​Board of Auditors
Pittsfield Town Office
November 22, 2016  10:00 AM

MINUTES

Present: Martha Beyersdorf, Sue Wuerthele

Call to Order: 10:00 AM

Approved Minutes from 11/14/16 Meeting

Agenda Modifications:
How to set up reports (fonts, justifying, etc.): We tentatively set standards for the report to use Arial 12 point justified for the text and use Arial 14 point bold for headings. The headings will be centered unless a logo is included, in which case they will be left justified.
  
TOC: Sue will start to work on revising the Table of Contents once Martha sends her an electronic copy of last year’s report.

Proposals from Spaulding: Patty has received emails from Dave Smedy at Spaulding Press and Sue called him to understand the pricing quotes.  If we just use a colored cover and all black and white content in the report, it will cost $1209.52 (same as last year’s price).  If we use colored pictures in the content, the price will be $1399.00 for the estimated 28 pages that we told him.  Note that this is not based on the number of colored pictures.  If there is any color on a page, even one line, it is considered colored.  If we have more than 28 colored pages, the cost will increase and it will decrease if we have less than 28 colored pages.  Spaulding has also offered to do a two year contract for the same price and will generate a more formal document if we decide to do that.  This topic will be discussed at a future meeting.

Letters requesting reports: Martha reported that letters have gone to town organizations requesting their annual, financial and property reports.  The due dates are 12/15 for annual and property reports and 1/12/17 for financial reports.

Organizing documents: Martha created two new folders in the Auditors’ Google drive for Minutes and Agendas from the Auditors’ Meetings.  She will work on transferring these documents from her drive to these folders.

Checklist for Town Report Documents: We reviewed the checklist that Sue had created to keep track of entries for the town report and whether they have been received.  Several changes were noted and Sue will make these for the next meeting.
Town Report/Town Meeting Timeline: We reviewed the 2016 Town Report/Town Meeting timeline with Patty and made changes for this year’s Report and Meeting.  Patty will update the document.

School Board Reports: Martha will contact Kris Sperber regarding the reports needed for the School Board entries in the Town Report.

Town Report Working Sessions: We agreed that we will produce a list of the sessions we are holding to work on the Town Report but will not do agendas or minutes for these sessions.

Town Report 2016:
Google issues: We are still working on the best way to move documents from one folder to another and will continue to discuss this at the next meeting.  We did decide to leave the extensions on documents when we move them (.doc, .docx, etc.)

What works/what doesn’t: We are still working on this (see above).

Email issues: None at this time.

Add new material: The VT Department of Health report was added to the drafts folder.

Historical Society photos: Tabled for the next meeting.

Budget 2017: We discussed the budget and looked at the hours reported by Martha and Erica for last year’s Town Report generation.  Based on the fact that there are three auditors working on the Report this year and the increase in wages, we will submit a budget of $2500.00 for wages in 2017.  The figure for printing the Town Report will be discussed at the next meeting.  Sue will write up notes for justification of the salary increase.

Annual Statement (of the Auditors): Sue will revise the Statement of the Auditors to change the font, justify the text and remove the parentheses from around the years after each of our names.

Next Meetings: 
December 6 at 10:00 am
December 12 at 10:00 am (if needed)
December 19 at 7:00 pm
January 16 or 17 (TBD)

Adjourn: 11:40 AM

Recorded by Sue Wuerthele
Approved by Martha L. Beyersdorf, Erica J. Hurd   Date:  December 6, 2016

​Board of Auditors
Pittsfield Town Office
November 14, 2016, 1:00 PM

MINUTES

Present: Martha Beyersdorf, Erica Hurd, Sue Wuerthele

Call to Order - 1:15 PM

Approved Minutes from 10/18/2016 and 10/25/2016 Meetings

Agenda Modifications:The procedures for the quarterly audits of the municipal accounts were reviewed and accepted.  Erica will remove the word “Draft” from the title and add the text for approvals at the end of the document.

Town Report 2016:
Photos: Erica made a list of photos to be taken from the ones we had indicated in the Town’s copy of A Glimpse of the Past  Pittsfield, Vermont at the last meeting.  She will shoot the “now” pictures of these photos by January 15, 2017.  At our next meeting, we will search the Town Hall to see if any of the “before” pictures are available.  Once the photos are done, Erica will move them into the Pictures folder in Google Docs.

Reports received to date: The Town Clerk forwards any reports she receives via email to the Auditors’ email address (pittsfieldauditors@gmail.com).  Once in this mailbox, Erica will copy the documents and put them into the Drafts-1 folder in Google Docs.  We will each move a copy of the document into the Edited-2 folder in Google Docs and change the name to add our first initial to the end of the document name (i.e. M, E, S) so we know who is reviewing and editing the document.  Once a document is ready for review, the auditor who has worked on it will share it (through Google Docs) with the other auditors.  Once it has been approved, the auditor who did the initial editing will copy the final version into the Final-3 folder.  This is where the Town Report document will be assembled.  Note that when editing a document, “Suggesting” should be turned on each time so that the changes are tracked/shown.

Best way to do Emails > Google Docs > Access: We are still determining how to best copy/move documents in Google Docs because of naming issues.  This will be discussed at the next meeting.

Send out requests to organizations: Martha will send out notices to request financial and annual reports.

Schedule Next Meetings:
November 22 at 10:00 am
December 6 at 10:00 am
December 12 at 10:00 am (if needed)
December 19 at 7:00 pm (previously scheduled)

Adjourn - 3:30 PM

Recorded by Sue Wuerthele ___________________________
Approved by:
___________________________ Date __________________

___________________________ Date __________________

​Town of Pittsfield
Board of Auditors
Tuesday, October 25, 2016
10:00am

AGENDA - MINUTES

Present: Martha Beyersdorf, Erica Hurd, Sue Wuerthele

Call to Order - 10 AM

Approve 10/18/16 Minutes - Tabled

Agenda Modifications - Pat Fuster expressed interest in assisting with the town report and has old Swiss Farm Picture and Parmenter. There are other historical pictures at the post office that we will look at as well.

Town Report 2016
   Idea for theme - Front Cover will be Then & Now in Edwardian Script/Arial Unicode MS. Pictures and journal entries, to be later determined, from past and present to be compiled and inserted throughout the town report. We looked through Historical Society book to get ideas for pictures.
   Dedication this year? - No
      Honor 20+ Town Officers Photo (contact Wendy for okay) and narrative - Martha has picture, This information will be placed at the bottom of front page under front cover description.
   Any changes to format, font, etc. - Alphabetize all Official titles listed after Town Treasurer on elected and appointed pages.
      Take a look at other town’s reports - We saw other town’s Auditors reports have additional information/ recommendations and we may add more to report this year. 

Schedule next meeting - Nov 14 at 1 PM

Adjourn - 12 PM

Recorded by Erica Hurd
Approved on November 14, 2016
​by: Sue N. Wuerthele, Martha L. Beyersdorf