presentation on the audit on the 15th as well. You can always do that at another time. All right. That's clear. That's very clear. Thank you. Um, that clears it up for me, Brian. Thanks. The re it's the report to the TM. It's another deliverable, which you'd probably want to do very early in December. Yeah. Right. And so we meet just to, just to repeat, we meet with, uh, with CBiz and we, that meeting generates a report to the select board. That's either at the same time that CBiz reports to the select board or at some other later time, depending on whether we can get our act together, uh, to prepare that report in time for that meeting. Is that, is that clear or not? Yeah. So just, just, you know, and then last year, the calendar last year, you know, it was, was, was way off of what we're just discussing right here. So what we're trying to do for December is what Samantha did in June. Is that right, Brian? That's correct. Yes. Yeah. Okay. All right. We, it sounds like we might have a busy, uh, November, December. Yeah. So first thing we'll do is meet with Kelsey in two weeks, then Alina,
then the town manager, and then maybe the select board. If we have a report ready in time.
That's to clarify, uh, Kelsey owes us a final version of the, of the, uh, RFP. Well, she's going to first give you a draft and then based upon your review, a final will come out of that.
And do we, but we don't need, do we need to meet or just? No, you can do it. You can do it by zoom. Okay.
I'm looking at the calendar now. I know the selectmen have a big meeting on the third and they have another one on the 17th. So maybe on November 10th, around five o'clock, we can do a zoom with Kelsey on the draft RFP. Okay. November, what? 10th, November 10. Okay. Kelsey draft RFP. Okay. And then she sends it out after that. Right. Then she'll publish it publicly with the dates when it would be due. Right. And then you think that's gonna, that due date is before Thanksgiving. Well, hopefully it's before Thanksgiving, if not early after Thanksgiving, because once the, once the, uh, once the reports come in, I mean, you guys just need one meeting. I mean, most of the work you've done outside the meeting, reviewing and reading the proposals, you'll come to the meeting with your recommendation of what you think is the best firm to go with. Okay. Okay. So one meeting to discuss the, to make the one, one meeting to do the rankings, discuss rankings. Okay. And then one meeting with the auditor and one meeting with the select board. All right. Right. Which would probably be December 15th. Right. Yeah. So I said one meeting, but it doesn't have to be different meetings. It's just that we need a meeting to A, B, C, and D or more meetings to do A, B, C, and D make the, make the recommendation on the RFP, meet to discuss our rankings, meet with the auditor to discuss the financial report, meet with the select board to, to discuss our take on the auditor, auditor's report. Fair. And that last one has to probably December 15th. Yeah. That sounds good. Anything else we should cover? No, I'm done. All right. I think I'm good too. So I make a motion to adjourn.
Second. I'm good. Okay. 606. Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. Meeting adjourned. Thank you.