TranscriptSelect Board Meeting ~ 4/12/22

united states of america and into the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right all five members of presents so we have our quorum this evening um we have reports from the fire chief from road commissioner did you say before being that we did not have reports specifically the public works department to report on informational costs on energy the new pricing that we're getting for diesel fuel kerosene gasoline

kerosene what are we using his carousel something four on the agenda an update to the board regarding the uh town minute or service process that i prepared made in april 8th it's the interim manager to you on the manager search i'm trying to get approvals tonight to move forward on the advertisements the cover page is really some of the outline but the details come back to one

page two where i've asked for you to review this town manager opportunity which is the title and the actual posting that i'd like to put into the newspaper ad itself i tried to be able to create it to try to get attention to those who are in the business but you might want to take a moment to review that because i am going to ask you to give me authority to move forward on the ads being placed place i did i read through these and i my question um was the page town manager opportunity and then the other one that's the town manager search and selection which is more detailed where are those going like is is the short one the actual advertisement but they have to go to the website to see the more detailed one or what what what's going where the title town manager opportunity is the title that i'd like to have for the ad so that if it's in the print print form it will show up as town manager opportunity and it goes exactly

as you see it here okay the website would have the same thing but on the front page town manager information or application go to that page and then all of this will show up again okay so this is the somebody would see this ad somewhere

website to get the more details if they are too lazy to get to the website you probably don't want them okay and that's that's the advertisement so let's keep this in the forefront because i want to make sure you're comfortable with it or we make amendments

on our website which will show up as your main town manager search and selection gives a brief informational point and then it indicates what we expect for submittals from any applicant and there's a disclosure at the very bottom that you yourselves are indicating to any applicant so they know the process and the list of submittals so are we providing pdfs of for instance like the application for employment and consent to the background

we will provide that we also have as i understand an application for employment as well so that they it's a one-stop shop once they get to that website location okay so we don't have one page you don't have the application no that's not here i would just simply at this point scan it and put it right up into it what is the summary statement is that is that like a resume is that with that yes what i'm looking for is a 500 less than 500 word why they think they would fit well but do well here oh okay there's the summary statement okay a couple of other centers okay that may tell us a whole lot right off

next page in this package fairly successful points for advertisement these are approximate costs the bottom line is my recommendation at the very bottom but it includes the portland press herald sunday edition only the sun journal which is also on ypph that would be a sunday edition the kennebec journal was also effective bangor daily news less so but not that expensive maine municipal association new hampshire municipal association and vermont league of cities and towns each have a small very small cost for about a 60-day run and we found that that gets us into new england and that's where you want to be the icma the international city managers association we are members but i'm not recommending you use them because you'll get people from nevada california who are very qualified but they want to come to where life is good at your expense

do the do the state of maine print options you've identified do they include any sort of electronic component at all like like do they even do electronic classifieds i believe that maine municipal association the advanced municipal association and vermont league of cities and towns are doing just what we're doing that is getting the ad they go to the website of that association and all the information is there but i mean like president portland press harold or sun journal it would be anything on their websites not that i'm aware of strictly britain

massachusetts i don't see anything about massachusetts correct and it because if massachusetts is looking they usually get the manchester union leader which we don't advertise but they also pick up on the new england papers and by having the associations getting managers who are already in the associations in that state picking up on it if you want we can put something into massachusetts but you're going to find that will up that price significantly just for a sunday round i'll do whatever you want no i i i understand what you're saying i just want to be clear on that okay could be you know if we're not successful round one we might have to like cast a wider net right now and do something like that add something like that too

taken the advice of we get a lot of bang for the buck absent of the icma which is the international city manager what about so i guess some so the only electronic things on here are municipal associations and you so you don't you don't think it's worth doing something like um

indeed yeah maybe indeed i've tried that a whole lot of like gravel enough as much as they advertise that they screen uh if you simply want to say that you got 100 applications we could do that through that specialized field but i'm not so sure you're set up for that doesn't mean you can't luck out but i yeah i guess i'm not the big risk taker with a few dollars yeah yeah sure um and i guess there's always you know like i said a minute ago we can always if we don't get a pool that we're happy with first time around we can always go back out and cast a wider net

replicate the same advertisements but in a wider net again my sense is the primary one and if i had to put money on the most likely source it's got to be the mma website i mean that's that's where people in maine that are looking for that are in the municipal world that are looking for a talent management job they're checking that all the time i want to come to maine yeah good point yeah over the last 18 months i've kind of watched what other headhunters have done casco is a good example gloucester at one point was a good example but effectively we're finding it's very difficult to attract attention in some cases they've actually gone out to a second round but i also looked at the timing of the year in which they were doing the advertisements you're at the right time of the year and i may have said this before but i'm going to say it again if someone is looking to move on they've gone through their town meeting

they've taken their town to that and through that if they have children the children are getting out in june that gives them time to settle their affairs time to give notice and time to move in if that's what they're going to do so it's a better time than if we start labor day and move through the holidays

i said we'll get after it anybody in reading through this on the um the opportunity page or the manager search and selection page to have any suggested edits strategically located words like that brunswick area there too yeah so we asked jesus

yeah this is like three speed blues if somebody was gonna draw up bedroom community and where would you put it right here exactly yeah i'd like to think that quality in that quantity of applications of what you're looking for yeah but the end results are the last page in that package it's the thank you but no thank you letter i tried to be reasonably respectful yeah

so did you say that we would actually would not request an actual resume though oh absolutely should that be listed yeah is that what you're saying like in this yeah you may okay you cover it all in like almost your resume but not a problem it's in yeah

entertain a motion to approve the town manager hiring packet as presented with the edit of adding resume as one of the submits any further discussion all in favor we have a five zero thank you okay um so we're still on number four we've covered the first two bullets of it the position of the position description and the ads we have status of interview committee membership um an application deadline of april 22nd to remind us of that people who are watching this replay we've gotten two applications of fire okay and that includes the one i sent you today not for me

that's why it was in the garbage i rewarded it to you um i have not yet i only have two as a six o'clock about five well if it doesn't include that one then you have to read it now we have to see but i just again we've been trying to keep this as open as possible we're reminding people you need to put your name in yeah okay and so the um last uh bullet under number four status of code enforcement officer physician uh in progress working back and forth offers counter offers i've given the applicant to the 18th of this month to give me a thumbs up counter offer or thumbs down

questions or comments thank you if i've died tomorrow you can still run with the package comment if you have something you'd like to say please come up have a seat state your name and your address typed my comment to read because i don't know if i can get it all out in three minutes so i'm going to read it and if you want it i also want to do it um okay first i was surprised to hear last week when mitch said that he spends 50 to 60 of his time answering questions for office staff regarding trio and other issues i would like for the board to consider hiring a trainer with potential um to be called if there are questions when the trainer might not be here i feel it would be a better use of the resident's tax dollars in terms of mitch's rate of pay and time um that he could be using dealing with larger scale items uh second i would like the board to consider the use of adobe scan app for ease of creating pdf

documents from multiple from multiple sources that would allow for ease of posting of agenda packets etc um like it would have been nice to read the job description if we had that available when the agenda is posted um i'm happy to explain and show how this works it's easily done um until an it person is hired although i'm not sure if there are no or not but it would allow at least to easily post to the town facebook page if the website posting hasn't been figured out yet expanding on the i.t situation oh did you do your report i read in your report did you do that manages reporting yeah is that later that's later on okay i have to make my public comment now that's what i'm going to um expanding on the id situation and town office space use if the eureka center was upgraded um to be able to be used as a meeting space then this current meeting space could be used as office space in addition

with the insane cost of new construction we have an entire mobile unit that could be converted into office space while allowing fire department to be able to be considered for significant grant opportunities to help offset the capital reserve budget which could in turn result in a lower tax burden and i know you don't answer questions but it would be nice to know how the second story of the public works building is being used and has that also been considered for office space fourth it's my understanding the town manager is the actual tax collector trip slash treasurer and that requires working knowledge of trio to do the tax commitment tax liens official reports etc and that transferring all of these duties to the deputy treasurer and expecting her to complete all the other requirements for her job that position rather is not feasible this is information that's coming directly from a previous employee in

that role um it was really highlighted through our budget process this past season how incredibly important it is that the person that we hire have working knowledge of trio so without being able to see that um job description and requirements i don't know if knowledge of trio is on there but i think that that's something that's really important um and if it already missed that process because you guys already approved it i think it's definitely something that the committee needs to have as a box to check um because i think there's you know there's a lot of issues around trio um so i think having working knowledge of that is really going to be important moving forward i would like for the board to consider contracting payroll out to a service as a small business owner myself prior to contracting my payroll out the amount of time that i spent doing payroll each week plus weekly tax filings unemployment payments workmen's

comp audits and payments contracting that out to a service was the best thing i've ever done in terms of freeing up my time and it's very inexpensive i know i don't have nearly as many employees as the town does but i pay thirty dollars a week to contract out my payroll um lastly i would like for the board to consider that if these things were done our interim town manager could set up systems that the town is severely lacking in compensation structures hiring processes evaluations exit interviews policies programs and committees that do not currently exist but need to we're very lucky to have someone here for the interim who has so much experience and knowledge and we should really use that to our benefit to put the town in the best possible situation when we're looking at our next group of candidates thank you

i was sure surprised to learn um was about the settlement agreement and the decision of the board to settle for twenty five thousand dollars when there had been a writ of execution issued for fifty thousand i asked to see the details of the settlement agreement and what i saw was basically our acknowledgment and receipt but that didn't include any of the details um and so i know that you're not going to answer this question and that's fine i'll just wait for the document that shows what the details are to understand there's a lot of going back to what you said before the meeting started about um you know people are going to make up their own story if they don't know the actual story and so from the outside looking in and the buzz that's going around town and driving by the property and seeing what it looks like it is unclear why the board would choose to do that and so i feel like information is the

best weapon to combat that situation um you know what i'm just going to be really honest that what it looks like from the outside without the information is that this is a person this is a situation and this is not directed to that person at all this is a process thing that i'm talking about okay is that that part of this land was in resource protection there were things that were taking place that were adverse to the resource protection that person had a court action against them and was that was found in the town's favor and then instead of holding that person accountable to the fullest extent which we don't know the reasons why and that's fine hopefully we find that out so we can have a better understanding it looks as though it's a a person's going to come in mess up reprotect resource protection land and basically get a slap on the wrist to then be able to move forward and try to do something else and so

understanding what the board's process or thought process or you know reasoning behind not holding them accountable to the fullest extent in that situation i think would really help residents squash what we see happening and then what people are speculating about so before i just i think and chime in here obviously there's way too much detail and legal stuff to go into you know in a setting like this so i think if you drafted what is your specific list of questions send it to the town manager and

to those questions okay thank you really think it would be the best interest of the town to do that for a number of reasons because i had the store i know that the state is constantly every quarter sending in if anybody holds child support um anything happens that they want to report it's hard enough to do payroll keep all the taxes straight keep everything straight now to be doing all of these reports too i think it's a bit much for somebody that is very new at all this and doesn't have the trio and everything a payroll company just spits out all the reports plus the hiring process the hiring process has a lot of different variables to every new person payroll company they come in they look at every person they'll set up the whole thing get it all set up and take it and then on a new person they have a spreadsheet so all you do is fill it out send it over to them they do everything so you don't have to

worry about what's hanging out what insurance is taken out or 401 anything so they do the whole process and i think it would be extremely beneficial to the town and keep us out of trouble too with the irs in the state and if having a human service anything else just something to really consider your name please oh i'm sorry trump

before it exactly um so i guess some of my confusion is um my understanding is our last town manager didn't have a good understanding of trio um our deputy treasurer doesn't have a good understanding of trio so that does lead me to what have we been doing to educate her and get her the training that she needs to understand trio um i think that's a value for sure even if it means shutting down for a day so that we know she's getting that training um and i think it's extremely important that our next town manager has an exceptional knowledge of trio since it doesn't seem like anybody else does um i also think you know we discussed the last time that the town manager wouldn't be doing tasks at the window but i think it's extremely important that the town manager understands how to do the tasks at the front window at the very least they'll be training people or you know hopefully they can help train the ones that we currently

have in part because the agenda wasn't posted i'm kind of curious to know what the timeline is for posting agendas and where we're hoping to be with that i realize that's a question i have no experiences questions like simple questions like that are happy to answer so it wasn't the it wasn't the agenda it was a meeting notice itself it wasn't posted so it's just just like for our meetings you and state law is a little bit vague it doesn't give you like x number of days it just says needs to be posted in the in the normal manner within a reasonable time period i think that says something like that and so the issue was this is related to the departure of the public information technician with no notice that's the role that is typical responsible for posting the meeting notices so that when the meetings are held they're legal and in turn we i guess they learned very late that that meeting had not been

properly noticed so they had to cancel it so the agendas are um it's not required to post an agenda i think we all want to see that happen and we all want to get to a spot where um you know the agendas are po are agendas sorry for when they are their agendas are posted you know you know several days in advance of the meeting so that people can see you know what the meeting is going to be and then once it's posted things don't get added like i i know that i know this week's agenda was posted at least on thursday if not sooner because i saw it on thursday of last week and after that somebody actually contacted us and wanted to get on the agenda for something and we had to tell them no because the agenda's already been posted and yada yada yeah so and they understood that they were good with that we're going to do it at a future meeting so um but the goal is you know like i said at town meeting we definitely

understand that there is tremendous room for improvement in the communication processes here and that's like that's one of the primary goals for this year is to be better in that area and get the agendas out there and minutes posted and meeting recordings up on the site you know within a reasonable amount of time after the meeting all that stuff okay cool thank you um and is the select board still using the town manager email or do you guys have your own group email we use the town manager you mean town manager at durham yeah we used to talk to him well i'm trying to figure out where that one goes well it goes again right now i'm a new person if i may yeah please new person would sign in is still town manager at durham.gov

office okay so the select board doesn't have an email we each have our own no there's no there's no email that is select board at durhammate.com if that's what you're asking okay because on the website it says to email town manager at durham yeah so okay so so really typically when you have a town manager form of government really um the first place for any concern about really anything whether it's fire or public works or anything is to the town manager okay and the town manager is the person that then well if necessary or you know addresses it like you know somebody sent in something about public works you know they would go to the town manager and then top manager would work with public works and depending on what it is we might not even know about it right you know if it's something more significant town manager will inform us and then if it's really significant it might be something that has to come before the

board to be considered by the board but um 90-plus percent of stuff will will probably just stop with the town manager okay no it's just because the public works has their email the fire department has their email so i just wanted to clarify which is fine it's that's that's fine that might be something you know i think we're going to be hesitant to you know take on a lot of new initiatives and make big changes or whatever until the new town manager is in place but that would be something that they might want to look at like do they want the fire department in public works having their own email address or should all that be funneled through the town manager and then the top managers i don't know i don't have a preference either way it's really going to be up to the town manager so um and then the last point that i'm bringing up because it's on the agenda is that i and you guys would get tired of me

saying this um but i do want to just reiterate the importance of public input public conversation when it comes to the arpa and spending plans um i think you know we discussed it at length but i definitely i think we all got that message yep yep so you'll keep hearing it because i don't want it to be forgotten um and my husband asked me um maybe this can or can't be answered but when we voted on the stream culverts we voted on culverts at the town meeting so now that the phrase is being changed to bridge does that change the vote because it sounds like there's going to be a lot more money needed granted it's just verbiage but you know when you say culvert and then you say you got to build a bridge it sounds very different to the naive ear i think they actually called it a bridge culvert didn't they yeah the the type of culvert i believe they're going to use is an open bomb

problem that's what they're looking at it's like a nfb and it'll be concrete instead of metal or plastic right it could be it could be metal but oh right yeah but it's not going to be fine all right so that change doesn't delay things or anything like that no because really it's funding approval no because at the end of the day you know and this is i mean technically um technically we didn't need to go to the town well actually to raise the money right so because we raised that right okay that's different so um we raised the money for that purpose and it'll get spent on that purpose in um if it was money if it was money coming out of capital funds once the town votes to put money into capital funds for a particular purpose then the board can authorize the expenditure of that money um it doesn't have to go to a town meeting voter we typically on big projects we take it to a town meeting vote anyway

just to make sure so what you're saying is if there's extra funds needed it'll come from undesignated no no no if it could to go from undesignated that would have to go to a town vote if it came if it wouldn't have to go to a town vote if we needed like additional monies and it came from public works capital reserves okay but we can only do that if it's for a public works project we can't take public works capital reserve money and spend it on technology in the eureka center so okay

to be involved with that is there an official place we should go well i'm going to put my application but is there an official place to understand the actual job position and the requirements from the state or something like that are we studying up everybody who's involved has a has the a common understanding of what the role is i'm going to let mention tonight mrsa 30-80 is the primary driver of the description and its responsibilities among other things of the town manager it gets to the town magic former government versus a select board or town council charter of non-charter that's the first part the second part is

once you adopt the town manager form of government the town manager is your chief executive officer business these are the board of directors they're the policy makers the town manager is the policy implementer overly simplified but there's a division there if you look carefully in the mrsas dealing with the duties of a town manager versus elected officials you get a better understanding but what you don't see is what every community does they take it and modify because they have different expectations of their town manager and the smaller the community is potentially the more responsibilities and multiple jobs that go with that position the larger communities tend to be very clear about segregation of duties now let's talk about it and so the position description that the board reviewed at the last meeting is the nuts and bolts of what we're trying to do plus the commentary tonight which is

very important and and i think the distinction was made knowing how to do it versus actually stepping in and doing it the segregation of duties because if you are at the front counter someone should be there as a third party who didn't do the collection who refused to make sure the money that you collected was properly recorded and deposited and that's that checks and balances and segregation will do okay and part of the process discussion we've had to date didn't include how the introvert interview questions are formulated or is those standard questions or

unless you talk to a headhunter i don't consider myself a headhunter but i consider the fact that the select board wants to get to the core of what that applicant is offering this town and in all of the interviews that i've worked with they've asked me to create a set of questions that go forward and in the first round interview it's nice to know you but we need to get a little bit more about you if they are invited back for a second round the questions could be very situational and detail-oriented we can deal with personnel it could be with issues of philosophy ethics more morality to some degree so so you'll take the first stab at the questions with the board does the board have to approve them or they answer i want the board to have their fingerprints on them because ultimately i'm really recommending to the board and it doesn't mean that their questions are not valid but i'm trying to get them to

find out from that applicant do we want to continue with that applicant based on what they have said and we all know we can dress up on sundays but it's the other six days of the week that we're concerned about and how did they function during the other six days of the week

actually have a follow-up question the timing of i mean presumably there would be times because i think you've probably got a standard slate of questions that you've used in the past and we would probably review and maybe have some others but i think once the committee is formed it'd probably be an opportunity for the committee to review the questions and if they see a gap somewhere they could recommend absolutely other questions that could be added why are not the final questions right i think the important issue with the reason for having a list of questions is so that and then the way you've described it to me and some of our conversations on how important other towns is that you literally assign people down the list okay you ask this one you ask us when you ask this one so that um especially in the first round interview so that everybody's getting asked the same questions it's the same

equitable treatment but i think there's probably room for some for the committee to have some input on what those actual you ultimately make the final decision as to what questions you want to use and and like everything else we can come out of the gate with a big bomb or we can lead up you know it depends on what your style and what you you know do we need to get a stretcher to get them out of here

and i'm not the last word on it but i have found that there are probably some consistent questions in every community and they go it's like an onion you got to peel the layers off let me find out is this person just prepared to answer these questions or do they have the substance behind them to do the job that your job description

what's the word i want that's the question you're asking oh my gosh you know who you put down as you're straight not sorry i believe is your town application for appointment showing references but i clearly want to see the references but i will tell you point blank i've never seen a reference that the applicant didn't like right right i mean you need to go deeper than that and find out and that's why we do criminal background check i do credit checks i don't but through the resources and ultimately is it 100 proof you know because there are things that you don't hear in an interview that can actually backfire on you and that's happened to a community i worked with once where we checked in here there's only so much internet information that they have about a person and once they finish their probationary period in this case that's what happened that person started espousing some political point of views that

were so far off with the radar screen that they called me up and said what do we do next he said well you called your lawyer you call me to come up be your interim like that it's always better to get bilateral agreements which put money on the table and nobody goes after anybody in the court of law it just isn't a good fit you can work that out

any other public comments last call okay close public comment all right number six distribution of fiscal recovery funds information it's simply a fact sheet i ask you to take it home there's more information than maybe you want but again with what's happening what has happened over the last two years and what is going to happen with our economy there's going to be infusions and these are beginning to come through as possible ways in which a community may best utilize dollars and cents going forward and i believe you know somewhere in that um in that law or yeah

um even though you know we're committed to a robust public input process but i've heard through the grapevine that there are some specific requirements regarding public input we want to make sure that even though we might we might think we're doing great but we might be missing a requirement or something so we want to make sure that we you know that's why i'm giving you this a little bit to keep you important if you're successful in getting your manager very quickly who doesn't have it on the federal fund's background this will help guide you when you at least say one thing i do notice we do we have time with this this is not something that we even need to figure out just we don't even need to spend any of the money money in 2023 you know i mean we have time to you know consider lots of things and you know do it right i started doing a little research on this and i found a white paper out of scotland county from

about a year or so ago that outlines a lot of this here that was actually pretty informative but yeah it's time to make me think about some of the ways you can actually use the white you can weave through this a little bit um yeah interestingly you know if we facility upgrades and stuff that's people don't want to go and do that with a new town manager coming in i think somebody have some yeah and it's changed a lot even since a year ago especially it's a small attack yes it has because when it first came out there was like almost nothing right i saw that and then i saw it yeah well i'll say liberal is it kind of long isn't it

building things into a budget that you have to anniversary year after year and then when this money's gone you're still left with that in your budget you know like but like i'm just making this up but like adding a police force right i'm not advocating for that i'm not saying i'm a favorite just kind of clear but that'll be the type of thing like oh let's see we're gonna buy a cruiser and hire two deputies and then all of a sudden when this money runs out you still got you build that into your reoccurring thing

there's definitely some things that we can do that's just i'll say capitals just right i'm sure there'll be tons of ideas and it's funny i mean i bet we'll be able to spend 400 grand so fast it'll make people's heads yeah by the time all the ideas come out and you know it'll be you know be a funnel process right like okay here's a whole bunch of stuff and then we'll have to prioritize and narrow it down to you know what we can actually do yeah kind of question mention yeah you mentioned a lot of times when there's bigger government programs such as this um the government and or mma sets up like um there's advisory teams or or businesses that actually get involved and actually advise the title and or is that are any of those things in place yet i'd have to check with mma gp cog in a meeting i was in had mentioned maybe doing some stuff along those lines too i think that what we're seeing is an evolution of

thinking about how this will go forward but your chair captured the key points non-reoccurring expenses expenses that have a longevity of amortization so that you're not necessarily telling the taxpayer well you know the thing we built last year now we've got to do this this year with that and it keeps you occurring no i would agree with that my concern is from a compliance issue and things of that future it's not necessarily for what we hear about the funds for more so for compliance et cetera right i know when people see a large amount of money like jeez you know it's it's like all of us we have a tendency to get a couple a couple extra bucks in the back you might get a little overcarried away with it and you're not even realizing what the ramifications are so mine was more from a compliance standpoint more so than um an advisory panel

information back and share it with all the parties in the community involved nothing is without these strings attached yeah it's just it's just a lot like that i think a lot of people alluded to us a lot and even though we have ourselves and even with the exception of yourself a public input at the end of the day a lot of these people are lay people and i'll include myself in that conversation so if we have uh an entity that actually is well-versed in this and so forth that can guide us through the process i feel held a lot more comfortable than just yeah some some communities have actually hired a consultant right you know to take him through it but i would ask at this juncture when you get down to number eight upcoming meetings in town news please allow me to give you my manager's report and i've got some thoughts that i want to share with you and the public that may fit into what you just mentioned

richard but beyond that there's common sense things that i want to put in your records so that whoever's sitting in this chair after me is going to be able to pick that up and at least understand you were giving thought to him yeah it's just a government program and it can be tricky to navigate um some of us in the business world realize whether it's retention tax credits or watson credits or things of that nature i mean a lot of us would utilize a third party to help manage that it's conceivable that in the larger communities you're going to see tax increment financing districts have the legal fees paid and everything and once that's done you've got a 25 to 35 year plan for what's going to happen within that tiff as it's called right and that's a good investment that it's not reoccurring correct no i understand okay thank you that's all i was concerned thank you pardon me i need a short pause here

make a slight adjustment to the agenda historic district commission cemetery committee and conservation commission but they were actually um they should have been under excuse me consent agenda um but they plugged down an upcoming meeting so i'm gonna make 7c um approval of oaths for the historic district commission cemetery committee and conservation committee and we have those available today it's a signing party tonight um they're taking it easy on us though usually we get them all in one night and it's like 70 signatures at once but right we it looks like we got just a small portion of it tonight we'll get more later okay so is there any objection to that agenda adjustment

agenda um actually we don't have the minutes from the april 5th so i'm going to remove 7a so what's left is approve inside the april 12 uh warrants just like paying the bills and then c which i just added so i would entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented

todd was so moved rich seconds all in favor five zero okay call for discussion on a motion for the consent agenda it's because it's the consent agenda and if somebody wanted to discuss they would have pulled it off the consensus okay um upcoming meetings in town news before we get into that i will kick it to the town manager who had some thoughts thank you very much mr i'm chairman to look out for the next few weeks and of course there are a lot of different things happening so bear with me but i also want to keep the public and yourselves informed uh within the with the conclusion of the annual town meeting and quarterly reports there are that are due in addition to the setting up of the approved budget i'm supporting the closing of the town offices on wednesday on wednesdays just wednesdays through the balance of april once we get through this we'll be able to reopen on wednesday's the regular business

by the way on the three and a half days after the town meeting this year the staff registered over 120 vehicles and completed 20 title applications needless to say they were very very busy and your staff despite some of the breadth of knowledge they are committed to trying to serve the best they can and we're catching up and we appreciate the public's understanding of why we need to have those days to do that it's impossible to get some of these things done when you're full board at the counter and that's our business we understand that over the next few weeks the select board will face some demanding issues which include review of citizen applications to be appointed to assist the select board for the hiring of the next town manager and i'm reminding people again applications are due april 22nd and we close at 12 30 that day that's a friday if all goes as planned i will affirm the hiring of a qualified individual to the

position of code enforcement officer at your april 26 meeting we are still working towards getting our agendas posted in a timely fashion so that our citizens can be rare of the business the select boat is working on the heating and cooling system in half of the town office is in need of replacement we should be moving this along now since the officers will need cooling in this summer and better heating next winter i do not believe any appropriations have been made but there may be opportunity to use offer or other funds because it's not it's advertised over more than just two or three years it's a longer-term investment as for any expansion of the town offices i strongly urge the board to start that discussion now with a time frame to bring it before the town meeting in the next year or two your current facility is not working well

right yes okay in the interim i'm asking the board to approve the modification all right of the current woman's room to an office and make the current men's room a gender-neutral bathroom i started out talking with the ladies they're the most impacted they're a rough bunch of people

but what that would do would actually allow us to convert that office so that your code enforcement officer would have the ability to do the things that are necessary at that office and in the other office that they occupy the planner and your tax assessor would still have desk space available no expansion well it just in public works will probably do all but the plumbing but basically it's remove the stuff paint as needed desk in there done and it makes better use of that space so you propose to put

to see the co in the bathroom versus is the other office bigger everything and right now your planner and your tax assessor both need desks and file space well i can appreciate that how great is that women's room yeah i've never been in there i read that and i was like i'm gonna have to go in there and see what we're talking about the office currently in the back is bigger please take a look yeah why i mean

today give you some comparison it's just about the size of the men's room i i still envision that it's smaller than the photos all right but anyway we don't need to get into that two part-time people well you've got your planner who will be there on mondays now tuesday mornings and wednesdays because the time distribution not thursday or friday or saturday or sunday so that person is going to need some time here code enforcement is getting to be a very big business and if you take a look i'm not pleased but if you take a look you've got files here you've got it's getting to a point where the shoe box is no longer the best way to operate okay so you have a cost for us on that uh i can get you a cost by just testing the waters and it seems like i mean what yeah and before you leave the building um in your comments not literally leave the building but um the heating and cooling system our sense is that that's not gonna make

it to next winter that it needs something needs to happen before next winter now we have capital as i was alluding to earlier we have capital in the municipal building account that i think we've assumed that you know we could um that if we needed to that we would use those funds to do a heating cooling project here my question is going to be if we do that can we then i think we can then later as long as we you know save our receipts and everything recoup those funds with arpa funds if that's where the yeah that's something to look into but uh you know and certainly the idea of if you look at the eureka house as an alternative for meetings you now open up this space here right so the question we talked about that before yeah and so i'm just throwing something else in the mix for consideration but to not do anything and just keep talking about it it does not solve the immediate problem and quite frankly

when i looked at the plans from 2004-2006 that's how long it's gone and that was done with the i think the initial expectation oh like maybe 2010 to 2012 you'd be deva i i think the one thing i would caution against with that is that like rich like with other issues you know were lay people todd excluded i guess when it comes to building renovations so rather than us say well let's move this over here and move this over there and that over there that perhaps we look at putting some funds in the budget in what year are we in now 2023 for like design work you know to come up with a plan that's where you say okay this is what we want we want x office we want this we want that and maybe even combine it with something like eureka center and have an actual professional plan from a designer that is going to think of stuff that we would never even think right we had a plan that was like oh five that's the one i'm

looking for [Music] it might i don't know where that came from if a professional did that it might be just having that re-evaluate that and the requirements may have changed because the um we didn't have a full-time code person then you know we didn't have we didn't have public works then you know that impacts this building no it would be interesting yeah so yeah but yeah but your point is while taking that um you know i think the heating cooling is probably a little bit more short-term and then but larger building renovation is probably a little bit longer term i don't know the condition of this side of the house and its system but it functioned well i've been here very well and the ladies seem to feel that and they were taxing it because they turned it up hopefully to migrate heat but that side that but that's why the reason they're doing that is because that side doesn't work exactly that's the point and if we

don't have this conversation now it's going to be another 10 years and then you're going to be in it yeah so the previous town manager had done a little bit of legwork on this and i'm not exactly sure where that stood but we should dig that up and we should probably be sooner rather than later moving on getting an evaluation in what we need to do because you know how long it's taking you to get contractors ready we need to get work done before winter but sure that was an impression yeah me too and so i i think there's i think there's some information that kathy left behind that might address that the the key factor that i work from is very simple form will follow function so until we do an analysis and evaluation of the functions you expect from your local government over the next five to ten years and beyond that has to include the nasty word of growth you can't go ahead and just say we're

going to put a tent down in front of that recovery it's going to require something that meets current and future right otherwise you're going to be behind that i agree completely and this is the type of work i do for a living you know people only hear me i'm always hopping on first thing we need to do is identify the requirements like so what are the requirements and that's that's kind of what you're saying in terms of what are what are the needs what do we like okay we need we're not we're not trying to tell them how to solve it but we're telling them what we need okay we need office space for a code enforcement officer with xml or footage so he can or she can you know spread out maps and have big file cabinets and we need you know something for the um planner who you know with the door so they can have private conversation you know whatever it is so we list all those requirements that's when the designer comes in and

says okay give those requirements what you have and you count your budget this is what i'm recommending and records retention is becoming a big yeah no i get that but you know i guess what i would caution everybody on and my concern on that is that actual bathroom because if you do go to that town hall i don't know what the state codes are for compliance and check ventilation

expensive to have a bathroom in the future if you actually have to have two so i just be careful i'm glad to see that you're thinking about it that's the important thing and i'm going to keep asking you to keep thinking about it to a point where what are we gonna do next yeah i know and i think we get on board has been presented with this on a couple of different occasions at least during my tenure and obviously in the past since you had finance from 2005 and you know one of the things that we could possibly explore which we talked about briefly behind us we have a lot of buildings that we don't necessarily utilize to their capacity others other words building eureka center et cetera and i think we could potentially look at that a little bit more closely before we start making major renovations and sledgehammer and yeah yeah okay hope i may continue the first guest a reminder again that commute to the

community that applications are available available at the town offices if you're interested in being considered for one of the three appointments to the town manager hiring committee the deadline is friday april 22nd and the select board will begin the interview process starting the 26th and i'm repeating this over and over and over again to remind people i didn't hear about it i'm telling you get your friends your relatives if they are interested if you have an opinion and they live in town they need to fill out the application no application no consideration all right are spouses of select board members allowed to apply i don't know someone asked me okay

is going to shift slightly i will be in the office from april 14 and april 19th through the 20th and work around my medical appointments the board members or the office can reach me by my cell phone number you should all have those and i'll be in new york from the 21st to the 24th and back here from the 25th again so i'm going to be back and forth if you will i've asked calvin to provide the board with a fuel price report on our most recent bids this will be presented to the board at your 26th meeting reminded that the town offices are closed april 18 2022 as this is patriot's day respectfully submitted

any um any further questions on that so i'm going to save way it's part of the upcoming meetings so mitch and i were talking about you know what the timing and interview process might look like for people that apply to be on the committee kind of the working idea we wanted to bring to you guys tonight is that we've already established the 22nd as the deadline for applications to be in and then we would kind of have to kind of see how many we have you know that would kind of be a driver of next steps um that we would look at the evenings of the 26th 27th 28th if necessary um to actually have staff schedule those um those interviews um the intent is that they they're just five to ten minutes you know in some cases we may not know the person you know put a face to a name you know have them just tell us briefly why why they want to be on the committee and kind of what they bring to the table and

any questions that pop up and okay thank you and that would be a short and sweet um so and i know um you know potentially three nights in a row is you know we're all busy you know so but at least some as you just um pencil them in um and everybody just try to make yourselves as available as possible if you if one of those nights is not going to work for you at all then let mitch know they copy me on it please and then

we can either because we need to make sure we have at least three of us here so if if like four of us are not available on the 27th that's not going to work what time frame i think we typically look at again i think it depends on how many applications we get if we get like 10 applications then maybe we'll look maybe we start it you know maybe we're okay to start at six or six thirty you know and do five on the 26th and 5 on the 27th or so this is in little me well no it might be an addition to it but yeah it depends it depends again we can um well actually we need to talk about that tonight so were you thinking that we would do some of the interviews actually on the 26 or just you are okay the quicker you move the quicker the process gets engaged okay so yeah and it might be that again we'll have to see how many we have it might be that we try to do interviews from like 5 to 6 30 and get and do that before

the meeting or we schedule them to start and hopefully have a quick agenda and start him at 7 30. if you whatever time you choose to start your meeting call that your official meeting because the more you and i have taught the reality is it's an interview process and i reviewed the right to know laws specifically as to an executive session and this is an appointment and as such the sooner we get to the executive session to do those the better you're going to be in addition to all the other business you might have to take care of like an example tonight you're moving fairly quickly to your agenda hopefully we keep the agenda light on the 26th and you can and if we only have 10 or 12 citizen applications then you may try to do all of those interviews and not have to come back on the 27th and 28th you've got some flexibility you just need to keep the public informed and we need to be able to tell

the applicants what you want to do so they will be here for that particular night so we might want to consider something like you know well actually let's open it up for discussion thoughts on first of all that the date well the 26th are regular meeting night anyway but thoughts on availability on the 27th to 28th and um

early you could start on the 27th and 28th just you know what what are people thinking of playing works for me five o'clock on would be fine commit myself available okay yeah me too i know you're coaching and stuff so i'm not tough i have a game

yeah you're good for the 26 though the regular meeting night the regular meeting that i'm good yeah what about the 28th if the half if it goes as of right now the only thing we have is rich on the 27th so it sounds like we're good to go there so i would suggest maybe we consider um authorizing the town manager to go ahead and schedule the interviews as he sees fit using 26th and 27th and

if necessary the 28th well actually that's a good point if if we don't need three nights then go 26 28 let's skip the 27th if we're going to need three nights then we'll have to use the 27th but that's the that's the lowest priority that's a good call but you're going to be in you're going to be in new york on the 22nd

you know we can notify we can notify people that have applied like now we can say we don't know specific time slots yet but the committee interviews are going to be 26 27 28 so um or 26 28 and if necessary the 27th and so try to keep you know just get those nights open

all right then i'm going to move that we authorized actually entertain a motion to authorize the town manager to schedule uh interviews with the citizen uh with the citizen applicants to the search community so josh moves their second second joe seconds any discussion on that all in favor five zero okay um and so as we said so our regular board meeting will start at 6 30 and we can start as early as five and it's not unprecedented at all to have an executive session prior to the beginning of a regular meeting so if that works out that's okay so i think what we heard here is that from five o'clock on on the 26th or 28th we're all good um and then the 27th we're also good from five on but rich is not available on the choice yeah oh the the five one thing will be getting yesterday oh red five is pushing up for me usually or we could say 5 30 or 5 15 minutes you want to start 5 30 let's say 5 30.

and and even if we have to do some before the regular meeting and a few after that's yeah that's the only one upcoming meetings and confirming that we do not need an executive session tonight right correct okay so nine is done when he's done i would entertain a motion to adjourn rich moves all in favor we are germed thank you very much