January 12, 2026 – Audit Committee – Video & Transcript
January 12, 2026 - Audit Committee
I think we have everybody, so we can call the meeting to order at 5.01 p.m.
Need to assign a minute taker.
Klaus, I know you've been taking meeting minutes recently. So, Michael, just so to clarify, I'll take the minutes. I have asked Brian to activate the artificial intelligence transcriber, all right? So what he'll do is, it's activated. I will get a transcription of the meeting, and I'm going to feed that into an AI processor. And it'll produce, hopefully, a usable draft for the minutes, so that there's minimum work to do after and if that works. And if all of that works, I'm going to hand that process off to Yuzian. Yes, once it's working, I'll learn from it, and I really would like to take some responsibility. It doesn't want to sit here, and so that's okay. We'll go from there and see how this process works, and I can learn this AI stuff, and hopefully, we can share your responsibility. Yeah, I'm very hopeful. Thank you. Could I just ask first, Robbie, are you on the Zoom with us? Did you activate the AI? Yeah, it's on. Okay.
That sounds good. I think it should be good with the AI notes.
All right. I'll quickly go through the agenda. I think the main objective for today will be kind of discussing our RFP evaluations and aligning on what our recommendation for Michael McCall will be and kind of just preparing for that meeting. We'll then approve the meeting minutes from the last official audit committee meeting on October 27th, and then discuss just some of the other audit committee deliverables, like the annual reports, and adjourn. Okay. So is there anyone from the public that would like to comment?
Nobody from the public. Okay. Nobody from the public. Now we can just move on to the RFP evaluation. So, Klaus, thank you for sending your RFP scores. I had also, I kind of tried to follow a similar formatting to what you had done, and I figured it would probably make the most sense to try to just kind of talk through what we thought about each of the proposals, and then what our scoring was, and maybe talk about some scoring that we had, like, differed on, and see if we can kind of come to a consensus of what our recommendation might be and some of the strengths that we saw in each of the different proposals. These are the evaluations that Klaus said he had sent me using a scoring scale of highly advantageous four points, advantageous three points, not advantageous two points, unacceptable zero points, and kind of putting them against the different criteria that we had. And then I had also put my evaluations alongside Klaus's to come up with a total. So I figured, I thought that this was a good approach from Klaus. Wanted to hear some additional thoughts if this seems like a good approach for how we can try to evaluate these RFPs. So, Michael, you had a three where I had a four on CBiz, on 1B. Yep. I thought 1B had a ton of mass clients.
Yeah, I was kind of interpreting it from a sense of how many, like, clients the specific engagement team that will be serving Wayland had experience with. But I do know that the firm itself had a lot. Fair enough, fair enough. I was just looking for a reason, that's all. Yeah. Yeah. My overall reaction is that absent the money or the price, numerically, CBiz has had a significant advantage. And all we control is this particular grid.
And on the basis of that grid, you know, and I'm not sure if you, Tian, went through the exercise.
You, Tian, you went through this exercise, right?
Hey, Michael, if you can, can you pull up the original evaluation sheet again? So, it might, yeah. Yes. Yeah, exactly, right. So, you, Tian, this is the metric that we were supposed to use. Like, 1A, it doesn't show well. It doesn't scroll. Yeah, you go, scroll. So, like, 1A, keep going, Michael, if you can. 1A, and let's stop here. Like, 2A, approach and understanding. 2A, proposers familiarity with Massachusetts laws and municipal regulations. And then 2B, proposers, yada, yada, yada. So, our job was to evaluate each of the proposals on this metric.
Yeah. Yeah. You, Tian, were you able to come up with, like, a ranking for each of these two RFPs? I normally use the, when I do, we just use the older one who is familiar with the job. That's normally what we do. So, I don't know whether any advantage for the new one.
Do you see the different PDFs of the two proposals? Yeah. I know.
So, do you think what stood out to me the most between CBiz and how you? Like, I think I'll just follow Klaus' ranking so you can put there.
Yeah. You know, to me, the most meaningful difference is ACFER. And that's a pretty big job. And Hague had rarely made a reference to their experience with ACFER. And that is kind of substantively what this auditing gig is all about. So, to me, it really wasn't very close. And since we can't control the pricing, I think our recommendation is pretty clear. We should go with CBiz. CBiz, and the only countervailing opinion in my view is we've used CBiz for 10 years. And in the private sector, that's a disqualifier because I think they want you to change the auditor every few years. But that is not the case in the public sector. So, we can't use that as an excuse. We can just add it as a small point in favor of Hague without really, in my opinion, changing the opinion. Because it doesn't seem like it's strong enough to counter the argument that they score better than Hague. I fully agree. I think everything about CBiz was better than Hague. It didn't seem like Hague had too much experience and that it was kind of just the same audit team on all their engagements, which I don't think is advantageous either. So, I feel like CBiz also just has more resources, more experience, and had a much better proposal. And I think it was pretty clear that they should be our recommendation. So, Brian, do you have any thoughts? No, I think I agree with everything you folks said. I had no experience with Hague. You know, I wasn't aware of them. There's only two CPA firms that did submit bids. CBiz is now a national farm. I mean, years back, Town had three regional independent firms, and they were very good. Powers and Sullivan, Melanson, and Sullivan and Rogers. So, Sullivan and Rogers was purchased by CLA. So, they're now a national firm.
Melanson was purchased by a firm that, I'm escaping the name right now, a couple of years ago. And then CBiz bought them, and then CBiz bought Powers and Sullivan. So, at least in the Massachusetts market for a governmental auditor, the two biggest ones in the industry are CLA, again, which was Sullivan and Rogers, and now CBiz, which is Powers and Sullivan and Melanson combined. The next step down would be an independent, small local firm, and I'm assuming this Hague would be part of that category. So, Wayland has been doing business now with CBiz, you know, formerly Melanson, now they're a national firm. So, you can't get much bigger than that with a governmental audit firm than CBiz and CLA. CLA did not submit a bid. Only CBiz did. So, where is Hague located? I believe in Brockton or Fall River. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. I recall now, yep. So, it's possible we keep them in the back pocket when we need to hire an independent, an auditor, other than the auditor for the ACFER. Isn't that right? Every once in a while, you're looking for, you know, somebody different from your primary auditor because of the nature of a job? Yeah, you can do it. But if you wanted to do it, you know, if you wanted to study, you know, some function of the town, I don't know, you know, it could be DPW or the school budget. If you wanted to do what they call an agreed upon procedure. I believe under the mastermind of law, you don't have to do an RFP. But in order to get other people to bid on it, you would have to do an RFP for that small engagement. And you probably may get smaller firms like Hague and some of the other ones that have never done business with a whale and they would want to sort of get in the door and be known to them. So if the town ever down the road wanted to do a somewhat small audit on something, they could do an RFP and see if they could engage people. But I think under mastermind of law, you don't have to always submit an RFP for audit engagements.
I was thinking there are certain things that CBiz would be precluded from looking at. But I thought, well, for example, if they were, if they were like CBiz and CLA and other small firms, because there's a shortage of accountants nationally, less and less people are now taking the CPA exam because of the 150 hour requirement. You know, before you went to college for four years, the new requirement to sit for the CPA exam is to do a fifth year, which, as we all know, college is expensive as it is. Now you're asking undergraduates and bachelor's programs to go a fifth year. At the college and university level, you've seen a drop off in an accountant enrollment. They're migrating towards computers, towards finance. They're going into other areas and accountants programs are seeing a drop in enrollment. So there's plenty of business out there for accountants. And, you know, CBiz and CLA are, you know, one of the two leaning out there. And I think that's part of the reason why you've seen such consolidation. You know, I've heard it from both firms, from CLA and CBiz, that they've had staffing issues. In fact, they've hired people from each other. They've taken people away. Now, for example, CBiz could not run the books for the school department upstairs and then audit the books. What you do see in some towns is they don't hire accountants because either they don't want to pay for, you know, the benefits or whatnot, or they simply can't find one. They will hire an audit firm to run the books for the town. That audit firm that's running the books for the town can't also do the outside audit. There has to be independence there. That's what I was getting at. Right. So right now we have CLA on a monthly engagement, you know, working with the cash reconciliations in the treasurer's office. They couldn't assist at that level and then audit the books. Uh-uh. It's a cross. You'd be auditing yourself. Right, right, right. And they may be subject to some peer review criticism on that.
Do we need to take a vote?
Yeah, we could take a vote. So the motion would be that the committee recommends on the basis of the RFP, the response to the RFP, that the town continue to engage CBiz for the next three-year audit cycle. I second.
I agree. Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. Then, so I assume we need to meet with Michael McCall or are we also okay to make that recommendation via- I think, Michael, you could send an email to Kelsey and Michael with your recommendation. And at that point, he would then take that recommendation and open up prices and then make a decision at that point. But I think you're probably best to keep the ball going, to send an email stating your recommendation tonight to both Kelsey and Michael. And then we'll let it go forward from there.
Sorry. Should we present, like, any reasons or just kind of- No, you need to maintain these records here. You know, it has come up in the past sometimes that Haig may call up and say, well, I want to see how you rated CBiz greater than we did. And what you're looking at right now on the screen is evidence that you went through that procedure. There was a deliberate attempt and you reviewed the RFPs, you scored them, and you developed your recommendation. So what you're looking at now is proof of that. And if Michael needs to go back and say, okay, show me what your results are, what's on the screen is what will do it. Yeah, Michael, I suggest you send him a memo with our recommendations. You add this as an exhibit.
Yeah, and I like the idea we don't have to meet with Michael because that's just a waste. You know, but he would owe us an explanation. Like, if he chooses Haig, he would have to give us a reason, right?
Yes. Like, for example, if one, if this was a situation where a committee recommended one firm over a bunch of different firms or even one, and the firm you recommended has such astronomically high prices, the town manager could push back. I agree. I agree. He'd be entitled to use money as an excuse or as a reason for ignoring the recommendation. I wouldn't challenge that. That definitely makes sense. And, Brian, I think the contract was expected to be either awarded or announced by the 15th and then executed on the 30th. Are we still trying to stick within that time frame? I mean, we can. You mean January 15th? Yeah. Yeah. I still think that's doable. If you send an email to Michael, I can meet with him and he can make a determination. And what happens then is he'll send an award letter to the winning firm. And then what will happen will be the winning firm will then turn around and submit the contract and we'll sign it. Okay. That sounds good. I can send him a memo with some exhibits that show the committee's recommendation. Anything else related to the RFP evaluation that people wanted to discuss? The next item is the meeting minutes from the meeting on the 27th.
I'm the one who wrote the minutes, so I don't have any suggestions. I might have sent the wrong meeting minutes in that email. You want to put them on the screen, Mike? Yeah. I think I sent the ones from. I think you did. The, some previous meeting by her, but it was, I believe, supposed to. Now this is the agenda.
Do you still have a copy of those? No, I can. You sent them out with, I think it was in your email. Let me see if I can find it.
Okay. I accidentally sent the February 10th minutes. Here we go. Let's see if I can do this. Oh, no. That was different.
Here we go. Let's see. All right. Was it February 10th? Was that?
I think it was October 27th. Yeah. Well, let's see. What you sent, your email, was, let's see. Oh, this is a problem.
Yeah. Your agenda says October 27th, but your attachment, your attachment was for, yeah, it says October 27th. Okay. Let's see. Is it possible that the, the, the label on the attachment was wrong and it should be October?
Possible.
See, approval of the minutes. Yeah, it's got to be because approve the minutes of June, June 2 is part of the, is, is incorporated in the minutes. So let me see if I can share this.
Oh, I think the minutes that you sent might have just been titled February 10th. That's my guess right now.
But are from the 27th.
Would make sense.
Why am I not showing? I can share.
I think these are the minutes. They just say February 10th. Yeah, that's right. And then that's what I have. That's the one I'm showing as well. Yeah. So we just need to change that to October 27th. Yeah. And then I think it was 5 PM.
Besides that though, I, I have no adjustments except there was, I think this should be 3-0.
Exactly. I don't know why that says 2-0. Uteon, do you have any adjustments? No.
Motion to approve as amended. I second. I agree. And Michael, you're going to make the changes? Yeah, I can make these changes and submit.
You know, I have to go back to school and figure out how to share because my, my, I couldn't get my damn desktop to show up.
Yeah. Well, anyway, to be continued. Got that out of the way. And then the other audit committee deliverables. I know we have to do, I think it's two annual reports, one to the select board and then another annual report. So I guess that would probably have to take place after we meet with Alina and we're able to draft up. I believe that's correct because the last time we did that, it was. Um, it's her name that did that already. So she, she attended the meeting and, and did the report. So we're all set for, for, for, for that until the next ACFER and the next management letter.
That works. So we can just, should we just hold off on that until we meet with Alina and then we can come. And when are we meeting with Alina? It's on, uh, we haven't, it hasn't been scheduled yet, but we could do January 26 at 5 PM. I believe if, if everybody is available for that. And Brian, you're going to, uh, you're going to ask the, uh, uh, the, the IT guys to send me the, the transcript. Right. Yep. Okay.
How long does that take? Any idea?
Boss? It's, I think it, it's, it's instantaneous. Just, I mean, it, it gets produced almost instantly, I think. So all I have to do is actually just send it to me and, and then, uh, we can discuss how we proceed from there. All right.
Well, is, is everyone available on the 26th to talk to Alina at 5 PM one day? I'm okay.
Yeah. It looks like I'm good too. Yeah. Same here.
It sounds good. I can get that set up and I assume, I think Alina will probably still be available so we can, uh, get that meeting scheduled. You may want to strive to get that definitely at five. Cause that, that may be a very big night at 26 without the zoom, um, you know, meetings and whatnot, because, uh, they get the, um, I think the warrant hearing, there's just a lot of things going on in that date. So try to lock in a five o'clock time zoom later. Okay. I'll try to lock that in right now. Well, that meeting, um, I mean, it could take a little longer, right? Because Alina, we'd be, uh, make a presentation, right? Should be doing it to you. So I think two hours is plenty of time. Okay. Now, my other question, uh, Brian was that, uh, I actually tried to get AI to take a look at the ACFRA draft and it, it did what I thought had some pretty cool suggestions. I was just wondering whether you did anything with them or are you going to skip it? So we had sent off the, the finals. I took yourselves and, uh, Michael's edits and recommendations. We, Alina and I incorporated into the, uh, the final draft, but we did not incorporate the AI stuff because it came in afterwards. So we didn't do that.
Fair enough. I mean, it, it, it, it doesn't, it did have some better language in, in spots. So in my opinion, I wonder if, uh, the audit firms are using AI in the same way to make their reports, um, you know, picking up different edits and whatnot. Yeah. I'm up at they are probably are to some extent, I'd say. So anyways, I had some, a couple of substantive suggestions on the, uh, on the ACFRA. So we'll be, we can, we can discuss them. Sounds good. Any, anything else we should, should cover today?
Well, I'll send an email to Alina about the 26th, five o'clock. You, you lock in the date with the zoom. Unless we hit back differently, then we're meeting again on the 26th. Yep. That sounds good. Okay.
So it's, uh, it's 536. I, I make a motion to adjourn. Second. I, I agree.
Meeting adjourned at 536. PM. PM. PM. PM. PM. PM. PM. PM. PM. PM. PM. PM. PM. PM. PM. PM. PM. PM. PM. PM. PM. PM. PM.
Klaus, I know you've been taking meeting minutes recently. So, Michael, just so to clarify, I'll take the minutes. I have asked Brian to activate the artificial intelligence transcriber, all right? So what he'll do is, it's activated. I will get a transcription of the meeting, and I'm going to feed that into an AI processor. And it'll produce, hopefully, a usable draft for the minutes, so that there's minimum work to do after and if that works. And if all of that works, I'm going to hand that process off to Yuzian. Yes, once it's working, I'll learn from it, and I really would like to take some responsibility. It doesn't want to sit here, and so that's okay. We'll go from there and see how this process works, and I can learn this AI stuff, and hopefully, we can share your responsibility. Yeah, I'm very hopeful. Thank you. Could I just ask first, Robbie, are you on the Zoom with us? Did you activate the AI? Yeah, it's on. Okay.
That sounds good. I think it should be good with the AI notes.
All right. I'll quickly go through the agenda. I think the main objective for today will be kind of discussing our RFP evaluations and aligning on what our recommendation for Michael McCall will be and kind of just preparing for that meeting. We'll then approve the meeting minutes from the last official audit committee meeting on October 27th, and then discuss just some of the other audit committee deliverables, like the annual reports, and adjourn. Okay. So is there anyone from the public that would like to comment?
Nobody from the public. Okay. Nobody from the public. Now we can just move on to the RFP evaluation. So, Klaus, thank you for sending your RFP scores. I had also, I kind of tried to follow a similar formatting to what you had done, and I figured it would probably make the most sense to try to just kind of talk through what we thought about each of the proposals, and then what our scoring was, and maybe talk about some scoring that we had, like, differed on, and see if we can kind of come to a consensus of what our recommendation might be and some of the strengths that we saw in each of the different proposals. These are the evaluations that Klaus said he had sent me using a scoring scale of highly advantageous four points, advantageous three points, not advantageous two points, unacceptable zero points, and kind of putting them against the different criteria that we had. And then I had also put my evaluations alongside Klaus's to come up with a total. So I figured, I thought that this was a good approach from Klaus. Wanted to hear some additional thoughts if this seems like a good approach for how we can try to evaluate these RFPs. So, Michael, you had a three where I had a four on CBiz, on 1B. Yep. I thought 1B had a ton of mass clients.
Yeah, I was kind of interpreting it from a sense of how many, like, clients the specific engagement team that will be serving Wayland had experience with. But I do know that the firm itself had a lot. Fair enough, fair enough. I was just looking for a reason, that's all. Yeah. Yeah. My overall reaction is that absent the money or the price, numerically, CBiz has had a significant advantage. And all we control is this particular grid.
And on the basis of that grid, you know, and I'm not sure if you, Tian, went through the exercise.
You, Tian, you went through this exercise, right?
Hey, Michael, if you can, can you pull up the original evaluation sheet again? So, it might, yeah. Yes. Yeah, exactly, right. So, you, Tian, this is the metric that we were supposed to use. Like, 1A, it doesn't show well. It doesn't scroll. Yeah, you go, scroll. So, like, 1A, keep going, Michael, if you can. 1A, and let's stop here. Like, 2A, approach and understanding. 2A, proposers familiarity with Massachusetts laws and municipal regulations. And then 2B, proposers, yada, yada, yada. So, our job was to evaluate each of the proposals on this metric.
Yeah. Yeah. You, Tian, were you able to come up with, like, a ranking for each of these two RFPs? I normally use the, when I do, we just use the older one who is familiar with the job. That's normally what we do. So, I don't know whether any advantage for the new one.
Do you see the different PDFs of the two proposals? Yeah. I know.
So, do you think what stood out to me the most between CBiz and how you? Like, I think I'll just follow Klaus' ranking so you can put there.
Yeah. You know, to me, the most meaningful difference is ACFER. And that's a pretty big job. And Hague had rarely made a reference to their experience with ACFER. And that is kind of substantively what this auditing gig is all about. So, to me, it really wasn't very close. And since we can't control the pricing, I think our recommendation is pretty clear. We should go with CBiz. CBiz, and the only countervailing opinion in my view is we've used CBiz for 10 years. And in the private sector, that's a disqualifier because I think they want you to change the auditor every few years. But that is not the case in the public sector. So, we can't use that as an excuse. We can just add it as a small point in favor of Hague without really, in my opinion, changing the opinion. Because it doesn't seem like it's strong enough to counter the argument that they score better than Hague. I fully agree. I think everything about CBiz was better than Hague. It didn't seem like Hague had too much experience and that it was kind of just the same audit team on all their engagements, which I don't think is advantageous either. So, I feel like CBiz also just has more resources, more experience, and had a much better proposal. And I think it was pretty clear that they should be our recommendation. So, Brian, do you have any thoughts? No, I think I agree with everything you folks said. I had no experience with Hague. You know, I wasn't aware of them. There's only two CPA firms that did submit bids. CBiz is now a national farm. I mean, years back, Town had three regional independent firms, and they were very good. Powers and Sullivan, Melanson, and Sullivan and Rogers. So, Sullivan and Rogers was purchased by CLA. So, they're now a national firm.
Melanson was purchased by a firm that, I'm escaping the name right now, a couple of years ago. And then CBiz bought them, and then CBiz bought Powers and Sullivan. So, at least in the Massachusetts market for a governmental auditor, the two biggest ones in the industry are CLA, again, which was Sullivan and Rogers, and now CBiz, which is Powers and Sullivan and Melanson combined. The next step down would be an independent, small local firm, and I'm assuming this Hague would be part of that category. So, Wayland has been doing business now with CBiz, you know, formerly Melanson, now they're a national firm. So, you can't get much bigger than that with a governmental audit firm than CBiz and CLA. CLA did not submit a bid. Only CBiz did. So, where is Hague located? I believe in Brockton or Fall River. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. I recall now, yep. So, it's possible we keep them in the back pocket when we need to hire an independent, an auditor, other than the auditor for the ACFER. Isn't that right? Every once in a while, you're looking for, you know, somebody different from your primary auditor because of the nature of a job? Yeah, you can do it. But if you wanted to do it, you know, if you wanted to study, you know, some function of the town, I don't know, you know, it could be DPW or the school budget. If you wanted to do what they call an agreed upon procedure. I believe under the mastermind of law, you don't have to do an RFP. But in order to get other people to bid on it, you would have to do an RFP for that small engagement. And you probably may get smaller firms like Hague and some of the other ones that have never done business with a whale and they would want to sort of get in the door and be known to them. So if the town ever down the road wanted to do a somewhat small audit on something, they could do an RFP and see if they could engage people. But I think under mastermind of law, you don't have to always submit an RFP for audit engagements.
I was thinking there are certain things that CBiz would be precluded from looking at. But I thought, well, for example, if they were, if they were like CBiz and CLA and other small firms, because there's a shortage of accountants nationally, less and less people are now taking the CPA exam because of the 150 hour requirement. You know, before you went to college for four years, the new requirement to sit for the CPA exam is to do a fifth year, which, as we all know, college is expensive as it is. Now you're asking undergraduates and bachelor's programs to go a fifth year. At the college and university level, you've seen a drop off in an accountant enrollment. They're migrating towards computers, towards finance. They're going into other areas and accountants programs are seeing a drop in enrollment. So there's plenty of business out there for accountants. And, you know, CBiz and CLA are, you know, one of the two leaning out there. And I think that's part of the reason why you've seen such consolidation. You know, I've heard it from both firms, from CLA and CBiz, that they've had staffing issues. In fact, they've hired people from each other. They've taken people away. Now, for example, CBiz could not run the books for the school department upstairs and then audit the books. What you do see in some towns is they don't hire accountants because either they don't want to pay for, you know, the benefits or whatnot, or they simply can't find one. They will hire an audit firm to run the books for the town. That audit firm that's running the books for the town can't also do the outside audit. There has to be independence there. That's what I was getting at. Right. So right now we have CLA on a monthly engagement, you know, working with the cash reconciliations in the treasurer's office. They couldn't assist at that level and then audit the books. Uh-uh. It's a cross. You'd be auditing yourself. Right, right, right. And they may be subject to some peer review criticism on that.
Do we need to take a vote?
Yeah, we could take a vote. So the motion would be that the committee recommends on the basis of the RFP, the response to the RFP, that the town continue to engage CBiz for the next three-year audit cycle. I second.
I agree. Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. Then, so I assume we need to meet with Michael McCall or are we also okay to make that recommendation via- I think, Michael, you could send an email to Kelsey and Michael with your recommendation. And at that point, he would then take that recommendation and open up prices and then make a decision at that point. But I think you're probably best to keep the ball going, to send an email stating your recommendation tonight to both Kelsey and Michael. And then we'll let it go forward from there.
Sorry. Should we present, like, any reasons or just kind of- No, you need to maintain these records here. You know, it has come up in the past sometimes that Haig may call up and say, well, I want to see how you rated CBiz greater than we did. And what you're looking at right now on the screen is evidence that you went through that procedure. There was a deliberate attempt and you reviewed the RFPs, you scored them, and you developed your recommendation. So what you're looking at now is proof of that. And if Michael needs to go back and say, okay, show me what your results are, what's on the screen is what will do it. Yeah, Michael, I suggest you send him a memo with our recommendations. You add this as an exhibit.
Yeah, and I like the idea we don't have to meet with Michael because that's just a waste. You know, but he would owe us an explanation. Like, if he chooses Haig, he would have to give us a reason, right?
Yes. Like, for example, if one, if this was a situation where a committee recommended one firm over a bunch of different firms or even one, and the firm you recommended has such astronomically high prices, the town manager could push back. I agree. I agree. He'd be entitled to use money as an excuse or as a reason for ignoring the recommendation. I wouldn't challenge that. That definitely makes sense. And, Brian, I think the contract was expected to be either awarded or announced by the 15th and then executed on the 30th. Are we still trying to stick within that time frame? I mean, we can. You mean January 15th? Yeah. Yeah. I still think that's doable. If you send an email to Michael, I can meet with him and he can make a determination. And what happens then is he'll send an award letter to the winning firm. And then what will happen will be the winning firm will then turn around and submit the contract and we'll sign it. Okay. That sounds good. I can send him a memo with some exhibits that show the committee's recommendation. Anything else related to the RFP evaluation that people wanted to discuss? The next item is the meeting minutes from the meeting on the 27th.
I'm the one who wrote the minutes, so I don't have any suggestions. I might have sent the wrong meeting minutes in that email. You want to put them on the screen, Mike? Yeah. I think I sent the ones from. I think you did. The, some previous meeting by her, but it was, I believe, supposed to. Now this is the agenda.
Do you still have a copy of those? No, I can. You sent them out with, I think it was in your email. Let me see if I can find it.
Okay. I accidentally sent the February 10th minutes. Here we go. Let's see if I can do this. Oh, no. That was different.
Here we go. Let's see. All right. Was it February 10th? Was that?
I think it was October 27th. Yeah. Well, let's see. What you sent, your email, was, let's see. Oh, this is a problem.
Yeah. Your agenda says October 27th, but your attachment, your attachment was for, yeah, it says October 27th. Okay. Let's see. Is it possible that the, the, the label on the attachment was wrong and it should be October?
Possible.
See, approval of the minutes. Yeah, it's got to be because approve the minutes of June, June 2 is part of the, is, is incorporated in the minutes. So let me see if I can share this.
Oh, I think the minutes that you sent might have just been titled February 10th. That's my guess right now.
But are from the 27th.
Would make sense.
Why am I not showing? I can share.
I think these are the minutes. They just say February 10th. Yeah, that's right. And then that's what I have. That's the one I'm showing as well. Yeah. So we just need to change that to October 27th. Yeah. And then I think it was 5 PM.
Besides that though, I, I have no adjustments except there was, I think this should be 3-0.
Exactly. I don't know why that says 2-0. Uteon, do you have any adjustments? No.
Motion to approve as amended. I second. I agree. And Michael, you're going to make the changes? Yeah, I can make these changes and submit.
You know, I have to go back to school and figure out how to share because my, my, I couldn't get my damn desktop to show up.
Yeah. Well, anyway, to be continued. Got that out of the way. And then the other audit committee deliverables. I know we have to do, I think it's two annual reports, one to the select board and then another annual report. So I guess that would probably have to take place after we meet with Alina and we're able to draft up. I believe that's correct because the last time we did that, it was. Um, it's her name that did that already. So she, she attended the meeting and, and did the report. So we're all set for, for, for, for that until the next ACFER and the next management letter.
That works. So we can just, should we just hold off on that until we meet with Alina and then we can come. And when are we meeting with Alina? It's on, uh, we haven't, it hasn't been scheduled yet, but we could do January 26 at 5 PM. I believe if, if everybody is available for that. And Brian, you're going to, uh, you're going to ask the, uh, uh, the, the IT guys to send me the, the transcript. Right. Yep. Okay.
How long does that take? Any idea?
Boss? It's, I think it, it's, it's instantaneous. Just, I mean, it, it gets produced almost instantly, I think. So all I have to do is actually just send it to me and, and then, uh, we can discuss how we proceed from there. All right.
Well, is, is everyone available on the 26th to talk to Alina at 5 PM one day? I'm okay.
Yeah. It looks like I'm good too. Yeah. Same here.
It sounds good. I can get that set up and I assume, I think Alina will probably still be available so we can, uh, get that meeting scheduled. You may want to strive to get that definitely at five. Cause that, that may be a very big night at 26 without the zoom, um, you know, meetings and whatnot, because, uh, they get the, um, I think the warrant hearing, there's just a lot of things going on in that date. So try to lock in a five o'clock time zoom later. Okay. I'll try to lock that in right now. Well, that meeting, um, I mean, it could take a little longer, right? Because Alina, we'd be, uh, make a presentation, right? Should be doing it to you. So I think two hours is plenty of time. Okay. Now, my other question, uh, Brian was that, uh, I actually tried to get AI to take a look at the ACFRA draft and it, it did what I thought had some pretty cool suggestions. I was just wondering whether you did anything with them or are you going to skip it? So we had sent off the, the finals. I took yourselves and, uh, Michael's edits and recommendations. We, Alina and I incorporated into the, uh, the final draft, but we did not incorporate the AI stuff because it came in afterwards. So we didn't do that.
Fair enough. I mean, it, it, it, it doesn't, it did have some better language in, in spots. So in my opinion, I wonder if, uh, the audit firms are using AI in the same way to make their reports, um, you know, picking up different edits and whatnot. Yeah. I'm up at they are probably are to some extent, I'd say. So anyways, I had some, a couple of substantive suggestions on the, uh, on the ACFRA. So we'll be, we can, we can discuss them. Sounds good. Any, anything else we should, should cover today?
Well, I'll send an email to Alina about the 26th, five o'clock. You, you lock in the date with the zoom. Unless we hit back differently, then we're meeting again on the 26th. Yep. That sounds good. Okay.
So it's, uh, it's 536. I, I make a motion to adjourn. Second. I, I agree.
Meeting adjourned at 536. PM. PM. PM. PM. PM. PM. PM. PM. PM. PM. PM. PM. PM. PM. PM. PM. PM. PM. PM. PM. PM. PM. PM.