TranscriptSelect Board Meeting ~ August 12, 2025

So every year I go and then this year she's call meeting to order here at 6:30 on August 12th. We have a quorum and we'll begin with for it stands nationy Do we have any amendments to the agenda? comment? do we have a motion to approve last meeting's minutes?

Second for Josh. All in favor? Any opposition? Seeing none, sorry. a motion to approve and sign as special town meeting/notice of election. So, Deb has a motion. Second and a second. So, questions on the motion. This is just to approve for our uh special election for the select board vacancy since it's going to be part of the November ballot. Uh we checked with the lawyer. Uh you can do the special town meeting as a ballot, which is what we're doing this time around in an effort to uh try to get higher turnout than if we were to have just done a special 200 person likely attended town

meeting or election. So, uh, papers are available right now to run for that position and that person will serve until, uh, June and then we'll have another election on our normal um, this year will be May 30th. Tuesday before the

So, this is just to approve for the uh, open vacancy in November. Any other discussion on the motion? All in favor? Any opposition? Seeing none, that's also new business. Okay. Now we are going to move into new business tax commitment. Come on up.

Um, so this year we are uh Oh, I'm sorry. Can you identify yourself? Sure. I'm sorry. I'm Don M. I'm the assessor of agent. Um, so as everybody knows, we're having a full rebal 2027, April 27. So it comes as no surprise we

are at 53% of market value this year. Uh that means that our homestead is uh 13,250 and our veterans exemptions are 3,180. What exemptions, sir? uh homestead and veterans. Um because we have to apply our ratio to our exemptions, our tree growth rates, our personal property, central main power, and all of that. I did pick up $7 million in new value, which if we were at 100% $14

million in new value, which is is good. We have a lot of of new construction here. So, because we have an 18month commitment, I we have three options in front of you. Um, they all off by three cents one way or the other. What I did highlight is I wanted you to see what the tax rate would be and what it gives us as an overlay. The overlay is what we use for abatements or any errors that we would have. Given the fact that we have higher

taxes this year, even though somebody's value doesn't change, it also makes people pay attention to what their value is. Would be unlikely for us to have more people who want to come in and talk about valuation, perhaps apply for abatement. Last year, our overlay that we had was 19,750.

but I'm really comfortable with at least a $20,000 overlay. So, the three options, if we look at the 3355, we're at $8,300 overlay. If we look at 3358, we're at a $20,000 overlay. and 3360 is a $28,000 overlay. Even though I hate anything other than a zero or five at the end, I think the 3358 makes the best sense for us as a town to have it not too much more. I

mean, a nickel is a nickel and to give us a $20,000 overlay. we have any other questions for Donna? I I just say thank you. I I think you answered every single question I can prepare to ask. Um I my my big question was about the overlay because I know we've been trying to keep it down.

So I really appreciate and and and the first one the 82 is just too low with this high of a of a tax bill for people. It will it will draw more attention to everything. And I know you said we used a small amount, but do you know how much of the 19,000 we used? I I you know if I have here's this is the hard part of the whole thing. If I have an abatement say you bought property and I didn't transfer it into your name that means I have to do an abatement and I have to do a supplemental. So technically it's a wash just I take it as an abatement in your name and then I send the same amount into to you.

The abatement comes out of the overlay and the supplement goes into the general tax fund. So it doesn't show as a wash. Um I I don't know maybe five maybe 5,000. And and that's that's where I I thought we were the five to 80.

Yeah. And so um and it is a watch except when they don't you know one person pays the other doesn't. That's right. Uh that's right. Um and so uh I guess the only question is is the 20,000 324. Is that enough? I think it is um

what we don't use does go into the general fund goes back into the general fund. And the thing is we don't want more than we need because uh we have this year we have next year when we we get into the rebal year we want a a huge overlay. And one of the things that you can see is the state uh allows us 5% as

an overlay as a maximum. And on every one of those papers, if you look at line 21 at the bottom, it it will or line 20, sorry, if you look at line 20 at the bottom, it will give you how much we could take as an overlay legitimately, which is so instead of the 600 672,000,

we're asking for 20. So, we'll be we'll be way over that in 27, but right now, I have a Could you explain more, Donna? Um, what you talked about on the homestead? Sure. The veteran. Yeah. So, in the state of Maine, a homestead is equivalent to $25,000 in value, and that comes off your valuation. Okay. and uh veterans exemption is 6,000. Because we're not at 100% market value, whatever percentage of market value the state deems us to be through the sales ratio analysis is what we have to apply.

So unfortunately, until we have a rebound that brings everybody up to 100%, we're not going to be 25,000. And and that's part of one thing we get feedback every year is tax bill, you know, the tax rate only increased 3%. Why did my property tax go up more than 3%. And that's because you're only able to take 53% of that 25,000 uh uh homesteads exemption. So instead of taking 25,000 off the top, you're taking what they say.

We are taking $13,250. So, because we're still waiting for our uh reevaluation to take place, every year that percentage has been decreasing a little bit. So, even if you had a 0% increase in taxes, your tax bill will look higher this year because that small percentage of your homestead exemption is decreased. That's why we are getting this uh reevaluation done as soon as possible to give people that full full exemption

if they signed up for. Yes. And we I push the homestead with everybody I talked to. So Okay, good. Thank you. You're welcome. Can I ask someone? But you you brought up the subject of revaluation. Yeah. We had another community in our area have issues with the roll out of their reevaluation.

Um, are you going to work with Jerry and and us and others to sort of I mean I I don't know how you what you do cuz it is kind of is what it is, right? I've done I've done more than I've done enough. Um, education is everything and the hard and and it it isn't really the new values. What happens is um I mean we

have 33 years this year. Next year will be 20some as our our mill rate. We'll go back cuz we're not doing a year and a half. And in everybody's mind you're looking at the 100% valuation with the 20some and you're taxing me out, you know. So, it's all about trying to educate everybody that 100% value does not mean your tax is double.

Correct. Triple. Yes. I know. I know. We'll do the best we can. I I I saw an article, was it last week? And I was like, I don't know how to get it out, but I I couldn't agree more. I mean, it's and it's all over the place and it's going to happen.

is about a third of people see their valuation increase. About a third see it decrease and about a third stay the same. But it's usually the third that saw the increase who are the largest come to the town office. Most people don't come up and say charge me less in taxes. What's going on?

Yeah. Yeah. So I mean and the the other thing is it's not like I mean this is a statewide thing. Yes. So we're in the same barrel as everybody. We know it's going to go up there just how much and how long we've been. Yes, that's what I was going to say. We have got that, you know, we've got that difference where tax the cost tables that I used today are anything like

what they're going to do. But it would be correct to say, you know, if all of a sudden the valuation doubles, if we're not increasing our budget, right, your mill rate would be less. So your house is worth more, but your mill rate decreases.

And if it doubles and nothing else changes, then the tax rate goes in half and everybody pays the same. So it's all Yeah. But, you know, our cost tables aren't built for million dollar homes, right? Because that wasn't even I mean, 350,000 was the big homes here back in the day when the rebound came through, original rebound. So,

yeah, it's it's going to get Yeah. And we already we've already started talking about how we're going to get the message out like we're going to put something in the town for that. But I'm just going to but I'm going to just caution.

No matter how much education we do, there are going to be people out there that are going to be upset. They're going to scream. Yeah. It happened to me in Brunswick. Mine went up drastically. Did you go yell the town office?

I did not. It's not the town's fault. Well, and yeah, we're right with we thought we'd put a insert into the into next year's um town and then if we can put something in with tax bills that are another explanate I mean anytime we sending anything the more we can get out there.

Yeah. If it's going in the mail, anything going in the mail, we should stick it as. What about doing or would you be okay with doing a video recording at home like doing a Q&A or maybe instead of doing a Q&A with you, we do one with you.

Okay. And we have the Breath Company which we're also going to rope in to try to and and we put as much information as we can. pictures of the people that come into your houses, identification, what they drive, what you can expect, what they know, what they don't know. I mean, you know, those are the things that

and and like Sherry said, it's not until somebody sees this new value that of course. Yeah. I mean, yeah, they're going to be like hundreds of Yeah. All kinds. But I think having a video rather than read like people I agree. you can read and not interpret anything. Seeing a video maybe will get half of the people interpret something.

And one of the things that that I did somewhere else is um you know I I I did kind of like a public meeting where we had and and we did it early enough. I mean, we're talking a year from now, but we did it early enough that we had applications for current use programs and, you know, new tree growth, things that people could get into and reduce their value, but you have to do it by April 1st. Also, make sure we had applications. And then just general questions, which somebody always says, well, I have a stupid question. Well, let's take care of it now so it doesn't bother you all the way through.

So, we can do something like that. I mean, we can also, you know, we could also do it like on a Saturday morning if people, you know what I mean? Yeah. I appreciate it. I, you know, like I said, I saw that article and I was like, "Oh my god, what are we in for?"

Uh, and I just had to ask that question. I knew you I knew you would. Yeah. Yeah. We should expect Oh, yeah. the worst. if it's happening all over. Yeah. And and the problem that you have is it's such a huge jump for people that it's you can't wrap your head around it. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah. Unfortunately, we inherited a long absence between the last one. So, we got to be the ones who take the brunt of of bringing the new one in. Yeah. All right. So, any more questions for fun? Do I have a motion to approve a

is the propos motion to move into the board of assessors? So second any questions on the motion? All in favor? Any opposition? Seeing none, we are now in the board of assessors. Uh, do we have a motion to approve a um tax commitment option? I move that we uh accept option two, which is the uh 33580

with the overlay of 20,324. Have a second on the motion. I'll second. Second. Any discussion? I just I I agree with Donna on the I think a higher overlay this year. I think there's going to be there's going to be a push for abatements. It's coming. It's going to be huge, you know, in two years. Uh uh but I think with this 18month budget, uh you know, the tax rate looks extremely large, but it's 18 months, so it's really only, you know, twothirds of it

per year. Uh which isn't a huge jump. So, you know, I'd like to like the door, but I think I just don't think that would be a a wise move with the towns. Yeah, I agree. responsible. Any other discussion? All right. All in favor of the motion? Any opposition? Seeing none, we are good on that taxment option number two. And do I have a motion to leave the board of assessors

before you go? No. I need your signature. And they um the official ones are in the consent agenda. Uh so this three pages with cool places to sign. So you'll I'll sign them and Jerry will or when Justin comes back, you'll take the original. Yeah. sign here.

You need anything else from me? I don't think so. You're welcome. Going to go put the things in motion to come out. Second. All in favor? Any opposition? Seeing none, where the select board? didn't have any questions for just

outreach on like tree growth and stuff like that mention because there's some options for folks for sure. Did I not There's four issues. So there are five, right? Oh, there's four. Four. I thought there was four places. I think you're right. No, four. That was two on one page.

Yeah. And then one on each of the other So, our next uh speaking of new business here is the review and discussion on the updated employee handbook with the human resource consultant. Betsy, how do you pronounce your last name?

It's like I was going to say I didn't want to if I pronounce the name wrong the first time, I'll never get it right. Perfect. Yeah. So um thank you. So yeah, this is B and I give our own autobiography, but uh we met I don't know probably last winter um talking about having human resources you guys you know funded that for me which was very appreciated and we've been spending a lot of time this handbook and I'm really proud that we got it done because it was probably my second month working with Durham when I read the old the existing hand blocks like, "Oh my goodness, this hasn't been updated in many years." And uh having Betsy help me with this and basically do the lion share with a lot of consultation was just eye opening. Um it was just awesome. So Betsy, everybody kind of background.

So yeah, so thank you so much for having me. Um I'll just give you a little bit of background. Betsy Olton. Um I've lived in Maine my entire life. I've lived in found my entire life and been on the same street my entire life. So, um funny um assessing story. I we had

built our home beside my parents and then a development went in between. So, my driveway went off to a main road and so I one day I decided to pick up my mailbox and move it to the culde-sac cuz it was new and my my taxes went up $1,600. Something decided in my mailbox and nothing else changed. So um

did you move it back? No. No. And my friend, why did you why did you move back? And I said, "No, I'm not going to like anyway. Um so I have u my prior sort of life um I handled workers compliments for many years. Worked for me. Um managed an office in Bangor, I mean uh Boston, Freeport, and Bedford, New Hampshire. And then I I got a little um I I didn't love all of the

sort of fraud and all of that that came with it over the years of handling workers comp. And so um I started doing human resources about 15 years ago. Um was the HR director for the town of Kiri and the Cury School Department uh for six years. And then towards the end of that, I just um I just decided one day that I thought it would be there would be a need for smaller towns that can't afford to have full-time HR folks um to help out in this way. So, I've been doing this now for 8 and a half years. Um all of my clients with very very few exceptions are are municipalities, quasi municipalities, water districts, school districts, counties. Um, and over the last 8 and a half years, I've worked with over 61 towns in Maine. Um, I keep

about 14, you know, towns currently. Uh, it's about what I can handle, um, at any given time. And so, um, so I and I I don't remember how we connected, but Maine's a small world, right? And, um, just one big town. Yeah. And so main municipal association um there there are all these affiliations and one of the affiliations that I actually helped start many years ago before I was a consultant was the main local government human resources association and that's been um a really

great group of I think there's almost 200 towns and cities um as a part of that. So they have a list serve and um I've been helping them a lot with the pay pay and medical leave law for the last year and a half. Um I also do union negotiations and those types of things. So handbooks are one of the things that I do and I um love to mediate conflict.

So um that's a little bit about me and um again appreciate the time and um so what we have prepared tonight um is really sort of the summary. It's really hard to sort of do a a full, you know, line by line comparison when you're doing such an overhaul of unemployment handbook. But what we tried to do is really sort of take what we removed from the old handbook and um the current new laws that we really need to keep updated with and then we um have updated some of the you know benefits for the employees in terms of you know time off and things like that because um recruitment is and retention are so difficult especially in municipal government. Um what's happening now is really um towns are you know towns steal from other towns. There's no sort of new blood in municipal government which which is makes me sad. Um I think it's a great field for younger folks to get into but right now um especially in fire

departments uh police departments and those types of positions. It's just you know what's what's moving people is money um and health insurance. And so gone are sort of the days of the lengthy time in one town or city um because of those reasons. And so we looked at you know we looked at that in sort of my eyes in terms of what I've seen around the state and regionally um and so we put together this handbook. So, just to say something more about that, um, Ron Ponto, exact member, works

in Brunswick, right now is trying to steal Kim and Jess to go work over there, just so you know. And that's what happens. Mhm. Is that town just stop coaching good employees? So, I'm not real happy about it, but there's nothing we can do, you know, just hopefully

they'll they'll like where they're at. Well, the other the other important piece that I failed to mention too is that workplace culture is really important, right? So, you know, having a good environment where people feel like they want to come to work and feel valued um also helps with that retention piece too. Um, I think this handbook, um, one of the sort of the glaring things that we really needed to remove is I think your original handbook said that, um, uh, they're atwell employees and there's a big difference between the public sector and the private sector in the state of Maine. And so public employees are not at employees. There's due process that has to be followed before you can um, you know, do sort of any sort of negative impact or a termination. And so, um, that was one of the things that, so you'll see through this. I don't know if we've had a chance to read it ahead of time, but you'll see

through sort of the changes. And I wasn't sure how you folks wanted to handle tonight whether you want to go through just me answering questions or if you want to go through the summary. It's sort of up to you folks what you prefer.

I was fine with going through the summary and you highlighting the the the parts for us. But if others want to do it differently, um, let me know. I'm okay with that too. I read through it today. So I was on as well. So this this was great. Good. This is wonderful. And and I don't know if we had shared either. So it was great. It's actually great timing that your labor attorney Kristen Collins also reviewed it. didn't have hardly any, you know, things to change other than it's interesting because some of the policies that were in here have already been vetted by other attorneys, but she tweaked it in her sort of, you know, attorneys are a little bit different in certain areas, but nothing substantive that um was concerning at all. So, she's already reviewed it and we've made those um those recommended changes within I think I just did that yesterday.

Yeah. Um so, yeah. Okay. So, is that good with everybody? Can you just kind of go through the summary? Okay. Um, sorry I have to keep taking my glasses off. Um, so again the introduction we remove the at will statement. Um, always think it's a good idea to have a mission statement and core values and so that's been added. If I go too fast, which I tend to do, just stop me. Okay. Um, so application and hiring. um we just added in the disability accommodation and process. So um you know that follows the ADA but it and it also follows the human rights commission. So to ensure that we have a process if somebody does have a disability that we need to consider a reasonable accommodation. That's new. Um we added the immigration law compliance. Um when I say new it's not a new law it's just new in your handbook.

Yeah. Okay. um removed the employee relations section and my little paragraph was it shouldn't be encouraged that employees voice concerns directly to the select board because you do have a town manager form of government and that does create a lot of issues if you're allowed to just sort of have those conversations without going through the town manager. Obviously, there's a grievance process and if the town manager is the one that they're concerned about, they have the right to go to the chair of the select board. But having sort of this open door policy is not recommended.

anti-brate I can never say that word fratonization policy. Um essentially you had a nepatism policy in your handbook but this just sort of brought it up to date um and and sort of talked about what's okay and what's not. You know my philosophy is a lot of times you meet your spouse at work. So, you know, that may, you know, that does happen. Um, particularly if you work for a town, sometimes families start, you know, fire departments. So, it's just a matter of making sure that person's not directly reporting to what they're hired hired by.

Every place I've ever worked, there's been married couples there. They met at work, so it's pretty normal. Yeah, absolutely. And everything's fine until it's not fine. Um, so that's Yeah. So, that's that. um removed letter of employment section. It basically not necessarily a state that a letter of employment is in a contract for public employees. The other thing that was different in here, it's statutory that public employees serve a six-month probationary period. I think you had a one a 90-day or something in here. Um so I replaced that with what's statutory. Um the only thing that would be different is if you had a police department and you don't. They have a they're a year after they complete the academy. Um and so um I'm a huge proponent of new

employee orientation and onboarding. That's one of the big ways you can actually have an employee experience be positive and have them want to continue to stay. So um we put that in there. That's new for the the town. Um, and that just what that looks like is, um, I think I provided Jerry with a checklist of sort of things to think about when somebody's coming on board and what to provide them to make them feel comfortable, etc. And it takes a good um year for a a proper onboarding process to to happen. And those are regular check-ins and and such like that. So, um, we have forms for those that have been created that that you you now have access to. Okay.

Um, so lateral transfer is new. Uh, it's probably not new to private sector people, but this is where if somebody comes from another municipality and is is a plow truck driver in another town and they've been there for 10 years. When you, and I think we'll talk about this at one point, I recommend, and I think you're already talking about having an actual wage scale, you know, a wage plan so that um, for a couple reasons. um for transparency but also to ensure that we aren't violating the equal pay law by just you know providing you know sort of unsubstantiated wages and things like that. But what what happens is when you have this wage scale, it the lateral transfer just means that if somebody has 10 years of experience with the same job and they come over here, wherever your wage scale is, say a wage is different at, you know, 7 to 10 years, you put them on that scale when they were first hired

versus starting them at the very beginning. That's a huge recruitment tool for um for folks. And usually when that's new with a town, what we also try to make sure we look at when when you have this sort of wage um schedule is that we look at, you know, where do the current employees lie like have did, you know, can we consider there um years of experience and make sure that there's some equity there um once you institute something like this. So that's what the and that also would be um the same with the wages and usually the same with vacation time.

Mhm. You know, a lot of times, as you know, if you've been forever someplace else and you've built up your vacation to three weeks a year, you don't want to start back at two weeks a year if you have the experience. So, I'm really happy that's in here because I think that's important. I'm a public employee. Josh is too. So, not all public agencies have always recognized that lateral transfer. um in my experience. And so they can be really challenging because you can miss out on good candidates if they're told, you know, you're starting at step one even though you're coming from a step seven,

you know, and so that's really important to me, you know, especially in line with what you're saying about it's really a small pool. So yeah, I mean it's it's now rare that towns aren't aren't um you know, adopting this just because they have been burned. Just like you said before, people are just not going to come for that. Um, so pre-employment physical is new just meaning it's new for so typically you would have a physical based upon the your job classification. So if you have a safety sensitive type physician um you all have class um CDL folks here so they

have to adhere to the federal law um etc. And so they're not required. Public employees that h hold a CDL are not required to have their medical card like sort of a normal CDL truck driver would. Um but it's always recommended that anybody in those safety sensitive positions have a pre-employment physical.

Does that include fire department full time? Yes. Yeah. Uh there's just a new section in there talking about personnel files. Um and uh you know a couple other things that um has been typical sort of in municipal government particularly with when their unions are involved is that they'll have language in there that will say you know if if um if there's not another warning in somebody's personal file after 6 months then then you remove it. Well you don't you're not never supposed to remove anything from a personal file. you can let it age and not use it against a person after a certain period of time, but you certainly don't physically remove it. So, want to make sure that was in there. Um, and legally compliant. Under section three, uh, this is all about employee classification, status, and job descriptions. And so, um, end of

employment. Oh, that's right. I'm looking at the summary. Sorry. Uh, end of employment is new. just talking about. So under the under the state of Maine, um other than public sector, um the private sector has to pay out all acred earned vacation time when somebody leaves regardless of whether they leave in good standing or not. But public employers aren't required to, but most do. Um most pay that out as long as they leave in good standing. And there's a definition of what good standing is. And basically it just means that somebody you know provides a a twoe notice or you know a 3we notice at their department head or something like that under section four just again. So, I don't know. Do we want to talk about the work week that we just talked about today or do you want to

um something that was posted on All Things Durham about the hours of the office and I think it would be very interesting for us to cover. Okay. Right. Well, so one of the things, sorry, a quick frame of reference. All things germ is kind of the sounding board run by the community. It's not run by the town.

They has one of those, but it's the one where all the conversations, of course. Okay, thank you. Um, yeah, so numbers isn't really my thing, so you just have to bear with me for a second. But um my understanding from today's discussion with Jerry is that the town office is open Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday 8 to 5. Um Thursday 10 to

6. And so, um, I think in your old handbook, I can't remember how many hours it said is a full-time employee, but the full-time employee really is, you know, a paid halfhour lunch is what I think has been occurring. public works typically has a paid half hour lunch because they can be out on a job somewhere and not be able to stop and completely be removed from um working to take that 30 minute break. Um so with the the town staff with the half hour paid lunch every day it comes out to 37 37 1/2 hour work week. So that's for regular full-time employees. And then the regular full-time employees for public works is 40 hours. So that's typical in a town uh environment. Usually public works um you know works

the full the full 40. But as far as your hours of operation um and I think that's what you were getting at, right? I I don't know how long ago that you know that was changed, but those are the hours that um that the town can come in and utilize the service. One of the challenges with that is that if you have a non-exempt hourly

employee, they can't come in early and get sort of set up for work without being paid for it. Mhm. So often times towns and people prefer to come in early and just like I want to get ready for the day. I'm going to get things set up, etc. But unless you're willing to pay more than the 37 and 1/2 hours and then sometimes over 40 is overtime, you really have to make sure that you um you you create that sort of buffer. And I think we talked about that today where uh it does take about 10 or 15 minutes before you wait on a a customer. Um you can't just come in at, you know, 5 of 8 and expect your cash door to be ready to go.

Work that has to happen before you go unlock the door. Yeah. Yeah. And same thing at the end of the day, right? So, you know, cash out or what, however that process is. So, we built in that extra time uh in to equal that 37

and 1/2 hours that that folks wouldn't be paid because and I don't know if it was happening here, but I think people were just sort of working and then, you know, only submitting their time when from 8 to whatever and that's, you know, that's against wage hour, right, laws. So,

and the reason for the paid lunch for the staff is because if you have one person out, you want to have two people in there and they may have to get up at that window during that lunch. So, they don't have that flexibility. So,

and that's been our practice for a long time, paid lunch. And main law also, main law, if you work 6 hours or more, you're required to have a 30-minut break, but it has to be a completely uninterrupted break. It can't be somebody eating at their desk and then waiting for the phone call to ring. And so when you have um so that's the other piece too that the law does state if somebody does you know sort of work through their lunch they can wave their breaks um you know in terms of having that full 30 minute uh break. If somebody did want to take a 30 minute break completely offsite and go somewhere for I don't know for a walk or whatever completely uninterrupted um then that would be an unpaid 30-minut.

Does that make sense? Yeah. saying I just I just want that stated for the record. I think that that is a great explanation for when I showed up here. We were closed on Wednesdays. So people um okay great. So we'll uh we talked about that. So there's a new law. So the other reason we you should probably once this is all done and overhauled if you were to have me review it every year. It would take no time at all. Right. So it's recommended that it get gets reviewed every year. There's so many different moving parts to laws right now. The last 10 years have been crazy. So, um, just to make sure that we're compliant in every in every way. So, um,

Pregnant worker status act is a new federal law. Um, there's a workplace lactation policy which is already was already enacted in the state of Maine. So, that's just new policy in here. Um, it does state just real quick that if somebody were pregnant and they need that then you would have to provide them with a room um, that's not a bathroom, etc. But you don't have to have that room available all the time. It's only when somebody um needs the room

essentially. Um so paychecks um I think it's just a new section describing when when people get paid those types of things. Those are always important to have in a handbook. Um so there have not been any sort of perceived negative components of this handbook for employees other than I would say um the one thing that we did remove um is comp time. So those who

aren't familiar with the public sector the private sector doesn't doesn't have comp time. comp time. True comp time under the public sector is every hour you work overtime that time and a half that time and a half goes into a bank to use for vacation. So it's not a day for day hour for hour. It's a time and a half time uh that people could acrue comp time. it it can be problematic in terms of just operations and I think that you know you have a fairly generous a generous vacation uh policy sick policy and we have added two personal days into the handbook that's new this year so I'm talking about it now just to say the comp time is something where it can be challenging in winter operations when you know you're working a lot of overtime and then you then you want to take the next day off and then Calvin doesn't have anybody to plow the snow. So that's the rationale behind removing that comp

time. Well, they bank a lot of it and they want to take time off in the summer and then it becomes a nightmare because they only use this much comp time, but they want to bank this much time and we spend so much administrative time trying to manage it and so if they work overtime, we'll pay them over time and be done with it.

Okay. So we remove the comp time and it's added two days. Yes. That's we personal days. Yeah. And those those operate a little differently when we get to that. I can explain that a little bit better. But and personal days, I mean, a lot of companies will have personal days. I mean, if you have to go see a lawyer because you're going through a divorce, that's not sick. That's not vacation. That's

you need those sort of days to take care of some business that that's personal. Yeah. Yeah. And I I think that that's I think when this is what's really helpful here is that when a lot of people want to develop the process if you if you're not a public sector employee some of this is forms like you have flex time. I had that in the private sector. I'm a state employee. We have sick days, we have personal days, we have

vacation days and so I understand that but I some it's easy for me to realize take it take not think about the fact that general public might not know this process. So this is really helpful. Okay. to elucidate for people watching and stuff like that.

Yeah, I try to and that's one of the reasons why most all of my clients are public sectors cuz my brain can't go from private to public too quickly cuz it's it's so very different. Um I do want to talk about so one of the requests I think the employees were looking you know looking to have us advance and I was considering it until Jerry and I really had this full-blown conversation um was to switch to PTO. Now again, another thing that's uncommon in the municipal world is PTO. There are there are buckets for a reason. Um some of those reasons are just the ability to understand that sick time is really yes, it's a benefit, but it's really an insurance policy, right? But now we have this new paid family medical aid that's going to be um enacted. The benefits are going to start May 1st of 2026. And what that's going to do is provide 12 weeks of paid leave depending upon sort of how much you make. It's almost

like a acts like a short-term disability plan, but it's all paid time. So if we were to convert the buckets that we currently have to paid time off, in most people's minds, that's that's all vacation time, right? So, right, and then they're going to have 12 weeks of paid family medical leave for almost virtually any sort of um you know, prolonged, you know, situation for a family or for themselves. And so, we just didn't feel it was prudent for the town to have um that liability on the books. They already we feel are offered really well. I think your vacation policy is great. um we added the two personal days but um increasing any more ability to use time like that we just didn't feel was appropriate.

So we have separate sick and vacation days right now. The way I think about that is I think that when you have a PTO model, people are possibly have to take all of their vacation and then they truly are sick at certain point in the year and they're like, "Well, I don't have any. I don't want to steal my vacation days, so I'm going to come to work sick." And there's all those sorts of issues. Whereas, I think that those vac sick days are good because you're saving those just for illnesses and stuff like that. Um, quick question. This might be Danny, but what's our policy on paying out vacation days versus sick days?

Great question. So, we we did So, again, I based sort of my recommendations on sort of all the accounts that I work with. So, vacation um we we'll pay out uh you know, unearned um uneared unused vacation when they leave. I believe it says in good standing. I'll have to double check that when we get there.

Um so if somebody's terminated, etc., then I'm going to get paid that out cuz we have the right to do that as a public sector. The the private sector does not. And then um what we did what we did change under the so your current sick buyout, if you will, you know, when you leave, um you didn't get um any kind of

a buyout until you were here, I think 10 years. So it was the original one. It was um and so we we changed that from one year to 15. It's a like you get a third um 15 or more but less than 20 this has not changed. You get half then 20 or more but less than 25 you get 2/3 and then 25 or more you have all

of your acred unused sick days. Yes. With maximums. So there's maximums. In other words, you can't just you know acrew to infinity and just super healthy for 30 years. So you can pay extra years for and part of the you know part of the the other challenge I think that co also taught us was we don't we also don't want people coming to work sick even if they want to come to work sick we have management has the right to send people home yeah and have them use their sick time because that's what it's there for um to you know hopefully not infect anybody else. Um, sorry for jumping on here, but one other question with the family medical leave. Y,

uh, my understanding of that policy is that it's not going to be people's entire wage. It's going to be a portion of it. So, correct. And what you'll do with your sick time. So, the law, I'm sorry if anyone's listening from the state, but the law, you know, why why we didn't sort of follow similar laws in the state of Maine, but we decided to just, you know, go crazy with it. So, um, so what happens is the employer really has no control over whether somebody's eligible or not because the state is going to have to determine whether they're eligible. And if somebody has earned six time at least six times of the state average weekly wage for the prior year, then they'll be eligible. That's something the employer gets involved in because we don't know um we won't know that information.

Six times what the state average weekly wage which currently is. So, that's also part of the benefit. So, the benefit um if you're a high salary earnner, the most you're going to get each week if you're out on that event is whatever the current state average wages. And right now, I think it's $1,144, but it changes every July. So, um but if

you're if you make less money, they did this sort of different formula, which I can't even recite cuz I my brain can't really wrap around it very well. But essentially, you almost get a a higher a benefit more equal to what your current pay is if you earn less.

That was my understanding. That is if you're on the lower wage scale, you're going to be close to your take-home wage. There's a threshold where you can't go above. So, it doesn't set up so you can say, "I'm going to take a leave and make more money than I was making." but also from like a it's not going to be equal for some folks because it's going to be a diminished wage from what they're off. That was my understanding.

Yes. And what's new too in this law? So the old sort of family medical leave act and the main unpaid family medical leave allows an employer to say during the time that you're out you can't acrew any time. But this new law says you can't do that. You have to allow them to continue to acrew their time while they're out. And you also can't make them use their acrruels. However, we're all sort of on the same mindset. We would recommend to an employee, hey, if you want to make yourself whole, you know, between the check that you're going to get from paying medical and your sick leave across, you can certainly do that up to your regular base rate. So, nobody double dips, nobody gets extra pay, etc. Um, so that's and just for purposes of um I'm devel I've just about finished

developing an FMLA and we'll talk about this here. The FMLA, the unpaid family medical aid and the paid family medical leave a leave a leave a going to be required to review and they're going to intersect. So, it's the policy that I'm creating. Um, and Luke, um, the

commissioner of paid family medical leave has reviewed my policy as well as, uh, a labor attorney. And as soon as we have a couple other pieces together, then you got, everybody will have this policy. It'll probably be in an appendix because it's probably going to be 75 pages long. Yeah, I'm joking. It's probably going to be six pages long though because whether or not workers comp offsets and you have to then still apply for paid family medical leave, whether or not you have short-term disability. So, there's a lot of moving parts to this law that I don't think, you know, we all really understood until now we're in the weeds of it. So,

but I think it's really awesome that we're doing this now because when people are in a situation where they're trying to maximize that off, it's usually something very serious has happened. Correct. And they want to know how we can make this work. And when you talk about that like culture of knowing that we know how to make this work and this is what you can do and also for just planning for back filling that's really helpful for us.

Yeah. And there's one big provision. There's one provision in the state of Maine law that's not. So I think there's 17 16 or 17 other states in the country that have a paid family medical leave program, but Maine is the only one that has an undue hardship clause in it, which um we all don't think that's probably going to be a thing because how that will operate is let's just say that somebody comes to Calvin and says um I have to have knee surgery in February and we know that that's like a snowstorm month, right? The employer has the right to say that could, you know, significantly impact our operations. Can this person move their knee surgery later? But the decision maker is their doctor. So I can't imagine any doctor's going to agree to postpone a surgery.

So you can engage anymore, right? So we're not thinking that that's really and even the commissioner is not thinking that's really going to, you know, pan out to anything. But I just wanted to So the undue hardship clause would be on the employer saying this would bring undue hardship. Correct. Yeah. I don't see that.

Yeah. So So there will be after this gets approved or whatever that policy will be added in when we're done with it. We're just not there yet. Okay. Just on another topic, I was surprised to see that we have people take off on their birthday. So that's a new that was a new um perk and again trying to stay competitive without you know right now we're also not the wages aren't really needed

um in most positions and so I know that that's a longer discussion and more work um etc. Um go ahead. So, well, that was my idea, right? And the reason why that was my idea is cuz I believe the town feels like they can't compete with the Lisbons and the free ports cuz it's been said, right? So, it's like, okay, how do we get creative then to attract people? And that was just one that came on.

And that would only be so some places do have birthdays on in public sectors, but how they run theirs is you can take it off the week of your birthday or oh, I'm going to be on vacation. Can I take it next week? This is truly like if your birthday lands on a Monday, then you have been then you can have that off. You're not if someone lands on a weekend then you don't get it off until a year

in this case on Friday even right you'd only get you get your birthday off if it lands on a day that you're already scheduled to work right correct um how to do this for you know the January 17th birthdays you're going to have a snowstorm it's a person who plows and they say well I know that you and come in work and they don't it's not a floating day. So for them it's just didn't work out this year.

Correct. Yeah. That's how it's Mhm. That's how it's proposed right now. Right. Correct. And ultimately you decide. Yeah. Cuz part of it is almost like moving adding a personal date in the birthday could be I'm thinking out loud. But

Sure. just point of thinking because it's I mean and the two I mean I do think so the employees had an opportunity I don't know if you said that they had an opportunity to look at this handbook and ask any questions and um you know things

that they sort of I don't want to call it a wish list cuz that's not what it is but I think most of the employees felt this was a really good um improvement from what they had received and I don't think there's you know a lot of so we'll talk about kind of the insurance buyout too get there real quick. Um, under 4.6,

uh, 4.8, there's just a new thing in there about how to how to come to work. Um, you know, your appearance. Um, gone are the days that we have lists of what you can and can't wear in a handbook that that can um, prove to be disastrous. Um, so we just have a regular standard of cond appearance. I've seen some handbooks telling the difference what male versus female employees are wearing. Like what is this thing? I know. Yes. Yes. Um certainly there are guidelines, but that's again that's what I like about the onboarding process is that's when the department head says to their new employee, this is what we you know what's acceptable in our department to where um to work. So um so gifts, gratuitities, conflicts of interest, you had the you had this in here. It's just more up to-date wording of that. Um I probably should have said updated, not new. um uh outside employment. That's a new uh policy. It's in a lot of the handbooks

now. And B, and I don't know maybe if you guys have that or not, but it's basically saying that if you're a full-time employee for the town of Durham, that's your primary job. And if you do decide to get a second job, you know, you you need to notify the town manager. So, for example, if somebody um you know, right now you work, you have Fridays off, right? So if somebody decided to go get another job, which often times people do on a Friday, but um then you switched back to, you know, 5 days a week. So it it's just a matter of making sure that folks understand that if things change within the town and your full-time employment that it may impact your your secondary job. Um, and just to to ensure that folks understand also, you know, if you if you had somebody who, you know, was a bartender at night and they stayed up until 2:00 in the morning and they couldn't function during work, it wouldn't necessarily,

you know, say you can't work that job, but it would be that's a performance issue, you know, so, right? or if their certain job falls on a Friday and it's a social, right? Then they got to be on the job, things like that.

I thought it was pretty strong language saying you're basically required to talk to us if you've got a second job. Um, but I understand the need for it and why we want Jerry or the department had to have a conversation with the employee on that.

Um, we have never had that be a problem before and I I agree with you. I I feel like but I think people particularly that work for municipal government understand that and one of the reasons why a lot of people love the the 4-day work weeks is because they're they have the ability to do excavation work or whatever they want on the weekends. But they all do understand that their primary job is their full-time job of the town.

When you said the employees looked at the handbook, was it all the employees that or just the office employees? I'm not sure if Calvin shared it with his staff, but all the office employees. I thought he did. He probably

when I see this, I I see it as being before your explanation there, I'm still thinking through it a little bit. I see it as being pertinent if it's outside employment that could be considered like competitive with us. So, like if someone's working for Lisbon on Fridays or something like that, it does feel strong for me to have to come in and say like, "Oh, yeah, I uh do a little roofing on Fridays for myself or for somebody else." Yeah. Or something like that. Cuz it's sometimes I feel like where do we draw the line between like employer not crying too much about what people are doing their free time and stuff like that, you know? And I think it's more of like just letting them know because like it's and again reminding people like that's right because I've never seen any sort of town manager say oh like it's more about like

your explanation there fixed it for me but when you said you know this is to let you know like yeah sure but just so you know your your role here requires you to be here on Friday you got to plow I suspect years ago when this policy sort of became popular there was there were a lot of issues with that because usually that's what happens when policies created

and it's really about liability, right? Yeah. So if somebody tries to pull that, we say, "I don't know what you did in the handbook." It wasn't in the handbook. Yeah. So we'll go through the standards of conduct. Um again, so political activity, that's just a new that's a standard. Um there's called an incomp in incomp incompatibility clause in the state of Maine where you can't um be an employee and serve in a certain capacity on a board or elected official. I don't know all the ins and outs but um that's out of the statute in Maine. So that's in the political activity offduty conduct basically really tells us that we are public employee representatives of the town of Durham and that's sorry I have a question political activity when I look here um

talks about like town employees shall not reference or otherwise use their employment position with the town in furtherance of others any such activities. So does that even include if someone's speaking and saying I work in municipal government and this is what I think is great or bad and when contributing towards a political dialogue or something like that.

Is that the last section of that? Yeah. and political activity. The fourth one where it says town employees shall not reference or otherwise use their employment position with with the town in the furtherance of any such activities where they're during or outside of work hours whether within or outside the scope of their employment unless taking any personal political viewpoints

as if it's the town of John. Yeah. So what I'm asking for that is like if someone's cuz you know when people are at political activities they're saying I do this for work and this is my experience on how this policy is going to impact right does that mean that an employee can't say I'm a town manager or I'm a town clerk or I'm a town code enforcement officer and this would be a terrible policy for for us

yeah so that's a great question that language was actually just that was the language added by the attorney this one okay um so we can we follow up with that because that's a great question. Um, do you want to because I know we get I know I'm getting into the new the nitty-gritty here. It's not like someone saying,

"Oh, I work for the town of Durham and if this new policy went through it would be terrible for our town staff." But at the same time, when people are talking about politics, what do you do? How is this going to affect you? I just want to make sure we're not infringing on people's

sense. That's one of the things like when you're posting on the all things journal and someone would say this is my personal view, not my staff member view. I think that's what Yeah. And I'm just trying to get a little clarity there, too.

Yeah. Um, great question. We'll follow up with the attorney on that. That was that was brand new language yesterday. Um, okay. And then uh so expected conduct um that basically is our non-bullying policy and so I so lawyers conflict in this and so I it was a non-bullying policy and then the other attorneys have said really we want to call we don't want to call it bullying we want to call it expected conduct. It has something to do with the potential legality of bullying. Right now bullying is not illegal like discrimination and harassment is. um it may be someday, but it it just really goes into further sort of expectation of that type of behavior that's not tolerated. And so I find that to be one of the most popular um

uh violations of policy in the workplace and so it's good to have it in here one way. So I I have a question about this because shouting in public, private, use seamless gestures or stuff like this. This is talking about ex acceptable or unacceptable behavior in the workplace. Our staff workplace is often populated by people who don't work there who may be participating in activities like this. Does that come into play of where you are allowed to ask someone to leave saying, you know,

I have the expectation that I don't get sworn at and yelled at at work and you're swearing and yelling at me on the other side of the counter. You need to leave. I'm sorry. Yeah, great question. So, so obviously this is an employee handbook. It's not, you know, you can't force, you know, the public to adhere to it. But what the town manager has every right to do and I always encourage that when I do my trainings with folks is that you should not tolerate that behavior and you should be able to you tell somebody that I'm not going to listen to you swearing at me um it violates our policy and then usually the town manager gets involved. So absolutely um very important and we just had training here and we um a few several months ago and we talked about that too. So um

great question. All right. So then just updating the policy for uh discrimination, harassment, updating uh there are new sort of um you know protective classes that we had to update. Uh whistleblower protection that's just a it's not a new law. It's just new in the handbook. Um then the discipline and grievance procedure is pretty common. Um that's been updated. um licensing and training um licensing and certifications. Just making sure that people who are required to have certain licenses for their jobs, they have to keep them um you know valid. They have to take their classes to make sure that they remain valid.

Sorry, before licensing there, um the technology use and social media policy. That's later. Oh, sorry. I thought we she said whistleblower and then I think that's the appendix. Yeah, that's the appendix. We're not there to the technology use part. I thought you said that. I'm sorry.

I No, I do talk fast. I apologize. Yeah, cuz I heard you say 5.10 and then we went to the next section. I thought you skipped over. Um, so let's see. Uh so now we get into the employee leave. So um you had already observed Junth. We just added in the handbook uh cuz it wasn't in the old one. Um you know there was sort of vague like you know the select board reserves the right to modify holiday schedules when the holiday lands on the weekend. It just makes it much easier when you just spell it out.

Just to clarify with Junth that is a recognized holiday by the state of Maine. Correct. Correct. Okay. Just making sure everybody knows that. Yes, absolutely. Patriots Day. Not every other state recognizes Patriots Day too,

right? Patriots Day I think is only made in Massachusetts, right? Yeah. But definitely that and that that sort of snuck stuck up on folks cuz when they enacted that it was it was literally I think 2 weeks before the holiday. So towns were really scrambling in terms of what what do we do? We're not you know I'm sure it wasn't just towns that were scrambling too,

right? It just when people make comments about it just so that people know that it is actually a recognized holiday by the state of Absolutely. Yes. Yeah. Um the birthday we discussed vacations. Sorry. Can we go over a little bit more? We said we had originally talked about the policy of the select shuffle a holiday to recognize if it falls on a nonwork day. And looks like you have a little bit that written out here.

Yeah. So we have in general if a holiday if a regular holiday falls on a Sunday the following Monday is considered a holiday. If on a Saturday the preceding Thursday or Friday depending on the employees regularly scheduled work week will be considered a holiday. Um the town manual shown prior to the start of a new calendar year holiday scheduled to all employees for that. And so this is where we one of the conversations that we have had in the past is you know um this is a holiday that falls on a Friday but the town office is closed Friday. Do we recognize that holiday for the employees? And if if we do so do we recognize that on Thursday before or Monday after and then the sticky would get there. Thursday is our long day. So that's people rely on that evening to come into the town office. And so my read of this is that essentially at the beginning of the year the manager will say this is the holiday schedule we're

recognizing make those adjustments based off of the upcoming year and probably you probably run it through talk to tell us what it is and that sort of stuff. Yeah. And I mean I think that's a good I think that's a good thing to discuss because because that is your longer day. Um the other alternative would be in other words, you know, most of the towns that have 4 day and this is another sort of a new thing for towns. Um going to a 4-day work week has been huge for folks and but it took a long time to get there. So I would say probably in the last 5 to 8 years is when towns started doing you know the 4 day and so many towns will observe the Friday holiday on the Thursday in other words close the office. Some towns do though depending on operations and the situation of the town will um still be open on Thursday but pay the person for the holiday. Yeah, because I know some employers who do that, you know, I think like the

medical field where people have to work on that holiday, they don't get that holiday off. They get paid essentially a holiday while they're working. So, they get double time. How does it h how does it work with if there is uh road work or not road work

but like plowing taking place? How does that work? Yeah, right. Because they're public safety. But so they don't really I mean and that's where again I this is a good discussion to have because you can decide what's the best for the town that they're you know you do have kind of a unique you know the three days and then you have this long day Thursday.

I know like with my job I work for the fisheries and wildlife. If I'm working on a holiday I get a comp day or I can take pay in instead and there's an option you have you have to time it that way. So that's floating holiday is another one. All right. So if you're plowing Christmas Eve,

you get to take December 26th off if you want or you can take December 30th off whatever 29th. Yeah. So that I mean that's something I think you know really to kind of talk through a little bit. So the flu, you know, and I don't know how you feel about that, Jerry. It's just it go you know again it's sort of all over the place. Um, but I I just know towns like

will observe that Thursday. Um, I I'm thinking of Burough right now. So, they have a they have a schedule, but I think their schedule is Monday through Thursday all consistent hours, you know. Yeah. And this came up specifically this year with Junth. We we recognize the holiday and so then the time the office closes Thursday when we're talking about this you know being one maybe we need a policy where if it's on a Friday we recognize it the following Monday you know the shorter days I I don't know we don't necessarily have to hash this out at this moment either

let's make a note of that just to like cuz that is a good how many how many holidays fall on Friday yeah I mean not many fourth of July I, you know, can right Christmas, New Year's, Yeah. So, Friday anyway. Yeah. So, there probably aren't a lot like much more many more Monday holidays seems to be, right? So, um, maybe just kind of talk through that and it may just looking at the year ahead and said when do we have a situation that might and then one thing is if we're looking the year ahead like a sign can live on the front window that these are the days the office will be closed this week you know and then when you get closer you put the holiday theme sign that says that but then just cuz we we are aware that like like and Josh you brought this up like when when it's closed to Thursday for some people like that 2 hours after work is when they were planning on going, you know, so

that's the day I went, right? I saw you on a Thursday Thursday evening at like what 5:30. But at the same time, I think one thing's interesting about us is we kind of have one cohort of employees which are our office and admin staff and then the other cohort which public works. It's like the snow decides when you work, you know, and so but I still want people to be equally like credited there. What do we have? 12

days off, you know, cuz that's when I think about, you know, that recruitment retention. How many days off do I get for vacation? How many holidays do you have? Oh, I have Patriots Day Junth. I'm not used to getting that one. That's an extra two days.

That starts adding in, you know. No, that's a great point. And I do like I mean for public safety in particular there's typically like a you know like like a floater if they want to take the day or something to that effect. Um

you know the other thing that happened that people went nuts about I think it was last year that 4th of July was on a Thursday. I don't know. I just remember like the week of the state of Maine decided I think it was the state of Maine that decided to also close that Friday. So they they had a Thursday, Friday, whatever it was. And then all the towns like then everybody wanted that. So then some and just people

Yeah. There's been a couple of polies the last couple years when it landed on a Thursday, it was announced like two weeks before, oh you all can non-essential get Friday off too, right? And then they said, well, what's the town's doing? You know.

Yeah. So I I do remember that happening. So it would be good to kind of put that out at the beginning of the year and see how that that works for you folks. So great questions. Um well I think we're we let's just read through it again in the interest of time just making sure that there's not an unintended consequence and maybe um you know just in that lens I think look at it again. Um

It's okay. So under vacation, we changed the first year of employment of 40 hours acrewed to now. So gone are the days where people a lot of towns weren't giving you weren't allowed to use vacation time time for the first year there. That's gone away. Um and even during um you know even during vacation time I mean I mean uh probationary time. So the other law that came into play in 2021 was the earn paid leave law and that really should not have affected municipal government because that law said um you know for

every 40 hours worked you earn one day you know 8 hours up to a maximum of 40 hours of paid time off a year. Well, that was great for private sectors who didn't offer any paid leave, but then we had to contend with that because the law also had these um stipulations in that they would have to be able to use it within 120 days of hire. And when people said, "Oh, you can't use your time until after 6 months. It wasn't compliant with the law." So a lot of the towns just went reverted back to you know typically you acrew and it's really up to management to decide whether or not you can have a day off. I mean there's a there's a request you know process. Um so so that's sort of from the very beginning they can request a vacation day. Um whether or not you know it's approved that's that's a department issue. Um, we talked about PTO. Um, I removed the ability to borrow time. I never think that's a good

practice. Um, so got rid of that. Um, we've just added the EPL. So, the earn paid leave. That's what that means is that it's it now that your vacation time meets all the requirements of the earn paid leave law. So that that 40 first 40 hours of vacation time is essentially deemed during pain for purposes of that law. It's not additional time off.

Who's managing all this? Do you do you helps us. crazy. So, so we added the two person two personal days. Uh, victims of violence leave. That's another component. Right now, it's a state law that you, you know, you have to allow someone to have unpaid leave, but in the new paid leave law, that is going to now be paid. So, that will also be updated once we have that policy where it needs to be. Um, non-medical leave of absence, that's just, you know, hey, I have an opportunity to go to Africa for 3 weeks. Can I take it on vac? You know, and Jerry says yes or no. Essentially, that's what that is for. Um, your winter operations and call. So,

sorry, real quick. Which page is this? [Music] And so, um, does it say that the employee employer is entitled to that non-medical leave or is an option to ask? Like, I got picked to be on survivor. Can I go? Right. afraid. I don't know.

Yeah. And it was a match. Yeah. You never know. You never know. So you can absolutely. And so what would happen in that case is you wouldn't that's when you would not acrew any time. You would have to pay your full health insurance benefit for that month. Like that's what it says.

This just establishes that you can ask and be told yes for that or no right now might be. Yeah. Yeah. That's really and a lot of unpaid leave problems. We lose Survivor and Right. We have a survivor winter in town. So Oh, we do.

That's exciting. Um, so winter operations and call Oh, I did change call out to call back because Kristen attorney was confused about the lingo. So it's not changed in here, but I think we said call out, call in, and call back in the same paragraph. So, we just basically made sure it was consistent. What we did, and what Calvin really wanted in here, too, um, was to include mandatory work on bulky bulky waste day.

Oh, yes. Um, and and that's that would be paid at time and a half, but so that everybody understands a requirement of their job. Yeah. Um, that was an issue this year. Right. Mhm. Um the snow policy, we basically updated that, called it a sto, you know, a storm policy because it could be a non snow related situation, right?

Um um sorry, I'm such a pain right now. Can we just put a star there to come back to that? That building allowance seems pretty well to me. Um you know, I was thinking about that. Where where is that now? clothing works 200

200 for boots and 200 for pants right so they get $400 total um good quality work boots 300 plus you know we actually just adopted a new policy because of the cost of boots you know and you can't get diesel smell out of anything so pants I

Yeah so I'm wondering if you could also include I I've not seen it broken out like this either where it's says like your pants are $200. Like if you could have one clothing boot allowance, one bucket of money that you know if you buy cheaper pants and you want more expensive, you know, you could do, you know, let's just say $600.

Yeah, I just we don't have to do that right now, but I just wanted to flag that. Okay, great. Thank you. Um know this this is always a challenge but I think we have it a pretty good because everybody was the same weight before so your stepmother was the same as your

Yeah. This what you have in here is good. Yep. Paid family medical leave. Again, we we have a blurb in there that just talks about the the contribution, you know, requirement of paid family medical leave and we will have the full policy when I get that done. Section 9 benefits. So,

um, something that I felt was pretty low and it's kind of a low hanging fruit for the town in my opinion is that if somebody does have a, um, an eligible health insurance, so if you if your employee is married to a school teacher, for example, and they have their health insurance benefits with the school teacher, there's typically an insurance buyout. And usually, you know, it it's a percentage of whatever like a single coverage plan is sort of, you know, received every week or bi-weekly, however you're paid. So, we I I did recommend the 50% of the single plan um to for that to be increased. Um it's taxable benefit for the employee. It's not, you know, like when you pay your premiums, that's a pre-taxed, you know, benefit, but when you take a cash out um in, you know, it's a tax, it's taxed. Um, but I I felt that your cash input was fairly low.

Yeah. So for folks watching, my understanding of this is that if we are budgeting for a position, the full expense that we budget for includes that person taking family coverage. And that might cost the town $5,000 annually for family coverage. If that person does not take any coverage, we now say they're getting 50% of that $5,000 as payment taxable income. It's still saving us $2,500 on the top of the total. Um,

it's 50% of the single% of the single. So most single coverage, do we do you have those numbers? I do. So the single off is $15,477 a year. Mhm. So it would be the family is 34,000, right? And so how many employees do we have that would be eligible? I think that you have two, don't you?

We have one. Just don't And so today we don't do that. Today we give them 1200. Yeah. Yeah. But like most think we can most towns will get you know you're still going to say you know you're not paying that money right or budgeting for it. So that was my recommendation,

right? And my understanding is that you know the position comes with benefits because you might not need all the benefits doesn't mean you shouldn't get some of that benefit and that's to remain competitive. But you know I get it

and that's another sort of recruitment tool too and retention tool for that matter. Um so why I say eligible is if somebody's on um Medicare they're not it's not eligible. So there are it has to be sort of a group eligibility plan. So it's usually if another

partner or whatever has insurance they have they are credit show proof that they're every there's a form for that card. Yes. Did you say we currently are doing 70% seven that was that's why so budgetary wise yeah this is a budget we can't we can't adopt this right now in the budget. What is this?

I mean, we need to make a list of everything in here that's everything in here that requires uh process support like you need to make a procedure on how you're going to do certain things and what's that going to cost us to put all that together. I think there's a handful of things in here that requires

budget an HR a budget and like an HR procedure. How we going to manage these records? Who who remembers to send the annual Please let us know what your coverage is elsewhere. So we don't just scatter just scattered throughout this. There are, you know, a lot of things to manage.

Well, but we're doing that now, right? It's kind of a dayto-day stuff. But what you could have though is what what and again it's I I developed this very insane checklist for municipal government which talks about every little thing you have to do when you're you know so I don't I don't think I've sent it to you yet. We'll have to amend it for for Durham. But essentially it goes through every little thing that you have to manage

making sure we're complying correct and and prove it. Will you have it? I'm sorry. You're not my secretary, but I have my paper with me. Okay. Okay. Um, so life insurance, there was this premium cap paid by the town, which I really didn't understand, so I removed it. It would be in the old one. So that's what has been removed. Um

really quickly about this. You currently have um uh participating local district is PLLD. So teachers have mainstate retirement. They're mandatory but PLLD municipal government non-mandatory it's voluntary. But when they sign up for mainstate retirement you have plan A which that means no COLA when you retire. an AC plan is with a cola. Um,

and so not every town, and I didn't get the I can get the data, but some of the towns that I work with have gone through the process to change it to an AC plan. It will cost the town more money because the rates that the employee contributes and the employer contribute are are a little bit higher. And I think I looked it up briefly and I think it's like a 1 and a.5% higher. um right now I mean it just every year their their rates change and so you're sort of a slave to those rates. Um the other thing that right now

you do make your main per you make main mandatory here everybody has to take it. What I would suggest to save you some money and to to make it a little bit more palatable for employees is to allow them to either take mainstate retirement or have a mission square um plan which

is um like a almost like a 401k but in municipal world and then have you either take one or the other and if you take this mission square the town would contribute let's just say 6%. That's what a lot of towns do. And that allows a couple things. If you hire a younger person, my son ran into this. Um, you had to take mainstay retirement and it was too it's too it's very expensive for a young person to just have to contribute all that much money into a retirement plan when they may not want to start it for 10 more years. So,

16% or something like that, right? Is it like It depends. The fire department's up to 12 13%. Um, and right now I think it's nine and like I don't have the numbers in front of me, but if you looked up main state retirement, you can see the the rates, the current rates. I'm just saying it would and again it would cost the town only to develop the plan. So I think it's I want to say it's $200 or $400 to set up a plan for the employees and then they have that option to be able to choose either or. Um, and that way, you know, it just gives that more flexibility and it also would save you some money if somebody decided, you know what, municipal government isn't probably going to be my lifelong or I or I come later in life and I decide I've always had a 401k. I'd rather have, you know, a 401k through municipal government rather than join mainstate retirement. At least you have that option and most towns provide that

option. So, if you are interested in getting that more information, I'm happy to provide it to folks. What about the social security? How does how does that work? Like if you have someone that comes in that's been on social security and they're older and they want to stay on it. Whereas now we when you sign or they sign a 218 form or something,

right? But now they've removed that. That's a very new law where you you are paying into social security. Your employees should be paying into social security now. That they dropped that um windfall provision. Is that what we're talking about? Right. That's very new. So I we should double check.

Wait. So I thought even with the windfall draw, people who were in main pers aren't paying into social security that the windfall just meant that they could receive the full benefit for all of the years they contributed. Cuz like right now someone has 40 years in a 401k and paid in social security forever and they come work for us in retirement.

Once they're invested at five years, they're they now are not eligible for their entire uh social security benefit. But that's what I thought changed. I thought that they weren't still paying in, right? But I also think it's it's also spec it's also dependent on what plan you have to in the PLLD. So, and I'm not

a retirement expert. I'm just I'm just know from sort of other places. Um, so I that would be something that we would want to confirm, but at the very least right now you're paying you're requiring everybody to join mainstate retirement and you're paying that contribution rate which is high

and the employees paying a high contribution rate. I'm just saying if they decide and probably maybe 75% of your employees will decide or 80% will decide um to join mainstay retirement but you'll still have those few people that will take that other option. you'll still contribute toward you know that that plan but not to the extent

well I think this is an important point to consider especially when we're thinking about highly specialized skill sets who might be doing this in a post you know first career setting committing to main pers at that point could be a deal breaker um for the job so I think it's worth exploring those options

you also when you set up a 401A you can you also set set up 457b and I want to go into great detail but the if somebody joined may retirement they could still contribute to a 457b there would just be no contribution on the employer side employer only contributes to one or the other so it's definitely something you want to consider because I think it'll benefit everybody around um

uh just added the employee assistance program uh in there that comes with your main employee health trust Excuse to do a follow-up session on this retirement options so we can have a session to go through it in detail? I think we need to have a follow up on a few different points here. I think

this is what I think we should do is we'll make a list of what we have to do and we should probably work over. Yeah, because at this point we're talking the holiday And especially the things they have a fiscal note that need to be budgeted.

Absolutely. lengthy sort of compensation performance evaluation section. So we just made it a little I don't love having like the whole process written on an employee handbook cuz those things can change. And just to say that, you know what I recommend during a six-month probationary period always, oh, what I forgot to say to the public also is that during a six-month probationary period, the town can separate with an employee without due process. However, um you can't you you it's not good practice to never have a conversation with the employee at 5 months and 3 weeks you say we don't want anymore. Right? So, um I like people checking in at 2 month and 4 month with written documentation and then um you know going that route in case you do you know it's not working out. Um and then an annual or I I'm actually recommending most people hate performance appraisals and most people hate doing them. I rather would see

something more along the lines since it's typically in municipal government not tied to any money. um have more of a check-in every six months with a questionnaire of like how do you think things are going? How can we develop you? Um you know what are things you can work on and having a more of a conversation. So we didn't put any process on here.

Is there any form that you provide or anything like that for those six month checkins just to Okay. Yeah. Because I just think what's really important for employees too is being able to say here are some places I want to grow and at least writing down maybe I want to learn more about ETB registration.

You think that you would think the state or GB or some place to have just like a best practices way for municipalities to deal with this type of thing and it would just be a common process. Here's the form you can find on the main page or something. there sound seems like you know it's an important feature and why not all of us kind of march in the same

that's a very great question I will say that's a very good question but typically in Maine and I can say it because I've lived here my whole life mayor's like their own Oh yeah four generations we just want to do it different to be the main way

yeah yeah so um okay safety is just a new again if you have I forget do you have Um maybe MMA. So either with MMA or anyone else if you have a safety policy in your handbook, you get a credit. Um not that we're just putting in there for that reason. It's also we follow it, but it's always good to have a safety policy in there. Um, fitness for duty requirement is new. Meaning if an, you know, if somebody sees that somebody is not physically capable of doing their job, they the employer has a right to send them for a fitness for duty. Maybe that they've developed some sort of disability over time and that we have to kind of talk about how that's going to work going forward. And so that's an important piece of and that's just because I mean I know we're required to make reasonable accommodations. what this is saying because I've worked places where someone had suffered a stroke or something like that and they

didn't want to act like it was impacting their job and finally someone said hey this is impacting your job but we can make it work for you and kind of took the pressure off them at that point. Yeah absolutely you know you know often times and you know my husband was a farmer uh and and now he's been in excavation he's 62 years old and like he can't you know if if he gets to the point in his you know that he can't physically perform his regular job. Same thing with sort of a lot of these physical jobs. Then we've got to have those discussions about like how can we sort of re, you know, is it early retirement? Is it like those conversations? But we got to have a medical document to be able to, you know, have that state that um workplace violence protection is not a new policy. It's just new in your handbook. Uh drug-free workplace policy has been updated. Can

I ask a question about that? as a former former drug prosecutor. Uh the uh you list the federal control substances act which is different than the main statute. Yep. Uh and federal statute includes marijuana. Yeah. Which the issue we have in our life cases is you know it stays in your system.

Right. So under this statute, under this policy, off time, can I be in the system? How do you determine? So that Yeah, great question. So the state of Maine has said that we don't have to have a separate state of main policy if you already have a CDL policy. you just have to refer to. So, in other words, your CDL folks have to can't can't like, but your other folks can.

Um, so I think this is written the right way, but I'll double check because this is the sort of common, you know, you can't I I think when we when we listed out all of the drugs that was in the in the substance abuse policy that is specific to CDL versus the nonCDL

drug and I think in this one is it on Josh is your question. My my question is essentially there's the paragraph that says being under the influence of illegal drugs, alcohol or substance of abuse on the town's property is prohibited. One of the issues we run into is how do you know when somebody is under the influence and it's not defined here.

So in in practice, not in policy. So MMA provides a couple times a year you should have at least one or two people on staff that have gone through the um reasonable suspicion training through MMA and they're the you know they're obviously not law enforcement but that's that's them allowed to be the the people that can predict they go through a training in terms of whether or not somebody feels like um they're impacted by you know by an impairment. of whether

or not you should have a couple of trained people in the town that go through that training to be able to determine whether or not there is reasonable suspicion. Is that is that your question? I mean, I just don't like the way I just don't like it. I mean, to to me, there's a lot open because, you know, uh I run

on the treatment court in Andro County. Um, we had somebody who had normal in your system seem like forever. Uh, you know, you get somebody who just doesn't like that person. Why won't you go get tested like that and it's in your system?

Yeah. If it's above a certain level, which is fairly low, you're under the influence. Um, and so, so I don't think that, and I'm I am very curious to like I want to read through that again because I I completely understand what you're saying. And you really can't you really can't send somebody for drug testing unless there is a real real documented reasonable suspicion. And so then that become again

that becomes a potential that's why you just don't have anyone say hey I think so and so like smells like whatever and you act on that you can't act on just somebody saying something they have to have the appropriate so my my question there kind of with Josh is so like I not on practice I try

to be positive but with these things I think about worst case scenario you have someone who has the training they don't care for somebody else in the office and they say this person's behavior checks all the boxes now they need to go for a drug test person comes back and test positive for marijuana might not have participated in 7 days so they weren't under the influence but now they can say look I thought they were under the influence and now this person tested positive so does this cause for termination like that's like alcohol is different because it's like there's an easy test or yeah this person was above the legal limit I don't know. I would assume our workplace expectation is zero, not 008. But um you know, that's where it just I don't understand it. I know a fraction of what Josh has seen. So it's like I'm just curious.

Uh no, that those are great points. I again I think everyone's grappling with the the recreational use of marijuana period. I think it's it's it's definitely a hot topic and it's something that the medical that needs to to be continually discussed. These are these are policies that that that the lawyers have recommended that we put in here. But it doesn't mean I mean I'm not a person that just goes by that either. Like if it doesn't make sense, let's figure out what it doesn't make sense and make sure you know we can't

avoid every sort of worst case scenario, but we can do our best to try to do that. So I'm happy to look into that. I put this on our list of maybe talk more. I mean I mean it's just like you know we just had an OI trial where someone was on the influence of prescription medication.

Yeah. Which is which falls under the statute. I mean, yeah. Do they show up under the influence of the prescription medication? I mean, it's just again like I can't smoke marijuana in my job because it's still illegal under federal statute. Um, and so it just there are

things. Yeah. No, happy to have more of those discussions. Um, so yeah. and it's making it very difficult to get public. Oh yeah, 100%. It's terrible. That's that that's a killer. At some point federal will come come along, don't you think, with um you know there's so many states that now legalize it because that this is what's crippling our public works, you know, that and you know, pay and all of that. So, um

just cuts on some of that stuff. uh tobacco use I think is new just um and again I don't have the old one right in front of me but it's basically um talking about vaping um you know I think tobacco products in general um you know are prohibited personal use tobacco products in town hall or these vehicles as well as um anywhere on a town premises except in authorized or designated so a designated state law is that it has to be 20 ft away from uh or a door or window. So, I don't know how many smoke are here, but they have to abide by the the state law.

How does that work for smokeless tobacco? Huh? How's it work for smokeless tobacco or even no chewing tobacco? Chewing tobacco. Is this Yeah, that's this is alternatives like instead of seeing any tobacco products in town owned or leased vehicles. So,

and you know, some towns don't have that policy in there because a lot of their staff chew tobacco and it's a very very difficult habit to break. And if you're you don't want to have a policy that you can't enforce or you're not going to plan on enforcing, right? Um so again, that's sort of with the makeup of the town.

So my question too is like nicotine pouches that might not be for like you know I believe that would be acceptable. This is tobacco products not smoke not non-tobacco products. I mean, I took a look at this. Yeah. I mean, my only question is just cuz it's like you have non-tobacco products that have the nicotine content of tobacco things like smokeless tobacco pouches or nicotine pouches that have 10 milligrams of nicotine in it. Does that fall under this? Like

I mean technically that's a tobacco product. I don't know. I don't know under here. Maybe it is like I don't know. probably overink this too. Some of those patches too are used to help get the stop. So that's what's common. Um you know and again these discussions are great. I think they're but we're at some point sometimes we

you got to let it go, right? You go down a rabbit hole you can't get you know this isn't going to protect us from everything. It's going to give us guidelines and things to follow and then we will always have those unique um one-offs and we'll have to deal with them. Um workers comp is

just new in here explaining sort of what it is etc. This is also what we need to update once PFML paid family and medical leave is effective. That appendix A is family and medical leave. Again, that's going to be all updated based on my policy I'll provide. Now we're at the

technology and social media. Um, and that is this is a very updated uh social media policy because of the free speech public employer employee ability. It's probably not the same policy that you would have in a private. Yeah. My thing was there's nothing about use of artificial intelligence in here.

Yeah. And I just know on our side we there's a moratorum for six months until they developed a policy and it dictates things like AI use is appropriate if it's these tools if you're never passing it off as your own work. So you're still saying you know

this was looked over by a person or you know you cite it as assisting in generating images or whatever. I didn't know if that is necessary at the municipal level like we we're working on one again we're all in the sort of the same boat with how what's what's going to be okay and what's appropriate so we haven't even

there's collectively how very useful applications but at the same time right so that will be an appendex to the appendix yeah it'll probably be right it'll probably be either in B or a separate one once we have it all vetted out between um you know all the lawyers and everybody else.

I'm sure we're not the only impression you have to worry about policy. No. No. Um we really liked the employee expenses and use of town credit card because this this policy actually came out of situations where people were were pretty laxidasical about utilizing it and then people were using it for you know other things etc. So, um this is a pretty um

you know strict policy to follow which I think is important. Um there's a vehicle use policy in here that's that's um I don't believe new again talks about um you know if somebody you know takes a vehicle home etc. Um and then the final appendix E is

the substance abuse for the CDL driver. to get a copy of and frankly like for how we manage things, having 1 2 3 4 5 6 seven things to follow up on, it's not bad for for a document this size, you know. No, this is Yeah, this is great. And you know I what we tried to do is really like think about sort of you know the town of Durham and I don't know the town of Durham well but try to compare it a little bit with other you know we're not a city we're not but you know there are a lot of towns your size essentially that are you know following the same you know procedures and policies and that's why um I always like the attorney to view it um even though some of these policies have been vetted many times It's still always good to have a fresh set of eyes to look at it with the attorneys that you folks use. So, a local flavor.

Yeah. Right. Just a format issue. I'm wondering if I I work process at that works process. Um maybe we should put a header use a header on this template. So, on the top of every page, it says employee handbook with the date.

You should probably have Well, the other thing the the cover sheet should probably be your should and also your know, very durable related, but I like that idea. Thank you. This is a really well done. I mean, I read it over and I was I had a few things covered. I found one area where you didn't close a parenthesy. That was one.

I whispered my thank you. I love people really well. That's so great. I am not one of them. So I So I have a question for later. It's not so much so the coordinator, but of the towns that you work with, how many town managers would know that any result of these policies going to be able to put this book together by themselves?

Not many. Okay. I mean, the the the funny thing about a town manager is they're supposed to be the personnel officer. they're supposed to be like they have all of these names and they're really not like that. That's an impossible expectation for a town manager. So, um

and I'm certainly, you know, you could probably hire, you know, any other consultant. I just I I know that like if you don't have the right policies in place, they're it can it can be a huge liability. Yeah, that's the big bonus for us wanting to work with you is that our number one goal besides, you know, being fiscally responsible with our dollars is to mitigate risk and prevent issues. And this was a area that Jerry brought to us as human resources was a big area we at risk at with. So, this seems like a really great step to kind of solidify some of these questions. And also I think what's great about this is it's just nice as an employee I found when I work places to be able to look and read what the process is supposed to be rather than have to go ask a question maybe if it's in a question that I don't want my employer know I'm considering like what's my leave options and stuff like that but at the same time

having something to reference so if someone tells me no you're not allowed to do this I'll be like pretty sure I am or you know I think it's just it's helpful to have that you know available this is really as I mean not many people are like I'm really excited about the new HR policy but I am

that's good well I'm happy to to help out this is a great team effort and it took us some time but we wanted to get it right and ensure that it made sense for the employees to have one employee at least here that I I I'm hoping it's very beneficial for them just like because you know you do look at other towns and you know all that information is public. So, you know, it's it's good to to get to where we

and really appreciate, you know, the focus on where can we add in something that's beneficial but still reasonable for the taxpayer and all that stuff. Like that idea, Jerry, I think that was great that you're thinking that way like what can we do,

right? No, this was a good this I learned a lot. It's it can get complicated and I don't have the specialty in this this well public are so different and it was just very eye opening and I mean everybody had input along the way so it really was a group effort the last person was Kristen that gave him which is very helpful

so I'm you know it's getting wanting to get this done in the second month of my employment and um ending my third year and we're getting it done pretty happy about Yeah. So, well, do we have any more questions for Betsy? Uh the only again the only thing I would say is you know where in this handbook do we need to be sure we have some kind of compliance document written. So we are making sure that we follow this. Um

records on certain things where are those records kept you know the whole the whole you mean the process behind it behind the handbook not the whole not everything needs it but you know there are pieces of it that we need to just make sure we're doing.

Oh I see what you're saying. So the like the checklist, the process, whether it's a checklist or a a policy, a small policy that's a one pager that just says this is what we do to make sure we're complying to section 8. Yeah. I mean I think for the most part it's pretty processed driven in here but

we can look through it in that lens to say like where are like where does this live if it's not in here in terms of like for example I'll just use the you know ADA piece you know a reasonable combination we actually have the process some place some people don't put the process in it's written someplace else we actually have the process in here this is what you do if you come up to this situation Yeah. Or or s um like an

example if we're going to give all the employees evaluations mid year or we're going to do one month, 3 month and six month check in new employees. Where's the new employee list? Is there evidence that we've done that? Oh, sure.

So those are the check, right? So that's the checklist that that I was referring to. The checklist will also be signed by the employee and then an onboarding and put in a personnel file. Yep. So great, but we'll make sure that we have all that covered.

So I guess what are the next steps as far as getting together group again and handling this up? We've got some time cuz most of this won't take effect until Well, you guys So you guys are going to go back through so I guess we can work backwards from that, right? With your meeting and going through with that. Well, we want to know what you all want.

Yeah, I think we need from you to make that we Yeah, because we need So, for me, there's a few things that are just a policy discussion like our holidays and and those sorts of things. Um, but things have a fiscal note. We might need to get an idea of what that translates to throughout here. Now, I know we have to be sensitive. It's not like we're going to you're going to come and say these are four employees who are taking

not but saying if you could give us a this is what it looks like if every employee did it at because I know that initially we budget for the fully incumbent position but then once someone starts going forward we kind of just budget for what they've been taking um moving forward because we talked about that a little bit and so understanding that fiscal note there for some of those things. So, some of these sounds like you're already working on like the AI policy is something that's already being developed, but I think that maybe we need to have a workshop that talks about things that don't have a fiscal note and then a workshop that talks about things that do have a fiscal note.

You don't think we could bang that all out in one meeting? I mean, we could try. Yeah, cuz that isn't a whole lot, right? Well, I'm looking at what I see written down for us to follow up on our discussion about the holiday schedule. um you know, you're already working on the compensation charts, so I think that once you have those developed, that lateral transfer is is just a thumbs up. Um the dollar amount on equipment and clothing allowance for public works is something. The discussion on what we want to do on the retirement options, uh the insurance cost, and then um looping that birthday idea into holidays as well. So they call holiday leave. So um

those are what IC is having. Correct. And also your policy. Yeah. Uh oh, sorry. I had stats. Yeah. Reasonable suspicion training for the drug policy is one thing I had written down. So just making sure we're square there. But like on Josh's prosecutor brain that

So you and I will talk when we schedule that at some point. Keep up to date where we are. Yeah. Okay. But if there's things that we asked first tonight that you're all are like, I got to do a little bit of followup and homework to figure out why figure out the more details before you can answer that. Take that time first, you know.

Yeah. So like the mission, you know, if you're going to consider Mission Square or, you know, the plan versus the A plan. We'll get that all and everything everything you presented and everything you presented tonight at least for me as a this is an option you could consider sounds like something that enriches the employees experience here which is builds a better culture is something that I want to hear the details of and in the perfect world it be like yeah let's do it all but at the same time in the functional world what's it going to cost what's what's the added work that's where I want to kind of hear

what the perfect is and then we can kind of go from there So and are your work just for purposes of understanding are the workshops essentially this? Yeah, we would just put nothing we would have essentially it would be this but we have nothing else on the agenda so you don't have to wait through those things. It would just be hey we're signing the bills and the payable but at the we're just going to work on this only.

Would you like us to work on a wage table or do you want to be part of working on that wage table? I don't there's I I don't think you can get valuable input from me on a waste of our municipal workers. I think you know more than I

get a good one started. Yeah. Yeah. I think like we looked at I think you know what we present to them that then they folks can sort of ask any questions but you know I have a lot so I do a lot of union negotiations. So I I have all of that data

current all the time. Um, I I know the MMA is coming. You know, they have a deadline to have everybody put their salary information in MMA, but that's that's that's I haven't looked at it in a while, but that's never that's not always a great comparison because often times they plug in numbers that somebody that's worked there for 40 years and somebody that's worked there for two, you know, difference. So,

yeah, did a study and Gray did a great study. So, yeah, we have plenty of data. You're right. And then it will just be a matter of this is the recommendation for your town and you know go through that. Yeah. So yeah. Great. Great.

Thank you so much. Nice meeting you. All right. Uh other new business we have here before we wrap up. Jerry uh just email explain the grant opportunities for uh GP. Yeah. So George got an offer to apply for a grant to support authorization. It's a $75,000 grant on the local match that work with GP color. And really what that $75,000

would do is kind of seed money to kind of lay out a plan of developing a agriculture and alternative energy economic. He presented that info to us last. I thought we thumbs up. This is a different one. So, this is in addition. Yeah, it's a norainer.

Yeah. favor? Any opposition? Thank you. George was just saying it's amazing the amount of uh juice we've been squeezing out of GP this year. It's awesome. I like to think, you know, part of it I wanted to make sure you get credit here, Jerry. I think that you build a lot of confidence in GP that can deliver. And so I think that they see that and they know that in a time where they're being mindful of where they're investing their energy, they know that with the team we have here, we can bring things to fruition and keep the ball rolling. I think it's paying dividends for us. So I think it's a big testament to your leadership on this.

Thank you. All right. Hand report. Okay. So you know things in the office of work dayto-day stuff. I don't have a lot of information just just just some stuff that I want to share with you. So the boat that we had bid so it was only one bid

and it went for $3,888. There's only one bid. One bid. I know. Yeah. Think it was a a young kid from Boston. I was going to um the other thing I want to share with you. So every two years I have to fill out a uh municipal solid waste um report for the D. Um so what I do is

they ask a bunch of questions and I go in there and I put in what Cassella has for us for tonnage for the year and all that sort of stuff. Uh and then the clothes bin and they the state has this like goal of reducing household waste by 50% through

uh recycling, composting and that sort of stuff enclosed bin. So we're about 32% right now. We reduce 32%. No, we're at 32%. We're not at that 50% reduction of municipal soft waste to recycle. Sorry, I'm not understanding what you mean when you say we are at 32%.

Right. So that's 32% of what? Of our garbages through recycling and Oh, okay. So you're saying All right. And their goal is 50, but that doesn't capture at home composting. Well, right. It doesn't. Yeah, it's what we're collecting.

But some some municipalities have composting programs that you can you can get data from. So if you are doing it at home, you capture that data. But the clothesman I just wanted. So I called them up to see what we're getting. We're at at 3/4 of the year we had six tons of clothes like that.

Wow. So we're doing about two quarters two tons for every 3 months. So every year stage we give up eight tons. Now I don't think that's getting tossed out of garbage. I think most people take their clothes to good roll of water. But still that's pretty good. No, that's pretty good because you put a box at the side that you keep saying you're going to take to Goodwill and you forget and you finally just throw it out.

Yeah, it was kind of nice and it kind of brought us like to I'm taking a box from my house and it was like that doing that in the report. It brought us to like 30% not to 32%. Yeah, helps. But I think that reduction is a big part of the solid waste committee just like not putting things in the trash can saves us on time. Is there a deadline of meeting that 15%.

No, no, it's just a it's a goal they have. It's not it's not it's not a mandate, but they have a date of or a year of meeting that goal. so we're going to be switching our phone and internet companies. our contract with uh Comcast is up so we don't have to bid and uh we're gonna switch to

consolidated. We're gonna end up getting Fiverr and we're going to end up saving about 15,000 in five years. So it's we're saving just south of $300 a month. So that's going to be taking place fairly quickly. So we still but that's that's pretty good. Plus, we have better we have better faster. So, our streaming will be better. It will all be better. So,

switching. Will that be every building? Yeah. And it's um they can't tap the Eureka Center while they're at it. Do we have a timeline of the center? They they were just here. They We need an an actual electrical box upstairs in the Eureka Center. An actual one that's working. So, work on that back continue that get that. Jerry, are you keeping a list of the I'll call waste reduction the cost reduction things that you're doing throughout the year?

Um, you should if you're not I I know I I get it, but I'm didn't even have lunch until 3. So, I try to do what I can do every day, but I can add it to the list, but I can't promise you it's going to get done because I'm just I'm I'm as it is, you know? That's why I was like, you know, a little bit, you know, to check these boxes about that's like another job to do on top of we're we're pretty maxed out, you know, so it's there's a lot to to do.

We keep adding these little task and task and task. It's got to be laid out. 50. Yeah. Right. It's just I I get where you're a challenge cuz we want to be able to show your success. I I understand and I we know you're the consmate professional to put your head down and find savings.

Um but even if it's just at the end of the year if you have the time pulling up what contracts should I change like we know you every it seems like every meeting you're coming in I found a way to save 500 bucks here,000 bucks here 15,000 here and it's like that those nickels are adding up to dimes pretty quickly. We want you to get the proper credit for it.

I mean you can you can ask Jessica. I mean, I have employees saying that they're telling me stuff and I don't remember it and they're saying, "Well, we told you isn't, aren't they?" Yeah. It's like I'm smoked. I'm busy. I'm not trying to make an excuse. It's

it's a reason, you know. It's not um So, that that's a good thing. We're going to save some money there. Um so, GPCOG is all holding a public farm on LD1 1829. That's that housing that's uh going to be 25th in Scott. So George and I are going to attend to that cuz that's that's a game changer.

Yeah. Affordable housing and housing. So we'll keep we'll keep that. Um so and we may have someone to fill the P one of the PWA positions over right now. So we still have one left. Um, but I I do want to share some where we're at with that just so you just so you have a kind of an understanding why we're struggling, I think, or part of the reason. Um, and there's no employees names on this, but it kind of illustrates kind of like where we're at. So,

together in like 50 minutes. So what what you're seeing is employee one, these are our employees. This is the wage they're making and this is how many years they've been there. And these towns down here, the lighter ones, but the darker ones cuz folks probably travel to those locations. But these are actual job advertisements on the M's website. And these are the starting wages for them. So I kind of averaged them over here to the right. So if you call it if you call it $24 as an average starting, our employees are below that and they've got six and nine years here. So those are some of the things that we need to talk about later. That's we're we're struggling to to fill those seats. So, especially what we're hearing tonight, it's, you know, why hire someone who's never done it before when you can call over to neighboring municipality and say, "For an extra 10 minutes, you can make an extra $4 an

hour." And Calvin's nervous, you know, because when winter time comes, we need people in the those polish up. So, we think we have someone. We'll hope hopefully that works out. you know, the last couple they didn't last couple weeks. They one guy showed up, I think, two days and never showed up again. So, we have all that onboard cost and you do all that. I think

I think the rate of pay attracts the people you but anyway, I just want to share, you know, just to kind of get you thinking about that. Um, and that's That's about it. Um, things are going good. I mean, we're right in the middle of summer. Staff's doing great. They really It's a good It's a good place. It's a good

I mean, sorry, real quick to go back to this. Some of this right here, in some instances, this could be captured with a new policy around people who are taking or not taking insurance. You know, like that's some of this is where like when you're looking at wages, when you're thinking wage hourly, but also the total compensation discussions like what we had tonight. Well, if you're not taking health insurance, you get 50% of a single premium. That could be what keeps you intact, you know, especially if someone's good, you know.

Yeah. I mean, that could be what says, "Hey, you know what? maybe my spouse and I will go on their plan and I'm going to reject this because the economics makes some sense there, you know. Yeah. But it's just quick data and I think is your data is your kind of help you make those decisions. So that's pretty much it. incorrect that people. Oh, I will be going to the town main town city managers conference tomorrow in the morning.

Where's that long day? Yeah, they are long days because you do your conference sessions and then you hold them up all night. Yeah, that's Sunday. Yeah, they're good sessions. Really good. Oh, yeah. It gives me good time to network with folks and ask them questions. you staying up there.

Perfect. That's going to stay a long drive. We're just going to drink. Yeah. wanted to say um really happy to see this stuff moving forward. I know that this has been a topic of discussion a lot, but also I wanted to just recognize um the fire department. Uh since our last meeting, we had a a a brush fire in the woods

that was pretty colossal response in the middle of the night and the spot mostly in the dark. And I think the local municipalities have have we have great firefighters. Um but when people have to like go fight something that's not as common. This is the biggest uh uh brush fire or forest fire that chief has seen since he's been here. But, you know, the Forest Service showed up and the way they saw the town working with all the local support, um, you you would have thought that we were doing this every week, it was really smooth. And I also think that sometimes it's really important to highlight the um the the uh mutual aid we get. I think nine departments from the town from the surrounding areas sent staff to uh help fight that fire, you know. So, really impressive on chief there.

Yes. Yeah. Self-promoting there a little bit, but um Josh at this point. Thank you, Deb. Um just want to bring up we did have I don't know if it was an accident or something where road was closed. I have to remember the details, but it didn't come out on the text.

Oh, the rabbit road. Um rabbit and Route 9. Yeah, we haven't had many text things rec I think Jerry's explaining this to me as when they happen uh you know so I think I I don't know that's that's I'll let you speak I want to jump in real quick there that's a one one thing that's sticky with that is um like some of the incidents have involved minors and some of the incidents have involved um fatalities recently And uh I think that the

chief is a little hesitant to project roads closed because oftentimes that turns into let's go see what's going on. And at least in one instance it was a very very grim thing that's even hard for our our staff to see grim things to um to to to witness. And I think that uh sometimes those alerts make it a little bit worse, especially when there's the person's spouse hasn't been alerted that there's been a fatality. So, I know that there's been a little and and then the other thing, too, is I I know that part of it is depending on who's available. And so, I've been kind of in my brain going back and forth on this like, do we do every road closure? Do we not? The fire department puts something out on their social media. Like I think there's an opportunity here to think a little bit more about a policy, but I think it gets a little tricky when you're starting with minors and fatalities and stuff like that.

I I completely understand, but I would how I'm just I'm a resident and I don't know if there's extenduated circumstances that would prevent it to be a reasonable thing to see on the text message alert. To me that was for

notifications and a road closure happens all the time. And to me uh you know if it's if it's like you know there's going to be traffic in control at the at that scene. So to to me that's not a big deal. We did it more for like 136 when that was Yeah, like that makes that makes a lot of sense to alert people or for storms or school closures. But um Yeah.

Yeah. I I just go back and forth there cuz like you said, Josh, there's there's traffic control on a lot of these road closures that's set up to reroute whereas with like some instances where they have to like re like the police have to be there to redraw an entire incident. That might be where Okay, we know that this whole road's going to be closed for

that one come out the reconstruction. about it until it was over. Which one? The one with the that road with the dog skate. I She come and told me about it. I didn't I didn't know anything about it until you know. So, you know, I mean, let's let's just kind of like let's let's talk through it. There's an accident. The chief gets called. Is the chief supposed to like Okay. Well, wait a minute. Because I got to let staff know that we need a text message, but yeah, I'm not

Maybe we don't need a text message for we should get chief's opinion on this. He had said it's not policy to when there is. Yeah. He said he said that it's not that's not the policy for the text messaging. So I think that pretty much

explains it all. Yeah. They can be defined. I also think sometimes we see people self-proclaim that there's road closures when there really isn't. There's just traffic control. And so like I know that there's times where and I working with chief I know that there's times where a response they say we need to close off rabbit road at the other end because we just can't be turning people around. Other times it's show up this car is going to be off the road quickly. We'll be able to get oneway traffic through. So I I don't know. It might just be worth getting. But managing the expectation too for what the town expects is like is tough because some people are going to want every text in the world and then they're going to go leatherneck at everything and it's Yeah, I don't know. I don't know the answer.

I'm not opposed to it and putting up tax whenever we can. It's just got to be timely and you got to know about it. I think like having a policy of if it's an accident like let them deal with it. That's not like they can go around. It'll be fine. Yeah. If the chief notifies you and he thinks it's important, I think that's

exactly I think I think those sorts of things are his discretion like you know when we had all the flooding I think that's saying this is like I mean for example like during that my kid was at a friend's house and I went to get her I couldn't go like but like the

kid's dad we worked together like we tried walking through the water barefoot like I'm not doing that we turned around it was too cold like that sort thing that's different, I think. Yeah. Uh, you know, I mean, I'll never forget the sound of 136 flooding and, uh, it was it was weird. Uh, but an accident,

I don't I I don't know. I didn't I didn't actually mean every time there's an accident there should be a text. I I thought I saw something about a road closure, but I could have. Yeah. I'm not sure. closure. They they didn't even close it. There's just

which is not to diminish what happened. But I think sometimes if people see through other mediums like, "Oh, road closed." They're like, "Oh, Rabbit Road's closed." It's like, I don't think Rabbit Road actually did get closed.

Yeah. But it's funny cuz she did find the dog. Called up. Oh, good. Did find the dog. Called the dog. animal control officer was after five says it's after five I'm not going to come get it. She's like what am I supposed to do with this dog? So they finally after a while the owner found them through the

I saw a picture of the dog here. Yeah. Um Rebecca, do you have anything for Okay, cool. All right. Do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda? So do I have a second? Second. All right. Any discussion? All in favor? See none. It's approved. Upcoming meeting, select board meeting, August 26th, fire station at 6:30. Town offices closed on Monday, September 1st, 2025 for Labor Day. Planning board meeting September 3rd, 2025, that's fire station at 6:30. Agriculture committee meeting at September 3rd, 2025 at the Rure Center at 7:00. And then the upcoming uh discussions for the select board is in 2020 August 26th. We're going to finalize goals and objectives. Um, we're also going to do the time management annual review and contract renewal and that's what we have on the schedule. Do we have any need for any executive session? Seeing none, do I have a motion to adjurnn? So, charge a second.

Any discussion on the motion to adjurnn? Seeing none. All in favor? Any opposition? Good morning. Thank you.