TranscriptSelect Board Meeting ~ July 8, 2025

Hi. How are you? Good. How are you? meeting on right now? Cuz I just did it blind. Okay. So, we're on. Do you want to start the meeting and then we'll figure this out in the background? microphones. They're broken. There's audio coming off of this. Can you hear me? Can you hear Joe? Yeah. Okay, cool. All right. Welcome everyone to the Durham Select Board meeting here on July 8th, 2025 at 6:30. We have a quorum. So, we will begin with the pledge of allegiance. So, will you let my

one nation under Gody and justice for all. All right. Uh do we have any amendments to the agenda? comments? Seeing none, do we have a motion to approve last meeting's minutes? Second. Any discussion? All in favor? Any opposition? See?

listed here. Does anyone have any old business that I failed to recall that need to be covered tonight? All right. Seeing none, we have our new business, which is our roles and responsibilities discussionworkshop facilitated by GBO. So, two girl a boy. Okay. Very efficient start to the meeting. I was going to say we could be split. I don't know if you need any help from us. So, thank you so much for having us back. Uh we're really happy to kind of repeat a workshop that we did with some of you. I don't know Josh and Joe were there, but I don't think Rebecca and Julia were there. So, we did this last year as kind of an orientation to the roles and responsibilities of the select board and the town manager and staff. and we're going to talk a little bit about how to make your meetings great, what some of your responsibilities are as you get ready for the meetings, um some best practices about being invited

awesome select board members. So, um I will start you guys know who we well you hopefully know who we are me the executive director of the greater Portland government and Tony Plant who is our director of municipal collaboration. Um Tony is a former town manager

recovering. You served you served 25 years in town manager. 22 years in Windom and more years as town administrator and finance director in uh some towns in New Hampshire. Mhm. And I'm a former elected in the neighboring town in Freeport. So I was a counselor there for 5 years. So Tony and I do these workshops together because I've got the elected perspective, he's got the town manager perspective. And this is like a team effort here, right, with all the folks in Durham here that are kind of working together both at the staff side and the select board. So we have fun doing these workshops with our member cities and towns. Um Durham is a city in town or one of our member towns amongst our cities. We have um 29 of them and oh yeah that's us. Hopefully we don't look too much older in person. Um, if you go to the next slide, this is just very briefly for those of you who are kind of new to us. You know, we

serve 29 cities and towns and three different counties and you as our members guide our work. So, Joe and um Jerry have been involved in different places where decisions are being made about the region. Um, really our overall purpose is to help you do together what you can't do alone. And we have lots of roles. We do land use planning. We also program and allocate close to like a hundred million dollars a year in transportation funding. We also are the federally designated economic development district. So we plan for economic development in the area and and Jerry and George and Tony and I just had a really good conversation about that earlier this week about what can happen in Durham. So our mission is very simple though at the bottom which is that we strengthen our communities. So, Durham and we also connect you across the region to build a good future for all of our residents. So, that's who we are. And the next

slide, if you go to it, I'm not doing that. Oh, you're not doing that. Okay. No. Oh, you are doing it. Stuff that was on the screen was not me. This will just take like two minutes for me to say just um you participate in one of our programs which which saves a lot of money. Tony runs it. So, you cooperatively purchase with your other neighbors to try to save money on a bunch of different products. We also provide tailored services. Um, I've worked with you recently on your municipal facilities, you know, town planning. In the past, I've worked with you on comprehensive planning. Um, so we can do, you know, different kinds of things for Durham. You areworked into the full region. So, Jerry's a regular participant in the convening of all the managers together. We also have the planners. George gets together with technical development. We have chairs in a circle. Joe has been there. Josh, have

you been? You haven't been yet. Okay. Where we have our chairs and our vice chairs that can talk about the big issues that your town face. This year's focus has really been on property taxes. And Joe is now serving on a property tax advocacy working group. Um we also do we offer one facilitated workshop just like this one per year that's included in your membership. Could be on anything that you want that's going to help you function better. uh whether it's setting your annual priorities or talking about roles and responsibilities, working out issues with your budget committee, whatever it is. Um and then advocacy, we are advocating in Augusta and increasingly in Washington on behalf of our region to make sure we can bring in money. Okay, so that's just who we are so you have a little bit of background. For tonight's agenda, I'm we're going to first just get down to your goals because I want to make sure we're

tailoring this to what you need. Uh then we'll go through your form of government, the roles and responsibilities of the select board and the town manager. Then we'll do some um habits about how your select work can be really high functioning and as we go through the discussion, we'll take down some next steps and any action items out of last year's uh you decided that you really needed some bylaws to help govern yourselves and you've adopted those this last year. So that's an example of a next step that you can take after the workshop. Any questions on just the overall flow of the agenda? We're hoping to modify it, you know, best based on like what your questions or your thoughts or the issues that you want to really grapple with and talk through. Good. Good. Thumbs up. Okay. So, we'll move to the next one, which is what your goals are for tonight. And um in preparation for this, Tony and I met with Joe and we met with

Jerry just to get a little bit of a sense of what are some of the things that you want to talk about. So that's why we have the form of government and some best practices as select board members. But for you, I just want to open it up to all of you. What are some of the things that you hope at the end of the night we've accomplished today? clarification on things, things that you want to understand more about how you operate or issues you want to make sure are addressed as we go through the workshop. I'll open it. So, you two first since you're in this for the first time. Josh and I already took the test. So, yeah, expectations of I have no expect I just want to hear more and because I don't really know what to expect. Okay. So, I'm just along for the ride. Okay, great. Pipe in. Yes, trust me, I will. All right, great. All right, great. This isn't a shy board. Yes, I know. Um, I'm hoping that tonight's content

includes some type of like best practices of how the select core communicates and interacts with the community. Yes. When we receive when the select board receives an email, like what what's the best practices of how boards respond and

how we respond as citizens. Great. Do you have issues al not issues, but do you have like um you get emails? You probably get comments when you're in the grocery store, the ball field. I know Jerry has walk-ins sometimes with constituents of yours. Um do you also have people that regularly show up for public comment? Um I wouldn't say regularly. Okay. But we get

maybe once a month an email from somebody. Okay. Whether it's a complaint or so it's not a high volume. No. No. We don't we it's more like some communities where there's like the same folks come in every meeting to make sort of comments or anything like that. You don't have that? No. Right now. Yeah. We don't really have any problematic issues. I'm just just curious that communication style of best practices. Do you do you also mean like communication to to the town to the

community in terms of getting the word out? Is that also what you're talking about? Um yes, but more specifically when residents, you know, raise a concern. Yeah. And uh Got it. We can cover both. Yeah. what what I think would be really helpful for us to understand tonight and also because we do know we do get like sometimes 200 viewers on our on this too for municipality our size I think that's great um like I know the core tenant of tonight's talk is like roles and responsibilities and I think what would be really helpful is for everyone to leave understanding just very much like what how the town manager select elected select board form of government functions I think that sometimes members of the public try to draw analogies between council and elected mayor and and town manager or select board and administrator and like that difference between um how they function and what the roles and responsibilities are

because I know as individual council members representing a a a geographic area within your town is very different than us all serving at large over the whole town. So, I think that sometimes it's hard for all of us both on the board, in the town office, and in the town to just know what is how is that different than my CEO or my mayor or my boss or my council person or my uh select person or my senator, you know, it just it doesn't feel like it's there's a perfect analogy. And so, I think that helping us understand that and helping viewers Yeah. know that too. So, we can talk a little bit about the endurance just All right, Josh and Jerry. I guess efficiency would be something that I would want to efficiency and what meetings uh getting things done and that

sort of thing. [Music] My big topic sort of so I'll just ch Yeah. But which one which one was the one that really the communication has been something I think recently I mean I also was looking for sort of best practices uh and

had this all planned out before um you know and and sort of getting a message out. Yep. I don't know if that's related to it's increasingly it's something that towns really haven't thought was a core part of their work for many years, but now with social media and also with kind of the decline in local press, it's becoming something that many towns are struggling with. Josh, it's it's one of those things, you know, recently someone who I think had partial information. Yeah. And then you know you know then there are other things out there and you know how do we get you know we don't we don't know who's saying it so we can't get there at the beginning we hear it at the end when half the town already knows and yeah right to your point about local news media like there the one once a year someone

writes an article about and it's our budget pass or and here's what it is whereas like you know Deb just the other day sent me an artic article that was about um written a local news article that came from one uh from uh Thompson. It was like someone watched their meeting and wrote an article about their meeting and put out like information. No one does that for you. I'm not saying it's necessarily I want like the press corp in here free meeting but like well I think we have all of this in our slides so far and we can just dig in on some of the things that you've um can I just add more as like as a manager perspective is understanding the the needs and want and the staff to provide it. Say that one more time. the the the needs and wants that we want to do and the staff and the ability and the funding to be able to provide that. Yes. And staff capacity, right? Yeah. And we'll talk a little bit about

that on goal setting about how to pick goals that are achievable and stay focused so you don't over burn because things will come up during the year, right? You don't overburden staff because then your first goals could fall off the plate because you got to do something else, right? Something else. Okay, I think I think we're good. I think we'll go right into the form of government in Durham and what it means. They're always going to start from here. So, yeah, local governments in Maine come in different shapes and sizes, but they all do pretty much the same thing. Um, responsibilities for cities and towns across the state really are more or less the same. It's a function of scale and things that some communities choose to do that other communities don't choose to do. Um but when it comes to the form of government, um you have uh mayor, council, you have uh council manager, council manager, budgetary town meeting, you

have select board, town meeting, select board administrator, town meeting, select board manager. So there are a lot of variations but it's all about uh who handles um the responsibilities as legislative body as governing body and as the administrative apparatus of uh the community. um for a city. Take Portland

as an example. It's handy. It's close. Um the council is the legislative body for almost everything. And the legislative body makes laws, policy, adopts the budget, approves uh bonds. Some things the city by its charter or by the council's choice sends out to referendum. Select board here can do the same thing. Town councils in towns with charters can often do the same thing. Um, they function as legislative body, but some things are still reserved to voters. Electing the municipal officers and other municipal officials that are elected is always done by the voters uh at the polls. Um, uh, we'll get into that a little bit more. Um, but it is important for people to understand uh what some of the differences are among communities and that the way Freeport operates is not the same way necessarily that Durham operates. you do some of the same things, but how those things get done will differ because Freeport's Town

Council has some of the legislative authority that was pre that in Durham and places like Durham are reserved to the voters usually assembled at town meeting like approval of the annual budget. In Freeport, the council can do that. Here, town meeting does that. Um, when it comes to the general operations of the town in towns that have not

adopted a home world charter and have not adopted the provisions of the town manager plan under title 38, um the select board uh is responsible for running things where um they've adopted the time manager plan or have a home rule charter that is a um council manager charter. The manager is responsible for operating uh all of the departments and functions of the town except as might be otherwise defined in the the charter. Durham doesn't have one. We've adopted the town manager plan. The select board is the governing body. uh you do all of the things that

are listed in statute for municipal officers where you read through a statute that says municipal officers here that means you uh the select board in Portland it means the city council in the town of Windom where I work as the town council the manager is responsible for the oversight and administration of the town and work for the city and working for the council or select board in this case. Um you've had this form of government for the last four years. Uh Jerry's been here for what, three years? Y yeah. So this is still relatively new. Uh, and I I suspect that there are some um patterns and some habits about the way, you know, Durham operated in the past that that continue to linger um and that um may need to change, may not need to change about the way things are done, but you have a very distinct uh delineation of responsibilities in statute about who's responsible for what. So, uh, again, voters, uh, and

town meeting, uh, act as the legislative body. When they come together, uh, as an assembly, that's, you know, town meeting, and you just had one of these. That's a photo from a recent, uh, town meeting. I'm not sure if it's your most recent one. I think it might be. Um, but anytime you have um the voters act on

things at the polls, you still issue a warrant. It's still a town meeting in a strict legal sense. Uh but it calls the voters instead of to an assembly, it calls them to the polls to act on a question or questions. Uh either is fine. Depends on what the subject matter is. Some things uh may be required to be acted on uh at the polls. Others can be acted on uh at town meeting. The voters also elect the municipal officers. Um the in this case uh the select board and I'm sorry is the town clerk elected? No, you're appointed. Okay. In communities where the town or city clerk is elected, they're also considered um a municipal officer. They're not part of the governing body, uh but they're also elected by the voters. There are differences among uh communities. Um but in general there's this um uh separation of duties, separation of powers if you will uh between the legislative uh the um the governing body

and management or administrative apparatus of the town. Um town meeting um approves the annual budget uh here and adopts and amends uh ordinances and plans. The select board look familiar? Um, proposes a budget for approval by town meeting. You appoint the town manager and other officials, adopt policies, bylaws, and you act only as a body. Your only your only employee is the town manager. Everybody else works for the town manager. um your um interface with the

administrative structure the uh town employees is through the town manager. Um the town manager is responsible for um working with the select board, helping you govern the town, advising you and being answerable to you for um

the operation of the town, adherence to statutes, adherence to policies, plans and so forth. Um, and I mean, as a former town manager, of course, I' I'd say it this way, but I like to think of the manager and the select board or council as uh partners. Um, you can think of it as a team, and there are times when it really does work that way, but, um, they're partners, I think, in a true sense, in governing and running the municipality, the city, the town. uh because the manager can't make the policy um and can't make certain decisions um and the select board or council can and the select board provides direction to the manager and staff for getting things done. So there's a give and take. There's a a degree of partnership and teamwork that needs uh to happen.

familiar uh proposes a budget for review by the select board. I know you have uh a budget committee that was established close to 100 years ago. Um but the town manager's responsibility is to prepare a budget for you to review um and is responsible for uh hiring and appointing others um to do the work of the town. Carries out laws, ordinances so forth. Serves as chief executive and the chair of the town. And again um is your interface with uh the

town uh administrative structure. Uh if there's an issue uh the first place you go with respect to a department or an office is the town manager. Can I just say one quick thing about that which is that one of the hard learnings for me when I became a counselor is that I had run on a platform right. I gone to my doors. I learned things that people wanted me to do. One of them was to try to do a senior property tax release. So when I was elected, I went to the town manager and said, "Hey, I really want to do this." And the town manager said, "We got to get the body to direct me." Right? So as an individual, I can't

direct the town manager, right? Only as a body can you direct the town manager. And it needs solutions to be alone. And that's um a good reminder of you know an earlier point about the select board is you are a collective decision-making body that individually you have no authority. I mean being elected to the select board is an important job and you know you are uh and I'm sure you know Jerry feels the same way that you are an important voice for him to hear uh and part of hearing from the community. So it's important from him to hear from you as individuals as well as a board. But when it comes to taking uh official actions, setting uh priorities and directions, those need to come uh from the board as a whole. Um Jerry and I were talking one time and you know just reflecting on my experience um in a manager or administrator's role um particularly manager's role where I had specific legal authority is that

my relationship with individual board members is important. I need to be able to work with them. I need to be able to understand them. We need to be able to have some kind of um healthy working relationship. Not necessarily always agree, God knows. Um but to be able to

listen to each other and understand each other and have us each respect uh each other's roles. So I'd have counselors come to me and say, you know, my constituents got this this that the other thing going on. Um as a manager,

it's not all black and white. There's still gray. and there's room for discretion. If you have a constituent that has a problem, um, I can help sort out whether there's anything, you know, I or we as a town can do about it. And, you know, if I can, I'm going to try to help help you help solve that constituent's issue. Um, but if that runs counter to board direction or a

specific policy or ordinance or something like that, I'm going to have to say, I'm sorry, that's you know, I'm I'm sympathetic. I hear what you're saying, but if I don't have the authority to do that, I really can't. So, you you may come away from the discussion not liking the outcome, but you can at least respect where in this case where Jerry would be coming from. I'll share just an example from my own experience. I had a constituent who was really mad that the snowplow truck seemed to be hurting the bushes, right? And so I went to the town manager and I said, "Can you do anything about this? Can you at least explain like what the issue is?" So the town manager talked to the public works director and then I got official explanation and actually the public works director volunteered to go and tell her how the machinery worked and tell her that actually her bushes were on public property, right?

So that that happened. Another example in the same exact area is I had many people in the neighborhood say we really want to put a state a a speed table in. You guys might know where Southreport village is. There are two speed tables, right? My husband calls them Christina's bumps because I tried to work with the council to actually help them figure out whether we could do that or not. So that was like a proposal that I brought to the council. The council said, "Okay, we'll install the speed tables and the town manager then execute it." So examples of like different levels of looking right and and working through the process. So you had a constituent come to you with an issue, you brought it to the board, the board acted on it and gave direction to the manager. That's textbook of how it should happen. Um and of course, you know, when it comes to um public works and snow plows, they always dump all the snow in your

driveway. So yeah. Um so to summarize and let me know if any of this you know comes either a as a pri as a surprise to you or b is no that's absolutely not the way things work. So voters elect the select board. Town meeting approves uh the budget and the town meeting of course is made up of voters. Uh select board hires oversees the managers, sets the agenda, priorities and direction, proposes a budget to town for approval. Town manager is responsible to the select board, hires and overseas staff, contributes to agenda priorities, direction, policies, makes recommendations as your adviser or sounding board, um, and proposes an annual budget that should reflect the select board's priorities and his

assessment of the town's needs for your review. Any that sound? Okay, sounds better. How do how do towns use budget committees? It varies. Yeah. Um I mean like what's a common layout you see with a select board town manager town? Um well, first of all, budget committ are not required by law and there's very little um said in state law about them. In fact, the only thing that I could find in title 38, I forget the exact section, is that if a community has a budget committee, a warrant article has to carry their recommendation uh on that for any appropriation. So, you know, if if you propose a budget, if the select board proposes a budget that includes a million dollars for the fire department, I didn't look at your budget. I don't know what you're about to do. Um the budget committee because you have one because it was established by vote of uh town meeting and has never been um unestablished disestablished.

Um they have a role in making a recommendation on that proposal. That's it. That's the only authority they have. Um different communities that have budget committees work with them different ways. Some are elected, some are appointed. Um and again, their

responsibility is to make recommendations. And this is typically for communities that still operate with town meeting. You tend not to find these in communities with town councils or city councils. What you'll find there instead are council subcommittees um that are usually called finance committees composed of the here that do a little bit of extra work. That's how it works in Freeport. Yes. And a lot of communities are like that where you know the town or city council may have subcommittees a finance subcommittee a an ordinance subcommittee whatever you name it they can have other uh committees and it's not unusual for those communities uh councils on getting a proposal for something to refer it to the ordinance committee or to refer it to the finance committee for review and recommendation. So then the committee goes off and does it work? does its work, sends their recommendation back,

and then council reviews the recommendation, accepts it or not, and acts on whatever they find. So, just to clarify with what you're saying in terms of town councils that have the subcommittees generally, members of the town council are on those subcommittees and play a part in decision-m within the subcommittees to bring it back to the council. Do you see that in terms of with towns that have I mean I guess with

select cores is that do you see neighboring towns similar to Durham that are in that situation? Um are you asking do we see select board towns that have subcommittees for the select board? Right. They can. Um it depends again on

the community, the size of the select board. Um you know with a five member board, you're more likely to see that than with a three member board because you know three members pretty much everybody's going to do everything. Um I think with town meeting select board towns whether they have a town manager or not. If they have advisory committees um they will generally not uh be composed entirely of

board members. There might be a board member u liaison to say a conservation committee or a recreation committee. and the the select board could still say, "We'd like to have the recreation committee review this, report back to us." You can do that. They're advisory committees. They're not making final decisions. You are. So, in your case, right? So, in your case, you have a separate budget committee that's separate from what you do. We don't have very many towns in our region that have that set up. Are we the only ones? Uh, I think there's one other. Is that right? Maybe not. Does Harrison have a Harris? Harrison was struggling with this because they've had um and I don't know where they landed. They decided to put a committee together that I think was composed partly of select board members and partly of members of the public. They wanted to have more of a watchdog approach to the budget. And so

they they they're in I don't know if they've actually created it. Last time we were there, they were in discussion about whether they wanted to create it. Right. I think Raymond has an elected budget committee. I think North Oh, North. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it can set up a not great dynamic, right? Because the select board is working with the staff and with constituents to figure out what the priorities are. And if the budget committee doesn't have the same information and isn't responsible in the same way to kind of being the employer that keeps staff and retains it, right? because this select board is actually an employer and you have like a responsibility to try to attract good talent, retain talent, make sure your staff stays around. So you have like some different pieces of your job that may not be reflected in what the budget committee sees as its job. And so that can set up conflict sometimes, you know,

between the select board and the and the budget committee. It can be useful to have um you know perspectives um you know outside staff outside the uh the select board. Um but remembering that you know you're the ones who are responsible for delivering on a budget and responsible for administering it whereas um a budget committee u may weigh in but they don't have any responsibility for it once it's adopted. Yes. So you have to make sure that the town functions. Yeah. Right. So that that part I think is often forgotten. Um but my my question and I

know there there's no number and I'm not suggesting we do this but you know our town meetings are not particularly well attended as I assume a lot are although there are some I think in county that get a good turnout. Um what are the pros and cons of our system as opposed to a system like reports? Uh

it seems like we get the same maybe 10 people. Uh a lot of them are the budget committee or other everybody else is there for really a cause and whether it be an ordinance change or a department. What are the pros and cons? And I'll tell you, I came to the first town meeting when I moved to Durham and I stopped coming because uh I said, "What the hell did I get myself into?" They just said, "We're not going to fix the roads." And I said I said, "I'm not a genius." Uh, but I went to my father who at the time I worked with and was on a number of boards in Freeport when when I was growing up there and said, "Hey, I'm not a rocket scientist, but this is going to cost us more money in the long term, isn't it?" Yes. Uh, and I said I said, you know, if I can figure that out, why why is this uh and and so public participation is important to I think all of us. Uh, and you know, again, I'm not advocating for this, but

thinking of ways to get more public participation. We're not getting an out of town meeting, but if we say if we switch forms of government and make people come to us, uh, I don't think we're going to have another meeting where we don't have public comment, especially around budget time. And is that a better way to get public input? I mean, I don't necessarily think it is, but I guess this goes back to my how do we get people more involved? Uh and that's been, you know, this is uh the first year of my second term, and I think that's been a theme throughout. It's the same people on the committees that that we appoint. Uh I mean, half of our committees, I think, are from from one road or or, you know, maybe three roads in the same neighborhood. Uh pros and cons, I guess, would be my question. Yeah, it's it's hard. I mean, understanding how your local government works and learning enough to make good

decisions takes time and it's way more time than you know the average citizen, the average resident should ever reasonably be expected uh to invest. So yeah, I think in a um in a council form, so as a select board, you're responsible for making a lot of the decisions for the community, but it's still um the voters either at the polls or at town meeting that make the biggest decisions. In a council form, you're electing the people who make the decisions. You're choosing people to be more deeply engaged with issues, to more

fully understand what the implications are of decisions. And yeah, they should be communicating those to everyone in ways they can understand and giving people access to the process so that when they make decisions, they're hearing from as broad a cross-section of the community as they can to help inform their decisions. To me, that's the biggest difference. when you have a town meeting select board uh and or town meeting select board manager um fun uh form uh you're still reserving a lot of the biggest decisions to the voters who don't necessarily have the time and who aren't going to be as engaged with the issues. You can be as engaged with the issues as any counselor anywhere, but if you're not the ones making the decision, you're less sure of the outcome. And um it means that you can put all that that time, effort, and energy into it and still uh end up with um not a very good uh decision.

I'm not saying that the form doesn't work. It works all over the state. It works. It's particularly um a form that we see a lot in New England and the Northeast. Once you move out of the Northeast, it's not very common. Um but for me the the council manager uh form uh vesting all or nearly all of the legislative authority in the council means you're electing people to make those decisions and then you get to hold them accountable at the polls for decisions they make. And I'll just add that, you know, the town meeting form of government is like the most direct democracy thing we've got in the United States, right? So there's this historic way that we've governed ourselves that involves everyone. The problem is that not everyone comes, not everybody takes the time to be informed and sometimes certain groups will organize for turnout. Right? Now you can have the same thing that happens with locally

elected counselors, right? You can have certain constituencies or a certain person who's really gifted at campaigning, never does their homework, and makes bad decisions. So, you've got risk in either form of government. And you know, the best thing that you can do is to try to communicate as best you can to your constituents, you know, through official channels, but also through your the way you talk with people about why it's important to show up to town meeting and why it's important for the town meeting to represent a wide cross-section of who lives here, right? is that what you don't want is a subgroup of a community to either be represented on council only or represented at the town meeting. But hopefully our election system balances out because once that happens and we've been both Tony and I have been around long enough, we see the cycles. If you get something that's skewed too far one way, a lot of people run for

select board or show up at the town meeting the next time. So you've got these cycles. the the best thing you can do is to try to even it out with public education. Not an easy thing to do. It's very hard to reach people as you know. Well, and and let's face it, you know, local government is far more complex than it was, you know, 100 or 200 years ago. Yes. So again, I think it's unreasonable to expect um you know, the average citizen or voter, and this is in no way a criticism of these people. They're all knowledgeable and functioning and can be, you know, experts in their area. But if you don't know how things work, how things are supposed to work, the legal constraints that cities and towns operate within or are supposed to operate within, you can really get yourself in a lot of trouble. Um, and it's hard to make good decisions that way. So, I think we've summarized the the the form of government. Is there anything I

just have? Yeah, back to budget committee. Um, so in towns that have elected budget committee, I'm guessing those towns usually have some sort of charter or something that's been approved by that legislative body that outlines the roles and responsibilities of that budget committee. The ones that I'm aware of u that have

uh elected budget committees are usually established by uh ordinance. So there's there's some language that defines what the responsibilities of budget committee are. Um maybe a little bit about how the process works that um because this this is done through ordinance. Okay. Um this is uh becomes then part of the u

apparatus of of local government. So if you have an ordinance that says um that um upon submission of a budget by the town manager to the select board um the town manager's recommendation should also be forwarded to the budget committee. The ordinance could say that that would be at the home rule level, right? Like you'd have your own you could write your own. what you're saying. My understanding is now when we read section 38, it when it says town manager, we know what that means. When it says town officials, we know what that means. The only place it says budget committee is if you have one, they have to comment on warrant articles. So, so if you don't have something at the local level that lays out what they're supposed to do, at minimum, you just have to have them comment on things that the warrant that's Yeah. At minimum, you can hand them a copy of the warrant, copy of uh the proposed budget that the

select board has adopted and say you're an elected budget committee. You have a responsibility under law to make a recommendation on these proposals. There you go. Anything after that is, you know, uh it's precedent, it's practice, it's Yeah. If you don't have uh an ordinance,

um you know, it's all based on, you know, what's happened before we're learning with our like town guiding document is that it has language in there that precedes us moving to a town manager town uh or select board form of government and so there's certain things that we're going through now through the codification saying like well we have a town manager now so actually the town manager does that and we're fixing it up so if we what I'm getting at is we don't have that reference of section 38 has a section called budget committees and tells you what it is it's kind of just I'd have to double check, but I'm pretty sure I didn't find it either. I think it's just one subsection that says that if a municipality has a budget committee, the budget committee's recommendation has to appear on the warning. And it doesn't actually say how the municipality has to constitute the budget committee. It does not.

Yeah. I mean, you have latitude there. Your town meeting could make those changes if you wanted to make any structural changes to Yeah. I mean, the town could uh I don't know. I suggested this. just hypothetically saying, you know, the the town could or the voters could vote on an ordinance, which obviously would have to be written somewhere. Um that would um establish uh a budget committee that would succeed or or supersede the existing budget committee um and then lay out what the process would be and the select board would has the authority to recommend a ordinance to the town meeting. Yeah. So you could draft that. So you know, barring any structural changes, just knowing the very very little bit I know about your process here, you know, you could also work in partnership with the budget committee to design a process where they have more understanding of the information that you have. So as they're

thinking about what they want to recommend on different things, they have the benefit of understanding from staff's perspective, this is what we spent last year. is he's going to select board priorities for how we're going to spend money this year. This is how much it's going to cost so that they're not just looking at it in a vacuum, right? So you could imagine some joint workshops or things like that to try to bring them and you closer together as you get towards town. So that's just a kind of interim practical suggestion about trying to reduce any kind of conflict or or different sets of information that different groups might be working on. So we have some flexibility when it comes to what uh the proper role uh of

the finance committee should be or excuse me the budget committee should be for the town of Dor if you choose to continue one you can do that through the ordinance process however you choose uh to navigate that. Have other towns disbanded their finance committees their budget committees? Um,

none that I'm specifically aware of. Um, but again, not every community has them. So, I don't know if maybe they had one at some point in the past and did away with it. Um, so I don't know. Great. I'll just share one other thing is that in Freeport the way that the budget process worked which is different because we didn't have a budget committee but we did have a subcommittee of the council that worked on finance and really got into okay what are the comparables for the town manager salary what are the comparables for benefits around like so that that those people really had a lot of data that they were working with and then they would come to the council and recommend things but all those workshops were open to the public and we often had people from the public that then had more information so that they would share their comments to the town council level on the budget. So the budget was really shaped

by constituents, right? Which is part of the point is to make sure that the process isn't so insular that it's only the town manager and the select board working together that it's permeable to public input and priorities. Right? And you can do that in different ways.

So you're you're four years into this uh transition different form of government some things that are still similar town meeting select board manager is different you had an administrator before manager's uh role is uh different has specific legal authority and responsibility administrator only has the authority and responsibility that the select board gives them I've been involved um and I will tell you that's kind of the big difference there is that there is a authority written in 30A that says what the town manager does whereas an administrator it's really just like

administrator right can be right depends yeah it depends very much on it depends even more um on the board and the individuals and uh the practice because there is no legal framework work uh for the office of administrator like there is manager. So I'm I'm going to play timekeeper um uh because one of the things we'll talk about is get things moving and time management. Um I mean this is some really good um we have Q&A already and yes we did. So moving on uh to the

habits of highly effective selectors. Yeah. So now what once you've been elected, how are you going to spend your time? How are you going to get things done well? How are you going to do them efficiently as sele talked about? And how do you want to work together as a select board and as a select board plus the metric? So we're going to talk about some highly effective habits. Um I'm going to take the first four and gonna take the last six. So the first thing is for you to basically do your homework. You need to know you all of you know about your community. You may not know about every aspect of your community like you may represent certain types of people in your community. I always um encourage you to try to reach out people you don't know and get different perspectives so that you understand the whole community and you can really res represent all people who live in Durham. Understand how the town works. So what the

departments are and a good way to understand how the town works is to really understand the budget and um budget can be kind of a complicated thing to understand and one of the things that Jerry works on is trying to explain it to you in ways that it makes sense but one of your big roles and we'll talk about this in a moment is that you need to set the priorities. What is it that you want the budget to accomplish for Durham in the next year? And this is something that many many governing boards skip over. They just look at last year's budget and they inflated by inflation or they say, "Oh, but we got to start saving for a fire truck or something like that." But you should actually start with some bigger questions about like where is Durham going? What does it need in the next year? What are your major priorities? There's going to be a whole bunch of stuff that you can't really do much about in the budget. Paving roads is a

good one, Josh. You want to keep on top of like paving the roads, otherwise it is going to cost you more in the future. But there may be something like the town facility study that we just did. You may want to take some action on that as a priority. You may have a few other things like that that you want to think about. And then your budget should reflect those priorities. And that's your role is to tell Jerry, here are the four things that we want the budget to accomplish. Make sure when you give us the draft budget, it does that thing. So, so an example like last year's we realized that we need more HR services in town. And so when Jerry started the budgeting process, we said, "Bring us a plan that addresses HR services up to and possibly including hiring a new employee." Yep. And Jerry came back with a budget and said, "I found a contractor who will do it." So that's kind of that. Exactly. Exactly. And you know, Jerry

also should share with you his priorities. He told us HR services. Yeah. So Jerry's, you know, Jerry's the expert. He's your He's your guy that can give you the information that you need, but you may also be hearing things from your constituents. So, this is where it's a partnership, right? Like Jerry knows what's needed in order to run the town. You have a sense of where the town is heading and what your constituents want. You bring those together when you set your annual priorities and then you ask Jerry to reflect those annual priorities in the budget. So, as a new council, new select board member, you want to understand what the past budgets did, like what did they accomplish. Um, which is a different question than saying like how much did you spend on fire truck, right? Um, and there's a lot to learn. So, I would just encourage you to be curious, to ask questions. Your staff is your resource. You should be

regularly talking with Jerry and getting information and be open to hearing things that you might think contradict your your uh preconceptions, right? because there's a lot of information about running a town. The second one is, and Tony talked about this before, you all ran as individuals, but then once you were elected, now you're part of a board and that board makes the decisions together. You don't have any authority to direct the town by yourself or to direct charity by yourself. You have to do that together. So the relationships that you form with one another are really important so that you can understand one another's priorities and then help accomplish them together. What I would add to that when we say cooperate doesn't mean you always have to agree. You don't. You're four should be five uh individuals with your different histories, your different backgrounds, your different views, values, so on. Um,

where you come together as a board is where you bring those to the table and put those to work with your understanding of the community, how it works, what the community, what the community members value, uh, to make decisions. Unimity is not required. Um, and there are going to be times when it's not possible. Is it fine to have unanimous vote? Absolutely. Is it fine to have a split vote? Absolutely. As long as those

positions are um honestly held uh informed by you know good uh information. Uh people can have, you know, different assessments and different views of the information, but um you can still make a decision um that reflects, you know, your understanding of the community's values um you know, through your own uh lens. They do not have to be unanimous votes, but it is important for people to understand where their elected officials are coming from. I know one of the criticisms I've heard many times is that well the council voted well the select board voted I don't know why. Um so it's it's helpful as you're discussing issues and making

decisions without prolonging the discussion simply to say here's my decision here's why and I'm going to vote yes or I'm going to vote no. uh unonymity is not required. Um but have the discussions you need to and cooperate on getting the information and getting to the point of making the decision. Yeah. The only other thing I'd say about cooperation is that uh and I don't perceive you guys have a problem with this at all, but to be listening to one another because you might hear something that changes your point of view or allows you to get collectively to a more creative solution. Right? All right. So the next thing is um being prepared. Um

it is really important for you to understand things before you come to this table because one of the things I've seen a lot is somebody will not really understand the issue very well or didn't ask the town manager before for clarification and it's like oh I think I need to study this more or I'd like more information on this issue and that leads to a fairly inefficient process over time. Right? So, I recommend that you make sure you read your agendas. Make sure if you have certain questions that you just like aren't understanding it or you are going to need some more data that you tell Jerry in advance so he can get it prepared for the meeting. That will help all of you actually make a decision and not have to like table it to you get more information later. So, um, the last thing is that you, if it's a controversial thing, you may want to talk to different people in the community just to get other perspectives

so that when you come to the table, you also have those voices in your head and you're representing those people. And I would also say like being a select board member, it takes time. Um, most of you have full-time jobs, right? All of you. Yeah. Yeah, I did too when I was. And it, you know, it's it's something where you got to treat it a little bit like a part-time job and make sure that you're coming prepared to the table. And everybody else will appreciate when you're prepared and you will appreciate everybody else being prepared and you're going to save Jerry a lot of aggravation because he will have already been able to give you what you needed, you know, to help make that decision. One one thing I'd uh add with respect to being uh prepared and you know having questions u that can also help the board and I did this u as manager um and when

not to begin with but as you know years went on we figured out how to make our meetings uh better. They're not perfect. um is if I got a question from a counselor uh about an issue that's on the agenda asking for information about something related to that, I took that request and I provided the information to every member of the board, not just to the one who requested it. So, you know, if you want the last 10 years of excise tax receipts, I'm going to give it to everybody u not just to one. So, everybody's armed with the same uh information. Everybody's prepared with the same information, not too. Yeah. And I think Jerry would do this naturally, but we've seen places where, you know, information was like only shared with a couple people or kind of hoarded and that just needs to break down trust. So having everybody have the same information is really a great way to proceed. I think it's a two-way street though for

us as board members, too. Like if I know I'm going to talk about a topic and so I went and pulled the last four permits related to that topic and reviewed them all and I'm going to come here and everyone else is ready then all of a sudden I'm like hey I don't know if you all look at these four years worth of permits but this that then sets back the clock on everybody because they're like right. So I think it's important for us too it's like rather than being like it's at the meeting that I'm going to reveal that I found all this information that I want to share. I know we're not discussing things on online, but we can say here are things I'm gonna bring up at the meeting and I review in prep for this. So, yeah, as long as you know start a discussion, right? Yeah. Right. So, as long as we don't start a discussion, but like I know like in the past it might be like I'm going to bring this up

at the meeting here. Here's the document I'm referring to. Obviously, if it's doesn't pertain to executive session or anything like that, like no surprises is a really good way to think about it, right? Nobody wants any surprises at the meeting. And the more that you already have reviewed what's on the agenda, it's really candy. I mean, that's a good surprise. Nobody nobody likes being sandbagged in a public meeting. Um, and you don't really want to be that person. And you don't want to put Jerry in this position either of asking, well, why don't I have this information? than having somebody have to say it's actually on page 37. Yeah, nobody likes that. I mean, and and again, this also like helps Jerry, right? Like you want to make sure Jerry sticks around. You want to make sure your staff sticks around. Make sure that he feels like you're being fair to him by asking the information far enough

in advance that he's able to get it and you're not, you know, wanting more from him in the meeting and he's able to prepare for you. Um can you talk a moment about the speaking opportunity input topic? So if we have an agenda item that Yep. warrants, you know, comment from the or seeking out Yep. you know, you don't want to just seek out people, you know, immediate neighbors. Um, is it acceptable for a board member to

make a Facebook post seeking out information on the non we don't write to the Durham page, but we do have a community page with 30,000 members or something and can get pretty active there. But I always struggle with that part about like where's the line of yeah, I'm a select board member and how how do how are we seeking out But besides just having maybe community members come to the public. I mean when I when I wrote that in this slide I was kind of thinking that you know you might have conversation with people that you see at the ball field or whatever and ask for somebody's input that you might not hear from normally. But I think you could use social media that way. You're just going to have to be careful that you don't slant it yourself. Right? So it may be something that each of you posts on each of your page. you even posted on the Durham page saying, "We'd like your your opinion on

this issue." Right? We we did that for the facility study, for example. We actively put out a survey, right? We asked for people to provide input in different ways. We had different meetings. So, it's always a good thing to get input. Um, you just need to do it in a way that it doesn't feel like you're trying to like organize opposition or something like that. You'll have to use your best judgment about that. It can be a slippery flow. There's no question about it. Can be I think we've done really well in pulling the, you know, requesting community input on big topics and getting more people involved. I just think from a personal perspective as a board member. Yeah. I mean, you're responsible to the people that voted for you, right? You're an independent person who has every right in the world to ask your constituents for information and to share information with your constituents. It's more difficult in

this moment of social media because you can see we've seen elected officials, you know, throughout the region who kind of use it as a platform for creating um misinformation or divisiveness, right? And hey, we've got the first amendment in the United States. You can do that. But as a habit of a highly select of of a high functioning select word, you know, you should hold yourself to a high standard as you're communicating to the public. Make sure it's factual. Make sure you're not doing it in a way that's like I mean you can communicate your position after a vote also to say I voted this way because right because you are elected directly by the voters but you know I think a lot of it's in tone you know no personal attacks make sure you're factual that kind of thing well just to touch on the word community and community input it was a question earlier about different forms of government and understanding where in

some communities um counselors might represent specific uh wards or districts or areas uh in their community and are elected only by the voters within those defined geographic areas. Durham's not like that. Any town uh in Maine uh that has a select board uh form of government, everybody on the board is elected at large. Um so your perspective

uh can vary and the community you seek input from primarily if if you're a district representative or you're you know ward 4 um will be the people who voted for you who elected you. Um but if you're elected at large like this select board like uh sometimes um members of a

council there'll be so many that are elected by district or board and others who are elected at large. Um in Windham for example was kind of a a unique arrangement where there are four geographic areas from which counselors have to be elected but everybody votes for them. Now, I live in the south area, but I get to vote on um

the north area, the west area, the east area, all of those. So, it's a way of providing geographic balance without being uh solely focused on your district. Um there may be other communities that do that. I'm not aware of any, but it it kind of is a hybrid between uh at large and uh district or board representation. Sorry. The last one is just be open, which is kind of obvious, right? And I know all of you will try to do that. It's just that sometimes they're conflicts that you may not necessarily perceive. You just have to be very careful about making sure that there's nothing that would financially benefit you or you don't you're not passing an ordinance that would benefit your particular property, you know. So just to make sure you recuse yourself if there's something that seems like it could could raise a conflict of interest for you. We haven't had this issue. So I always hate coming up with hypotheticals

because it makes me sound like I'm like worried about it. But like have there been scenarios where you see boards where individuals might not be be recusing themselves? Yeah. But other board members might be like Josh might be like, man, Joe really has a lot at stake here and he's not recusing himself. Does has there become a time where it's appropriate where Josh might say I think Joe you might want to recuse yourself from this vote like yeah no I know you would but like do you think that there's a in in that and then in the whole tenant two here of cooperative and not wanting to sandbag people like I have thick skin I'm fine with being told that but like is there a better way to go about it if you have that concern like oh yeah in the private before or it would be much better if like if you guys are trying to cooperate then Again, no surprises, right? You you would call Joe and say, "Hey, I really

think," and this is part of doing your homework, right? You would want to read the agenda before and then you'd be like thinking about it, say, "Hey, Joe, I really think you ought to recuse yourself." And then you could either make the case that you don't think so or not, but then in the meeting, you know, if you felt strongly about it, Josh, you could call for you to recuse yourself and then there's a vote and and um he

refusal, right? Absolutely. have to look at the rules, but the rest of the select board members would vote on whether you needed to recuse yourself. So, it's it's on you to declare it, but it's also on everybody else to provide a check on each other. You know, I'd also say that most of the time the ethical behaviors will be clear, but there will be times when it's really not. And I think it's perfectly fine um for you to have discussions as

um individuals, you know, say, you know, I'm not really sure where the boundaries are here. Uh or if you think someone else may have a potential conflict or the appearance of a conflict is just to to have that discussion with them. I think that's like a good one because that's like when you're dealing with like land use ordinance or stuff like that like everyone in here owns land that so no one's immune but whether you like own land that's subject to within an area that might be tax on your property right so it's like you know we all chime in on things like we're all taxpayers so everything we talk about here has an impact on us but there's like a line there's no it seems like there's kind of a self policing. It's a difference between uh something that is of general applicability or specific applicability if it applies specifically. There's an ordinance against wildlife biologists and then I'm going to

probably have to pull myself out. You might All right. Okay. Great. So, we'll move on to the next one. So, Christina already talked about uh the importance of uh establishing uh priorities in a budget. And uh I don't know if you knew this before you were elected to the select board or before you decided to run. Uh but sitting in those chairs is a lot about money. Uh there's a lot about running a town, running a city that is about money. It's about financial management. It's about budget management. Um, some of it can be really

eye watering or mind-numbing depending on your preference. Um, but following the money and understanding how the town's finances work, at least at a basic level, is really important. understanding where the money comes from, understanding where the money goes, what the town's responsibilities are for, you know, assessment and collection of property taxes, um what state revenues are, what things you're required to do, uh and what you have to spend money on. All that's important. um where Christina said that it's important uh for you to um set priorities in the budget. What I will do is I will say um that the budget is all about priorities.

I mean there's some stuff that you're going to have to do anyway. Uh but a budget and this this has stuck with me uh since an undergraduate budgeting course at the University of Maine. is the best working definition of a budget I've ever heard in my life. A budget is a plan for what you intend to do expressed in terms of dollars and cents. So, first and foremost, it's a plan. It's an expression of what you intend to do. It's about your priorities. It's what you intend to accomplish over the next year. Typically um if you adopt a

capital uh plan and capital budget comes with that you know it can expand into multi-year but generally um the budget is the best way of articulating your priorities and uh you on behalf of the community the community's priorities for what you want to accomplish during the year and that becomes the road map for Jerry or anybody else who sits in the manager's seat. U so understanding what your priorities are and reflecting those in the budget is of vital importance. And I I can tell you that there are far too many communities that don't get this right. Um that it is about

um that it's about the dollars first and what you're doing with them second. Yes, you want to control the amount of spending. you don't want you don't want to use, you know, more precious uh public resources than you have to to accomplish the town's priorities. But in order to know that, you've got to know what your priorities are. And then you can put yourself in the position of balancing those priorities against what the level of spending is that people are comfortable with, you think is responsible. Um, but it's it's important to understand first what it is you're trying to accomplish. Starting with um I I want a zero tax increase. I can't tell you how many times I've heard that. Um only to have to ask, well, what do you mean by zero tax increase? Zero on a levy? Zero on a tax rate. What do you mean? And what do you want to cut because inflation, right? So, I mean, one thing you you might have a goal, many towns

have a goal, an annual goal of keeping the tax rate stable, right? And some places will say, "Well, we're only going to we're going to have a 0% or we're going to hit for 2.1% or whatever it is." But you're kind of picking this number out of the air without understanding what it means in terms of what you can do. So, for example, if you wanted 0%, you might start with, okay, we've decided that our I'm making this up. WCK department is not that important. We're going to cut the W recck department and that's going to enable us to keep the tax rate stable or

lower, you know, but you you can't really start with a it's got to be 0% because there's stuff that's going to have to give on something like that. So you have to decide it be better to start earlier and say okay of these things that we fund we need to figure out how we're going to cut it because our goal is to cut taxes for our for our residents. Well, and what I can tell you also from manager's perspective, being given a direction like that means the board is essentially abdicating its responsibility, its role in budgeting and priority making because it puts the manager in a position of saying, "Okay, what am I going to cut? I don't know what my board's priorities are. I might try to, you know, sus it out by, you know, my knowledge of the individuals or, you know, what I've heard at board meetings, but I really don't know. And you're putting them in a position of coming to you with a budget that

includes a bunch of cuts. It's like there's no way I can support this. I think that goes against the the van for cooperation. You know, it's like, oh yeah, we we want to develop a budget that there's a vision. We don't just tell Jerry, right? Hey, bring us a budget for next year. It's like, well, what do you want in that? Like, we might say, bring us a budget that keeps the lights on and nothing else. Like, that's a different conversation. Yeah. He has he doesn't hear that from just me. The board says, "Bring us a budget like this." You know? Exactly. and and you and you have a responsibility to provide that direction to Jerry before he goes and puts a ton of work into creating budget which is not a good use of town resources and you're you're exactly right you know if you you go back to uh the you know cooperate um it's cooperation among uh members of the board it's also cooperation and and

going back to you know what I was saying about the partnership between the select board and the manager to get things done and I'll just do like A little addendum here about your budget committee that if you are going to try to bring your budget committee along with the information you have, you want to engage them very very early up front on that goal setting in the priority setting for your budget because only from there would they understand why Jerry's going to put together what he's going to put together and you're going to recommend what you're going to recommend. So, um the the the next uh the next uh

best practice for a newly elected official or really any elected official is to promise to do it. It's it's easy and you know you uh public office has certain things they want to accomplish. They might have um you know they might have you know one burning issue and you know they they're promised to make all this change. We're going to bring uh Durham forget about the 21st century. We're going to bring Durham into the 22nd century. Well, okay, maybe that's appealing to you and you might vote for that person, but that one person has no authority to do that on their own and it sets their supporters up for disappointment and failure could be uh detrimental to uh

the operations of the board. What I think you can and should uh promise responsibly is to make good decisions to listen and to um uphold the the values of the community. Where do you find those? You find those in, you know, the comprehensive plan. You find those by, you know, listening to uh neighbors, find them by, you know, people sometimes uh social media sometimes, not always. Um, but you find it by listening to uh other people. But it's it's careful. It it it's uh you want to be careful about making promises because as one member of the board, you don't have sole ability to keep those promises. You can promise to try and to work as hard as you can to make something happen, but that's really all you can promise.

you behave uh at meetings matters. People watch, people pay attention. Um and how you conduct yourself uh is a model for other people when they come here, how they treat you, how they treat the staff, how they treat each other. Um, and the more they see you treating each other and Jerry and staff and the public with respect, the more that becomes a norm um for the community. Maybe that's not an issue uh here. Um, communities go through cycles. I've seen uh times when communities go through really hard time and there's this, you know, real, you know, headbutting in public and it just gets nasty and ugly and nobody likes that. Uh but as the elected representatives, the more you model good behavior, the more you encourage that uh from others. You also don't want to say something you'll regret later. No. Um so there are times when uh you may be called upon to act in a quasi judicial capacity. And what that means is like a

judge, Josh knows that. Um, and you have to remain impartial. Uh, if you've got, and I don't know if this would be a situation, say you've got an application before you for um, uh, quarrying or sand pit or something. Uh, and that's an application that comes before um, the select board. It's not usually um you should be really careful about expressing any opinion about that. You know, you're down at um you're whatever local coffee shop there is or whatever place people gather to talk about uh town stuff. Uh people say, "Wow, what do you think about this application for so and so's, you know, gravel pit? It's an application before the select board. I can't talk about it." uh because as soon as you say anything about it, it can prejudice uh your role on the board and your ability to make an impartial uh decision. Um so there are times when you're going to be act you're going to be acting not just

asked to, but you're going to be acting in a capacity on an application, a a hearing of, you know, some kind of an appeal. Um and you have to really be careful to remain uh impartial. roles, responsibilities and relationships. It's important to honor those boundaries. Um the select board has by law certain functions. Um the

town manager by law has certain functions and each of you needs to respect those functions and work within um the system. Um I I would tell you know the counselors that I work for that I would jealously guard their role that

that there was not going to be anything done that required council authority done by anybody else. Um, and likewise I expected that if there was something that the manager needed to do that it would come to me and if I needed to go to a department head or something like that, I would do that. Um, and that's

u abiding by uh the law. That's abiding by the decision of the voters who established the town manager plan in Durham. That's respecting and honoring your role as the select board. You're the governing body. You're the four four five people uh who have been chosen uh by your fellow voters to make certain decisions on their behalf. That's your job. Uh your job is also to hire, oversee and give direction to the town manager and through them staff. You should do that. Um and Jerry should take direction from the board, provide you with input, you know, as as appropriate, and um report back to you on how things are going. One one thing I'll just say about that is that um your focus is on policy and priorities. It's not on managing Jerry's staff or managing how Jerry does something that you direct him to do, right? So, you want to make sure that you're preserving your time and not being overly prescriptive

in telling Jerry, "Okay, write this letter this way or, you know, fix this pothole with this kind of asphalt, right?" and you're going to say to him, "Please communicate our general sentiment on this or please make sure that these potholes, you know, are, you know, part of the overall plan for your, you know, street mans or whatever it is. You just want to make sure you don't stay in the weeds, right? Because you have precious time and you want to you want to stay at that kind of strategy level and you want Jerry to be at the execution level. Does that make sense? you know, save everybody time and heartache. Well, and it's it's also easy to get into the details because that's something a lot of us understand. You know, we we grasp the details better than, you know, the abstract big picture policy stuff. Um, and that can be really hard. Um, but I really encourage you as as Christina said to stick with, you

know, kind of the high level what's, you know, what's what's good for Durham, whether, you know, whether the guest Wi-Fi placard is on the left side or the right side of the whiteboard, who cares? You know, it's there. We've made people uh aware that there is guest Wi-Fi available. Who cares? I remember one particular workshop I was in with my fellow counselors. We literally spent 20 minutes talking about whether The planner should have a $500 travel budget or $1,000. 20 minutes of seven people's time to figure out something like that, right? And instead it should be our our goal is that the planner has professional development opportunities. Manager can figure out like if that's 500 or a thousand, right? I mean, and it's just such a waste of time to be radical like that. Well, they need a four drawer file cabinet or a five drawer file cabinet. people still use file. Anyway, um the the final uh

best practice for newly elected or really any uh elected official and it's always useful to revisit these um because you may forget some of them and you need to be reminded occasionally. Oh yeah, I get to you know do better at this. Um is to be resourceful. Um, it's easy, you know, to be in your foxhole and think you're the only ones dealing with these issues and, you know, how are we ever going to deal with this particular issue? Uh, talk to your colleagues in North York, talked to select board members in North York, talk to counselors in Freeport. Um, I would encourage you to go to uh a main municipal association uh training from time to time. talk with your fellow elected officials from other parts of the region, other parts of the state. Absolutely. Come to our meetings, uh come to our events and it it is a good place in our our um it's a good place to talk with uh people. Good opportunity to

talk with people. Our annual summit at the end of May, for example, um is yes, our annual business meeting. We approve the budget, bylaw, amendments, any of that stuff. Um, but really what it's about is bringing people together and giving people nuggets of information or

you know micro topics that they can talk about. Um, and we give people time to do that, uh, to network, to talk with each other and say, "Hey, you said you're doing this in in your community. I want to know more about that." And we actually have heard uh from uh board members in um various communities who say, "There was somebody who talked about this thing. I'd like to know more about that thing. Can you connect us?" And we absolutely do that. Um, so reach out to officials in other towns. uh take advantage. It is Durham an MMA member. Yes, you are. Um and we we're not they're competitive. Uh MMA does a great job of things at a state level. Um what we do is we focus on our region. There's some overlap in what we do. We try to coordinate on some things. uh we try not to duplicate some things unless you know we feel there's really uh a need to focus on specific needs of uh our members. But uh MMA is a great resource.

They have a ton of uh information about their their legal library, their um um legal memos, notes, the municipal officers manual. If you don't have a copy, um, you can get one. Um, you can download one. You don't have to print it out. It's like, I don't know, 500 pages. Anyway, it's a great resource. I would be careful though not to read it and then expect to apply it verbatim. I've had people try to do that, but it's a great learning tool. Um and please as I I had somebody made me promise when I was um going to be you know taking office in another organization not to go it alone. You can't do it alone. Um not any one of you as a member of the select board and not even the select board here only within the confines of Durham. There's a wealth of knowledge out there. Take advantage. Okay so your turn. What did you hear in these 10 best practices that you think you could apply to yourselves? Are there things that you

heard that you could improve on? Are there things where you feel okay where you can improve or where the board can improve? Have you heard from Jerry before, you know, asking those questions ahead of time? It's a conversation he and I have had. Yeah, I think I need to make listening to all this new person, I think I need to make more connections. I need to spend time with Jerry, which I don't do. Yeah. Um, and I also think it would be healthy for me to learn more about the town, the businesses in the town. I went to the uh open house at the historic building. I just got on a note saying maybe we should all try to go or whatever. But I went there and introduced myself as a select board member to a number of people and I think maybe that would be good for me to do more than um yeah and I was thinking this is this is recorded so it would be good for to go back and just kind of listen to it again. If we

we'll give you the stuff. It would be good. The next new board member should I think should listen to this immediately. I mean, these slides are really good. It's hard to know what the job is when you're elected. job description? No. No. It's It's hard. Yeah. Yeah. And maybe even when we put in papers to run for the board, something should come back. Or maybe it did. I can't remember. But you know, what are the key I think that's always

an issue. I'm on some other volunteer type related committees and I you know to add value to a board to a group of people for some reaching some common goal. I mean everyone has a different skill set. But you do need to hone up on some things, right? I do not understand the details of the budget like I want to now that I've heard this. I mean, I've got the gist of it, but I would like to, you know, understand it better. I'll talk to Jerry more about that. Great. Thank you. Anyway, really good good information. Good. Oh, um, I agree. I think I don't

know a lot. I mean, I know the town, but I just don't put myself out there. And I think that that's a very knowing your inner circle of constituents versus the town of constituents is a huge difference and I need to do that. I also I've met with Jerry and I would like to continue and meet more with Jerry because I still am a newbie and um I'm learning but I still don't know what the hell I'm doing. But I'm learning. Yeah. Getting there. I think your first year for me like I was just kind of like it was like a fire hose and I felt insecure taking boats because I wasn't sure about things. Like it takes a while to get up to speed. So have patience with yourself too, you know, and Jerry is such a great resource for I think um one thing that our board can do better is like giving Jerry direction rather than us bringing a topic up for discussion, us all kind of discussing it and then moving on. And

it's not really like what's the action item there? And I think that like myself included like not like speaking to Jerry oneon one is like oh hey this is what we need done. Can you can you make sure this gets done before next meeting? It's like the more I've learned about this is it's really nothing like no board member should ever say that to the time. Can you make sure this gets done next meeting or can you do this? It's like we turn to the board and say should we have Jerry do do this for next meeting. I think so. let's have a vote like can you come back to us with this plan. Yeah. Um and I think that that's something that we can we can do better myself included really. Uh there that's great Joe I'm just going to build on that for a second because your staff is a scarce resource right so you need to make sure that you as a board are figuring out how best to use your limited staff time.

Um and then like in vein of cooperation, one thing as the chair I think I can do better is help uh communicate with individual board members more. I think that sometimes I do take for granted what might be known like what I think is known or or because I'm done this already or had a conversation with Jerry that I forget that you know wasn't had at the meeting and I can do a better job of like communicating like here's our objective in this meeting rather than just like a line that says discuss XYZ or here's what we're hoping to accomplish. That's part of that cooperation so everyone feels more prepared. Yeah. That's great. That's great. You guys are a reflective bunch. That's great. Jerry, what do you think? I think, you know, given the complexity of local government, I got to be a little patient, I think, with the elected offices because running local government is hard, right? I mean, Tony and I went to University of Maine.

This is like a discipline that we studied in college. And I can't imagine just a resident want to come in run government without that same kind of training and education that we have had. So I'm going to just be a little little more patient with their ability to, you know, understand that there's a lot that goes on in that town office and if you don't work in that town office, you you you wouldn't know, right? So, I just got to be a little bit more communicative, I think, about what what does go on in there. Yeah. The staff is certainly um find out because they're all new, too. They're doing a super job. So, just just being a little bit more communicative, I think. Um I think if they come see me a little bit more, that will help spark that, too. You know, there's one it's difficult to answer these questions that come off the cuff, if you will, and I'm not necessarily prepared for them because so talking

about that sort of stuff ahead of time would be extremely helpful. So I think one thing too we always take for granted with town like meetings and these sorts of things like catching people off guard off the cuff is like so much of the municipal government is done like after people have already worked an entire workday. Yeah. And it's like, you know, there's days I know where Josh has been up since 5 a.m. and have been in court all day or Rebecca, you've been busy all day or Deb's been all over doing all these sorts of things and it's like sometimes we're just like tired by the time we get here. And so it's like, hey, do you have this ready? And it's like you open your mouth to say yes. And then it's like, well, I've already worked 12 hours, hit the gym, fed my pigs, and done my chores. I don't remember what I was going to say. Like I I did prepare but I just am not ready and like that's like I am really bad

a full day already and then you're in an evening meeting. It's a it's like an endurance thing you know actually. Yeah. And I know one thing for me I'm really bad about like just like carrying like like beating a subject to death at a meeting and it's like we like sometimes it's going to be like oh you know what we our meetings matter. We should make sure we're putting ourselves in a position where we're not tired and exhausted because Joe's gone on for 40 minutes about a topic that needs two minutes of addressing. How how long do your meetings typically? We have them supposed to end at 9. Yeah. We over 50% of the time extend them. So they're going a little long. Nine. Well, and you just during budget season, I guess. Yeah. I we're coming off of a heavy lift, but um we've been pretty good, but like So, you just said cuz Joe will go on for 40 minutes. Do you guys have trouble like being concise when you're talking with each

other? I I feel like we I feel like we just depends on the topic. Yeah. And I also feel like it's because sometimes we try to do too or trying to do too much where it's like Yeah. I remember last year when we re-evaluated the um the fee schedule and the concept that we were going to dis discuss every single fee in one meeting. Yeah. And it's like we're halfway through the third meeting still discussing the thing that was one of four things I had put on the budget. I mean on the on the agenda for the night and it's like did it warrant that much discussion? Um it hadn't been addressed in like a decade. So it warranted a lot of discussion, but it should have been the only thing on the agenda, not the fourth starting starting it at 8:30 at night and then being like he makes me look good when he is not here because he doesn't put any big topics. So we get when you're taking vacation I think the next part is actually

talking about meetings. You guys ready to go into some habits about how you can actually work this? This is a little bit more nuts and bolts. We're going to get into a little bit of nuts and bolts. All right. So, we're going to talk about four different areas. One is honoring boundaries. We already talked a little bit about that, but we're going to go into specific areas just on one slide. How you can focus on priorities and what you do right now on that and how you can improve that. We'll talk about how you have productive meetings. will give you some tips and have you reflect on what works well in your meetings and what doesn't work so well and then how you can have like you know open healthy communications without resentment without toxicity building up. All right, sound okay? All right, so we're going to go right into honor boundaries and is this me or you? That's me. Okay. All right. So you we've

already ted on some of these things. So, some of this will be reinforcement, but anything that seems unclear, let's surface it and pound it out right now. So, the first thing is you're going to set the priority. You're going to set what kind of services you're going to be offering to your residents. So, that's the level of service. Are you going to do I don't know, are you going to feed the pigs or are you going to stack the chairs or not? Right? And then what's the overall tax rate? So, the manager's role is to is he knows a lot about this stuff. He's going to provide you advice and input, but you're going to make the final decisions on those things and you're going to set the priorities and have the manager help figure out how to deliver those priorities and he's going to report back. So, there's going to be a lot of back and forth in there, but ultimately you're the ones who make the decision on that and the manager is your

sounding board and your advice giver. you will recommend the budget to the town meeting, but the manager is going to draft it and then once town meeting actually approves it, he's the one who actually manages the resources. Right? So, you're not involved in after the town even sets the budget. You're not involved in saying, "Okay, precisely on this budget, this is what you need to do, Jerry." He's going to figure that out after it's adopted. You recommend the ordinances to the town committee, but usually the town manager will help you develop those ordinances. He has access to legal resources, MMA, policy background, so he can help develop it. You guys would tweak it and then recommend it. And then the town meet, the select board would actually adopt policy, not ordinances, right? So, so right under town meeting, they don't necessarily adopt policy, but you can. So, for example, you adopted your own

bylaws for how the select board interacts and I think Jerry, you helped draft them and then the select board adopted that policy. Um, and then your only employee again is the town manager. You appoint the town manager. You also supervise the town manager. So, you got to make sure you do performance reviews, right? You're the you're the employer. Jerry deserves a conversation every year with you about how he's doing, how you want him to perform. You then also figure out his contract, and how you reward his performance. So, that's on you. You guys do that, right? You do a performance review every year, right? Um, and then Jerry's job is to do the performance reviews and hire everybody on staff, and he's the one who does that. If you have input on staff not performing, you tell Jerry. You don't tell the person directly. He's the supervisor. He's the one who actually oversees that. All right. Questions on this or things that

aren't working this way in that meeting discussion. I have a question, Tony. When we have our meetings every year, you're asking town managers what they're putting up for colas. Yeah. Do you know if are the town managers kind of re do you know if the town manager is kind of recommending to the council and boards what they think or is the how does how do you think that works? And and how I mean because I don't have any problem recommending that. Yeah. And you take that as, you know, a a data point. Yeah. Um in putting your budget together, you know, here's what's here's what's going on around uh the region um and understanding what your own uh budget issues are, uh what your challenges are, recruiting staff, um and you know, put all that together and you know, come out with a recommendation. I think our goal this year should be, you know, 3.75%. Um so we so what what Jerry's referring to is um um I along with our county

manager convene a group of town managers throughout uh southern town of city managers throughout southern Maine um on a monthly basis from September to June. And one of the things we regularly do is ask them what their thinking is for cost of living adjustments going into their uh budget cycle. And I collect all that. I ship it all out to all the managers so everybody gets to see it. uh so that helps inform uh their decisions in what they propose to their uh council uh so that they know what's what's going on. So then so Jerry's role would be to recommend he would he would look at that data and then from that data he would make a recommendation about what the cola would be in the budget and then you guys would make the decision on what you wanted to recommend to the town meeting on that. Right? So, that's basically how that works. I mean, Jerry may be, you know, thinking as he's beginning to um put his thoughts

together about the budget for next year that, you know, looking at the budget, looking at all the priorities and understanding, you know, challenges. You know, I'm thinking a 2% cost living adjustment is is really what would fit best with, you know, everything else. But when you hear from managers throughout the region that maybe it's more like 3% or 4% you know that

could give you know Jerry some uh pause about you know is that really the recommendation that one of my issues and it can also be information that he shares with you should be information that he shares with you as he's making his recommendation you know I got this information from managers around the region and you you know, we're competing in the same labor market as, you know, Freeport and North Yarmouth and Carl and so on and so on. Um, and this is what they're doing. Um, you know, what do we think is right for for us, for our needs, for our staff and so on. And do you think that most of the managers are using the Northeast CPI? A lot of them do. Yeah. Yeah. The CPI Northeast. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I mean I mean one of the things that's challenging for some place like Durham is that you are competing against free court. You are competing against Portland and you are also competing against panel. So like you know just

because you're a smaller rural town you still are in this labor market that's been pretty competitive in the last 5 10 years especially. Yeah. And so that's a challenge that you have as an employer and people are pretty highly mobile too. So, you know, if they're not finding um you know, a job opportunity that meets their needs uh here, but they find one in, you know, the town 5 miles, 10 miles away. And we've had a lot of town manager turnover in this region. Um like more than I've ever seen in the last couple years. So, that's why a lot of retirements, lot of retirements very competitive now. some really tough um political environments. Um social media frankly has played a role. Um just the general uh coarsening of uh

debate, people just being really nasty. Um residents are nasty. Sometimes governing boards are nasty to their staff. So and unappreciative, you know, and so like it's a really tough job. I mean I I could never actually serve as a town manager. know about municipal government because there's just so many polls. First of all, you have and and also the other thing is that the town the town management training school that both Tony and Jared went to is closed down in me. So now we don't have a steady pipeline of town managers being trained in me. So we have kind of a shortage and we see more and more people that don't have the backgrounds of Jeremy and Tony kind of going into these jobs which you know God bless them for doing it but it also means that they don't have the same professional background. So folks that have the backgrounds of Tony and Jerry we have fewer and fewer candidates in Maine. So

there is still a challenge an undergraduate program at the University of Augusta but it's a a fraction of size. It's a good program. Uh but it's a fraction of the size that the the program at or was. Um you know, used to be you couldn't go anywhere in Maine or anywhere in the northeast. U you go to a international city management association as it was now at the time u conference and you couldn't turn around without bumping into somebody that went through the University of Maine program. And um consequently, a lot of you know the smaller towns, even midsize towns in Maine benefited from you know a homegrown um cadre of um town and city managers who learned um what it is to manage in

the public sector which has some similarities to the private sector but it's it's different. It's its own visible. So I only share that with you just so that you understand kind of your role in trying to do staff retention just because we've had a lot of resignations. Uh we've had a lot of retirements and kind of like our Cumberlands Kates etc. But then we've had a lot of turnover in our rural towns that are closer to we've lost

and Christian Naples, Raymond. Y I know in the restaurant, but one thing I always I don't want Durham to be is like the farm team for other municipalities because like I want I don't want us to be like, oh yeah, well, if you get a job in Durham for a few years, then you can go down to Camp Elizabeth and get a get a swankier job or go over Brunswick. So I think that's one thing I appreciate appreciate about your approach to your is you always have the staff in mind you know and you are very open about that and I you know raises awareness like we need to continue to find ways to you know support the staff motivate the staff and reward them for good good work that's through a salary increase or just different opportunities training that type of thing and Julia I'll just say one thing that I've learned as a manager is that Oh, that's okay. I'm sorry. God, I'm calling you Julie the whole time. Um, yeah. So,

sorry about that. Um, one of the things that I've learned is that like even just the appreciation piece is really important. It's like almost as important as compensation is when people feel like their work is really appreciated, you know, and I know you do that for your staff is to try and and you you should also be appreciating Jerry and his staff as part of your retention just because the market is is hard right now. And when you have like, you know, um I'm trying to think of a good example. Harrison Harrison's gone through a whole bunch of town manager changes um in the last few years and it became very unstable for a while and two select board members resign at the same time as town manager quit it and oh jeez it was you know quit yeah and the select board you know it was on the remaining select board members to figure out how to find an intern I don't mean to scare the heck out of you but just so you understand

that this had this can happen and with a lot of the political toxicity and polarization that's happened it's really risen in the last decade or so it's a really you know you can get regularly yelled at you know by residents or whatever and it's just like not pleasant or you get yelled at on social media and it's not pleasant or you know people accuse you of things and nobody's there to defend them and it's just you know it just becomes a really hard hard job. So

practices. The first thing is for you to know your goals. And I I'm going to just go through these other two bullets, but then ask you to talk about how do you do that here in terms. So, it's important to stay on track. You are going to get pressures and requests and other things that come up during the year that are going to be, you know, pressured to become part of your priorities. And you may want to make those switches, but you also have to realize you have limited resources, money, and you also have limited staff time. So every time you add something in, you got to think about what's going to be coming off of your plate. So it is hard to stay on track over a year. And it's important for you to kind of keep those goals front and center and then be intentional if you're going to change those goals, right? So that you don't end up going at the end of the year, oh well, we had four goals

at the beginning of the year. We ended up with 10 goals and we only made like progress on a couple of them and we weren't intentional about which ones we made progress on and which ones we didn't. Um, again, Jerry is the person you're going to work through in order to advance those priorities. So once you set them, then you can hold Jerry accountable for accomplishing them. But you can only do that if you don't load up his plate more and more and more, right? So or you got to take something off his plate if you're going to ask him to do something else. So my question to you is what is your process for setting your credit feed into your budget and also feed into other things. Um so this is year two of us kind of working on our new process which last year was good not perfect always room for improvement I think you know and that's where we are having like a steering like a meeting where we have

asked all of the boards and committees that report to the select board to bring forward two priorities that they're seeing as in their work as the most important thing for them. At the same time, us as board members have already shared what we think is most important from our perspective as individuals or as a board. As individuals to each other to each other. And so then we're going to hear from on July 22nd, we're going to hear from the boards committees and then we'll go into a discussion based off what we're hearing from them, what we've been hearing from Jerry, what we have for goals ourselves, right? kind of come up with a strategy of what's what's like maybe a not a super high priority but a really easy lift that a board can just do or something that's a really high priority that's going to involve staff time or something that's even longer term like the goal of doing a downtown visioning

center isn't going to be a next year thing you know so I think we have a process where we're um doing a better job of setting those this year and we did that last year we we saw like the big one was like moving to a fiscal getting HR services um addressing uh battery energy storage. Those are all things that came out of that first goal setting workshop last year that we got done. So, but what we what we do need to improve on is how we prioritize and we should have a workshop where we have a kick chart and urgency versus benefit and all this other business. and we

we're not as good as our I think in our PR that we should be like all those things were goals you know we should be able to go to our website and see 2025 goals check check what's this year's so I think we can hone up on that a bit and that just does everyone a service because every resident should be able to go to the Durham website and see you know what's our mission our charter or you know our list of goals and how we're performing to them you know by quarter. I think we can just improve on that. Did you go ahead? No. So thinking about um setting u goals and priorities um you've probably all heard of smart goals. Yeah. Specific measurable achievable um realistic realistic and time out. So the time

horizon for a lot of things for um Durham, like other towns, like other cities, is um the fiscal year. Uh but you can have goals that extend beyond the fiscal year. Um the the thing for the things you can accomplish during the year as well as um pieces of multi-year goals is to be specific about when you say we're going to uh improve our improve Durham's roads. Well, what does that mean? Let's be specific. Um you know, there are ways to uh evaluate the condition of roads. Let's find out what the condition of our roads. Well, Jared knows all about this stuff. Um and um you know, how we want to achieve a particular, you know, road quality rating of X within five years. So, having specifics about what it is we're going to try to accomplish when we say we're going to do economic development, what do we need um and make sure it gets into your budget and you you identify those specific things that you're committed to

accomplishing during the year and you build them into uh the budget so you can make progress. Um I mean the trick here is uh your goal setting session is coming after your budget process. So um I don't know if there's an opportunity to think about the the timing of goal setting and budget making and you know whether that all makes sense but having a process for setting goals setting a ser manageable number of

specific measurable achievable realistic and time based uh goals will serve you well. We have a little worksheet that we when we do annual priority setting workshops with our member boards, we use a smart goal worksheet where everybody tries to draft the the smart goal. It's not an easy thing to do actually, you know, to figure out okay like as Tony was talking like you know x number of roads are in x, you know, condition and that's going to result in spending x amount of money and only cover this many miles, right? It's not that easy to get done. It's actually kind of a little bit of a process where you guys decide on that goal and then Jerry is going to have to give you some feedback on how achievable it is given your public works resources or your paving budget or whatever it is. But then you once you adopt them then you can hold yourselves accountable for it and you can also show to the voters

what you're accomplishing very specifically which gets to your communications point you know. So anyway, we can share that worksheet. Yeah, we'll send that over and then you can use it for that. I mean, you're gonna have How many boards of committees do you have reporting to you with one or two goals? Um, sorry. One, two,

Okay. So, you could end up with And how many priorities did you guys tell each other about? That was a lot. 12. So you had 12 from 12 committees. Yeah. 12 committees. Okay. Say they only each give you one. Mhm. Which that's going to be really hard. And then each of you had a couple. Yeah. All right. So you could have a minimum of like 20, but the board work the board goals are for them and we give them the priority that we think they should work on. Okay. So it's not Oh. So we're we're delegating. you're going to delegate their goals and then we have our own goals that sort of like a perfect example I've already heard from the ad committee like they're really their goal and objective is reworking the definition of agriculture in our town or so they'll work on that and then we will and then it's still going to take you time right so I just the only thing I would say is be disciplined about not overcommitting what you can

get done right because you want at the end of the year, you're going to want to say success, right? And I think we've had that this year with the the fiscal year and the the battery energy storage and the solar energy ordinance um getting taken care of and then um the uh fee schedule and the um we also did the the ordinance ch the land use ordinance. So yeah, I have pretty The fact that you can just reel things off is actually really a great testament that they were real goals that were accomplished. What what like where we worked on the delegation there was like the planning board was taking the lead on the ordinance change, but they're handing the uh some of the work off to the conservation commission. So the conservation commission was working on some of the aspects. So, we were kind of getting a really well hammered out rough draft. And then like things that we needed to hear from those boards, too,

is like, well, we're still expecting to have to manage our applications for subdivisions and stuff like that. And our planner is our time. So, you know, having that conversation with Jerry was like, between subdivisions and this, the planner doesn't have time for anything else. So, anything you have that requires a planner, no, you know, so helping us.

Okay. So, let's go on with the next one. Um, but I like your idea that it should just split right down. So, now I want you just to kind of talk each of you about what you think is going really well with your meetings right now and what isn't going as well with your software. I think what's going really well is the new system we have for the um

the uh agenda makes it really easy to prepare because everything's linked in there and we um can see what's going on. I think that making adjustments like what you suggested last time Dev but the upcoming meeting I think that's already going well because we see what the upcoming meetings are. Um I think for the most part folks are coming prepared for the meetings too and where I think we can improve. It's just some of the time timeline stuff that's on me too. All right. Others

I think we have new discussions. Sometimes they go a little long, especially for my liking. That's me. True. especially especially like it seems to me every Tuesday we have a meeting like tonight I got to go home and do more work after for your regular job right I was there all day today run home make dinner for love the page but my kid uh things close. Uh and

she she had a whole almost a whole box of mac and cheese tonight. So things don't compare I I can sympathize. I would work all day at, you know, the town office as town manager, go home, cook dinner for my family, and then go back for a council meeting at 7:00. So right, it's like, you know, it was like I I didn't I didn't get lunch today. I didn't have breakfast. And I snack while I was making I mean that's not enough water and it's just it's so they turn into long days for me. Yeah. And so especially today when I'm not feeling great health and for our staff too like you too these are almost like 12 14 hour work days for me.

It sounds like like finding ways to shorten the time would be helpful or or dinner at the meeting like But there's no good there's no good solution, I think. But okay, being more efficient with our our time, I think, is big. I know that the last couple weeks we've been smoother and it's been like when I get home at 8, it's Oh, wow. I'm home at 8. We had a We had one meeting that was 52 minutes. Like, that's great. Really a record. But Rebecca's first meeting was almost like three hours. She was like, "What did I just sign up?" I think what goes alo well is that the staff really has us prepared. I mean, we get the packet in time when we come in, you know, everything's set up and ready to go. It's just uh we we seldom we really seldom have issues with this. That's a good point. Yeah, we we do get prepared. We get the information. Yes. Yeah. I will say since I feel like Josh and I have been on the board, Josh has been on

a little long. I feel like every year our meetings have gotten more productive and there that first year where I feel like they got really productive, they got really long and I feel like we've gotten a little bit better since then because we used to have uh like short meetings, but we didn't always do a ton

and you know with with some sometimes so it's like you know Yeah. I mean this sounds pretty good. I'm going to go over a few tips here, but it sounds like you're in pretty good shape. So, we'll just go through a few of these and if any of them um stick out to you, you can answer them. So, one question is just what's your process for developing the agenda? Because the agenda is really what's going to be the meat of your meeting, right? So, here I've laid out all of your roles. So, for the town manager, you know, Jerry's going to identify the agenda items that need your attention. He'll provide you the background information and analysis. Often that comes in the form of a staff report and then if you want him to he can make a staff recommendation. Some places they don't want the time manager to make a recommendation you know but you know often that helps guide you in a good direction and then he will prepare

you know write the agenda and post the agenda. Now the chair and the vice chair are going to contribute ideas for what needs to go to the town manager. town manager is going to know what are the things that are happening in Durham that need the select board's approval or decisions. You may have ideas from your constituents or from the direction of the town. These are the things that I'd like to see on the agenda. So Josh and Joe ideally will sit down with the town manager ahead of the time and Jerry will say these are the agenda items. You guys will ask whatever your questions are. You'll give whatever advice you think should be the information that would be in in the in the item and maybe discuss what the recommendation might be. And you can also like add items. Now, any one of you that of the select board members, you can also suggest an agenda item, but it should go to um the two of you, Joe and Josh, and then you would

bring it to Jerry. So, this kind of how it works. Yeah, it works like this. Um Jerry and I talk almost every day whe it might be a text or a brief call. Yeah. Um and you know Josh and I communicate by text. It's like hey maybe this should be on here or he shoot me an email say hey maybe this. So I think we're doing but you have some facetime with Jerry so that you can get the agenda ready. I don't get a lot. I just the timing for me is timing is hard for Josh. He usually feeds me that information and then I'll either often times I'll either have a a phone call with Jerry the Thursday before or I'll stop by and meet with Jerry. Okay. The Thursday before and we'll make sure that we're on the same page for an agenda. Jerry, what do you need from the select board members to make it easier for you to put an agenda together? Or to get the meeting to run well once the agenda is out. What I need from them

is for me to give them information so they can deal with it during the open meeting rather than me. Like for instance, there's like if there's a letter, I'll give it a case in point. Um, but last week there was a a suggestion to uh write a letter to this group and they they um lumped in uh another building.

Okay. Well, that's not really quite ready. And rather than say that in an open meeting, I would rather have them come see me so I can say, "Look, what you asked me to do last week really isn't going to work. And here is why." So you can work it out a little bit in advance. for the meeting. Yeah. You don't have to have like you don't have to waste time on it or you don't have to I what I hear you saying is that you didn't want to like contradict what so like board members were saying in in open meetings. Exactly. I have a question about that. So how how that's a very fine line and I I respect that and I completely understand it and you and I have had conversations about that. But then how do we necessarily

know what is and isn't on the table to have that discussion because it's a it's a fine line and I I don't want to put you out. I don't want to put us out. I want to everything to be, you know, happy and but where where does that kind of where where do you find the line? I think it's okay to have said in that meeting, but if it was but if I got a visit after that, then I could say, "Hey, look, we can't really do the Eureka Center because we don't have a budget. We don't have a plan. We don't even have a town vote. So, we really can't ask these folks to do this because we we don't have the background and I would rather not do that." Yeah. And I think what you're trying to be sensitive of, Jerry, is the perception, too, because we have an idea, we bring it to Jerry, everyone's that's a good idea. New information arises, the the what you need to fill out when you file an application, all that, and all of a sudden it's like, oh,

this probably won't work. Jerry doesn't want to come back and say, "Your guys' idea is stunk. It doesn't work." He's trying to say, "Hey, with new information, like maybe we need to adjust this." But he's also aware of the perception of the meeting is the town manager just really put the select board in their place. They they didn't know what they were talking about. You know, I think that goes back to like Deb and I were saying how we have to come and see more and have those conversations so that we know better. I think it brings to light an issue that we did struggle with and I don't really think we cross the finish line is the action items that come out of the discussions of this board meeting. Uh we've tried to you know a while ago I was trying to collect things and put it in a Excel file and have a like a rolling action list and then we had trouble like at least connecting those actions to a

meeting agenda you know making sure that you know what we might have expected maybe for Jerry to come back with and talk to us about because it wasn't really on an action list. Yeah. and maybe it got done, but we didn't know. Should we have known? Should we just trust the fact that if we say something out loud at a meeting, it gets accomplished? I mean, that's that's always a struggle with all meetings, but we don't have a section that has follow up from last meeting with this list of actions. And quite frankly, if we did something like that, it could be just an expectation or a known thing that it's just a progress update. And the progress could be we can't go execute this idea and for these reasons. I'm I'm a little gray on, you know, what what conversations need to take place in regard to that outside of the meeting versus, you know, as a followup. But maybe because we don't have a strong action

followup process, it drives a little bit of grayness in how exactly all that happens. But is that the town manager's report when he gives that to us? Yeah, that's where I get a little concerned about the gray area where it's like our act like it's not like a project manager to Jerry where it's like all right here's our action items Jerry's responsible for X Y and Z and then on our list says but the town planner needs to do this and that. Now it's really feels like it's getting out of like our realm and that's where I'm like, you know, giving Jerry a list where it says here's everything you and your staff are responsible for. Report back weekly on that progress feels a little bit like Yeah. And that's where it's just it feels different than like a normal like at work I'll have those all the time like this is what's going on. But here it's like it's not like hey the goal is to develop this budget.

Yeah. Not all right Jerry please have you have you checked off the pre-budget meeting but the thing right that's more of the administrative need weeds. Yeah. But I think it's one thing we're just everyone from this board is coming at it from like we want to be supportive and helpful but we also understand it's not like all Jerry here's your checklist. I want a weekly update on how you're proceeding and you have and I don't say that's what you're also responsible you're also responsible for um making sure that Jerry is accountable for performance. So you just got to make sure that you're not so far that you're micromanaging his time because he's got a lot on his plate, right? But if you have and I don't know what that list look like, Deb, but like if your list is like um I don't know, make something up figure out how we're going to repair the roads for the next fiscal year. Right? Then you might say part of what the chair

would do is say, "Okay, so we Jerry, is it reasonable for you to come back in February with a report to us on the road repair plan?" Is that kind of a good example or what do you think? I was going to use something morally. Yeah. Can you make sure that the public works department replaces the stop sign at the the corner of Rabbit Road and Route 9? Yeah. Okay. But Jerry and Jerry has the town manager's report. So that there have been things that have been addressed that you have come back with responses. So I I personally just assume that's how

that was like essentially it's not a checklist but that's the checklist like you have been a reporting back to us. It depends on how big the item is I guess is my right small things right. So, if it's like what Tony was saying, a stop sign, like, oh god, you know, like he gave if the if the board is a fix the stop sign. You might say, okay, just so you know, I fixed the stop sign. But you really don't want to be spending more time than that on that, right? But if it's I think we were at the point of just, you know, es and flows. And we had so much going on. There were so many moving parts that I don't think any one person felt like we had a complete handle on are we are we making sure you know we're crossing the finish line. Yeah. Yeah. Well, in and some of those things I see that that is more of something that Jerry develops internally because it's like we have the big strategic goal, right? And then that more tactical

list of all right in order for Jerry to deliver us the budget on April 1, he knows that the first draft we want to see January 1. We don't need to make the list that says like meet with the department heads or and I'm not saying that but and I feel like I feel like we're just we're learning as a group together on h how those things work. And perfect example like with this this uh situation with like applying for a grant to fix up a couple buildings. Someone said, "I want to help apply for a grant to fix up Point Czebo or whatever." And we said, "Well, maybe this is an opportunity to add this other building in." So, we said, "Sure. Yeah, let's go for that." We find out more information. It's really not a good fit for adding this other building. Yep. Jerry and I had that conversation today. And my thought process is well the report back is hey town time manager here time manager report I met with the

person who's filled out that grant application. It sounds like adding that other building isn't really a good fit. Joe and I talked about it in our premeating. Yeah. He said it's probably best to just stick to this. Um so barring any strong opposition I think we're going to just go with that one segment. And that's like a really like good way to do it. But like, and that's where it's like, but if I don't go in and meet with Jerry now, he's sitting there and it's like 9:00 at night, everyone's already kind of cranky and he's like, "Hey, just, you know, I'm not going to be able to do what you guys asked me to do." And I was like, "What the heck, Jerry?" You know, like, you know, but I I think too, like, you know, like last week when we sent that letter and you said you wanted to see it before, I don't know as if that I don't know. I just Yeah. Like that's one thing that we don't we I struggle with too is our

board is like so they're going to send someone wants to send out a grant application. Well not a grant application or a letter to say hey is your organization interested in helping us fix this building. Is that something our select board should say okay we okay and that's where I don't know if it comes out from us executing. Right. So you give them the direction we want to apply for this grant. Jerry applies for the grant. You guys don't have to review all that stuff. It was the same thing like we had an RFP go out for um open space for the open space planning and it's like my inclination is like should we have last eyes on it before it goes out or is it like I mean that's like you not in my opinion you should set the direction of what you want the open space plan to accomplish. Jerry writes the RFP, runs the RFP process, hires the consultant and then the consultant works with you guys on

actually getting your input at different parts of it. Now, where would it come into place? I'm not saying this is applicable, but the RFP goes out, one of us reads where it goes out, and we go, "Man, that doesn't really feel like it looks what we were trying to say there." I'm not saying that that happened. That didn't happen. Yeah. If that were to happen, then then I would, you know, hopefully that doesn't happen. If you're giving clear direction and you've got a competent town manager, that shouldn't really happen. Yeah. So, you know, then then there's a communications issue or, you know, I mean, another way you could do it is you could have somebody, you know, one person on the select board that has finalized with, you know, with Jerry on it. You know, you could appoint something if you really wanted to do that. But, hopefully that doesn't happen because I mean, what you're supposed to do is

have, you know, you're supposed to set the direction, they're supposed to execute. So you don't really want to get into like word smithing or even like getting too deep into the scoping. And I think that's really helpful here because I do think sometimes what we hear because our budget our our model is so new is that there are community members who expect that that comes from the board not the time manager because they're like well we elected the board this unelected official is the one who's asking for this project. And it's like well we directed him to do that. And so it's like in my mind sometimes it's like well if it says you know select board and our signature does that take some heat off like can it can just be a little bit getting into the weeds because it's like it's 2025 we've kind of time management is 2021 2021 was a weird year to begin with and we've gone from fiscal year to 18month

budget. We have all this sort of stuff. So it's like we and like every other entity involved in town like this is the youngest board. Everyone else on boards has been on longer than the town manager been a thing, you know. So, we just have like this institutional thing. So, I'm like, does it take a little heat off of the town manager for saying you got a lot of new, don't you? Everything's new. Josh is Josh is a seasoned veteran with four years of experience. Yeah. I remember your board. I think it was you were on, but you had people that were on the board for 20 or 30 years at that point. It was Yeah, it was just a different board. Different. different. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, I would just encourage in the in the spirit of time management, encourage you to not micromanage. And then if you see something that like wasn't how you'd expected, then you have that as a conversation with Jerry and

say, "Hey, this wasn't really what we were expecting." And and you try to figure out what what happened. Was it the direction wasn't clear enough? Was did Jerry need another proof reader? whatever it was before. And a lot of times when we're like looking at takes final eyes anyways. It's like all we did was make Jerry wait until tomorrow to send it out because it shows up. We go, "Oh yeah, this looks really good." Yeah. And it's like, "Well, I could have sent it out earlier today." And you don't really want to have that stuff mucking up your either. This is helpful though, like understanding that. All right. So, in the spirit of managing precious time, we'll go through this really quickly and I think we're getting pretty close to wrapping. So, we've talked about this before. One way to make meetings go fast is to do your homework ahead of time. If everybody reads their packet, has a lot of their questions answered ahead of

time, you already have the data you need from Jerry because you ask those questions. Then you can actually make a decision. We I've sat through many meetings where somebody's like, "Oh, I didn't have time to think about this or I want to see this new data, blah, blah, blah." It gets tabled. It gets tabled, right? And it's just not using people's time efficiently. So to make decisions, you've got to be prepared. Uh stay out of the weeds. We've talked about that before. It's really easy to be in the weeds, as Tony said, because it's very comfortable for most of us to be in the weeds. It's harder to make the bigger decisions, but you can spend a lot of wasted time in the weeds. Similarly, rabbit holes, you kind of go off on a tangent. This is this is what happens a lot. We do this all the time in our meetings. All of us go into rabbit holes. This is like something that's kind of like a universal human trait. I

think we actually like sometimes have bells on our table like rabbit hole and you can call each other on a rabbit hole, right? And I'm trying I'm rapping my brain to think of a good example of a rabbit hole, but you know it might be like for the Eureka Center. Well, did the public literature say the water flows under it or around it and what's the foundation issue like right like no, you don't need to know that. You just need to know that the Eureka Center is going to be Paris. So try to stay out of the radical. Um, be clear on how you

take it. Respond to public comment. I read your bylaws. You already are. You've got three minute, you know, three minute limit. If Joe's chairing, the person says their piece, then the ding ding ding, you know, it's done. You don't engage in back and forth. If there's a big issue that needs to be resolved, you can ask the town manager to respond or to look into it. But um

that is you know another thing is just to be strict and fair. Everybody should be treated the same way at public comment. Doesn't seem like you've got a lot of that going on right now, right? But that that could happen at some point. But that policy came out of that was solving an issue that existed before. Yeah. We have seen examples of uh places where they're not that where they have rules about public comment but they don't apply them consistently and that really creates a lot of problem. You need to treat everybody the same. Um sharing the error. You guys need to do a good job of listening to each other and and speaking and being concise. So just make sure that not one of you is dominating. You're not taking too much time. If you're staying out of the weeds, the radicals, you'll probably say fewer words, right? And then you can actually get through your meetings faster and then your job is to keep it

moving. I will say one thing I think that I do a lot and we all can do a little bit. I feel like sometimes we stay in the weeds because we're comfortable in making a decision, but we feel the need to really explain why because we'll make a decision and then someone will send an email be like, "Well, you all didn't even talk about this." And prior to this iteration of the board, there was this perception of this like behind the iron curtain discussion happening. And that's why meetings went so fast because we're not being told everything where it's like we're all so in the weeds. We understand that. We're like, "Yeah, we reviewed the agenda packet. Let's vote on it." It's like, "Well, should we read out loud part of this agenda packet just so people don't think we have some preconceive,

the city of Portland makes it decisions, right? It's like deciding millions of dollars in every meeting, right? and they they can't understand everything and you have to move forward. So like on a smaller scale here in Durham, you don't want to discuss everything. It's not a good efficient use of time. People are going to want to serve on the select board if you're talking about every week, right? So the concern for us is always what's the public perception and at some point and how much do they know and at some point I think we need to put the burden on them and not us and say you need to participate. Yeah. All this information is available. If you have questions, Jerry's available. Exactly. And I think that's Yeah, that's probably the biggest disagreement is me saying, you know, we don't need to do all of this. Yeah. And I think we got I I personally have to get better at that. Just like I

read the packet, I did my homework. I don't have any questions. Looks good. Yeah. And the packet is out there and people in the public have had the opportunity. So, you know, likewise, um I think and it's hard again because you know, people have lives, but that's why they elect you, why they elect counselors to do this kind of work is because they don't have the time. But if they have an issue that they're really concerned about, it's incumbent on them to see what is coming before the whiteboard and say, you know, I'm really concerned about this grad application. So, I'm going to read the application. I'm going to read the material. I'm going to call Joe. I'm going to call whoever and have the conversation. I'm going to find out from the town manager more about this and then I might show up at a select board meeting. Um, you know, home rule, local government, um, civic engagement, public participation

um, takes time and you know, you can't just sit back. I mean, you can, people do it all the time. um you can't just sit back and you know rouse about things when you don't like the decision but you don't really understand uh what it's about. It's it's hard and I think people need to invest some degree of confidence in all of you uh to

have done your homework and to make the decisions. I think we should skip to number 28 so we can talk about the communication members. This is the last thing we're going to Yeah, we we do need to have a motion to extend our meeting by we're going to get you done by 9. Well, we we'll still have Oh, you still have we just have to consent agenda so we can preemptively on that are fine. Does that work for votes? Second. All right. Without objection. Any discussion? All in favor? I made a motion. Just so this goes back to, you know, meetings matter. Your conduct matters, your tone of voice matters, the language you use matters, the way you behave matters. And the more you model good uh behavior in a public context, the more people will see that, the more people will hear that. does not mean you're always going to agree and be linked arm sing. That's doesn't happen, but you'll have the ability to have important discussions

about topics that matter in a respectful uh civil way. So, be respectful, appreciate each other even when you don't agree with each other and um you know bring the spirit of collaboration, you know, team dur whatever you want to call it. That that was my addition. I would put an explanation, but uh you know we we did some work with um uh the town of Harrison that was um experiencing you know this the political turmoil, the turnover and select board members, town managers, uh staff and you

know they worked hard together, the remaining select board members worked hard to come up with a positive vision for how they were going to operate. And it's very much like this. They actually came up with their own acronym uh for the effort. They got it posted in their select coordinate room. Um so we we talked a little bit earlier about uh communications and the importance of um communication. A lot of

I mean what you're doing now a lot is good stuff. You're putting stuff out there that's available to people. Um you can't make them read it. Um, but the more you use the channels you have, the more you use different channels to get information out there, the more you will reach different people. And again, in the official communications of the town, use the same guiding principles that you use talking with each other, dealing with each other, how you conduct uh your meetings and expect uh people to behave uh the same way. you can have um a social media policy uh for um employees. Uh that's

you know some communities have adopted those some haven't. I think it may be uh just important to have uh a discussion about what kind of policy fits. Do you have examples of policies? There are yeah many social media policies that are out there. we have one.

the inevitable uh negative comments, misinformation, uh, personal attacks. Um, one of the most effective things you can do is in a, you know, again, dispassionate, uh, calm, professional, respectful manner, put the record straight. Um, and, you know, put it out there. If you know the town has a Facebook page, if you've got an email newsletter that goes out, um, use the tools you have and set the record straight because if you don't, nobody else is going to. You can't rely on anybody else doing that.

constituents um, everybody in town who well, not even if they're not a voter, if they they live here, if they have a business here. um you know they need to be treated with um respect and again you're you're the elected leaders of the community u you should treat every interaction as an opportunity to model what it means to be a good uh elected official and really I mean it just comes from being the good person um be accurate be factual don't you know

speculate or spread misinformation disinformation because that just um hurts everyone. Um when you do take personal um positions on matters before the town, it's really important to distance yourself from the board. you are one member of the select board and you can say you know um about this issue

um be careful that it's not one of those quasi judicial things where you could compromise your ability to um act impartially. Um you don't have to be impartial on everything. You have your own opinions. You have your own values. And it's okay to say as a select board member I have this opinion about this issue before the town. You can't represent your personal position as a position of the board when in fact the board has not taken uh any position. The the correlary to that is you may have an

opinion a position that's very different than the boards. is when the board takes action on things. You can disagree uh but once the board acts even if you disagree um you have a responsibility to honor the decision uh of the board not work you know undermine it or badmouth it or something like that you can say you disagree that's fine and you can say why you disagree u but once the decisions made the decisions made move on you a lot of other things to do and to hang everything on you know one issue where you disagree is um not good for the board and it's not a good way for you as a member of the board to be successful in trying to navigate the issues that are important to you through the board and uh have approved. Um I didn't look at the uh the board bylaws thoroughly, but do you have a code of conduct about uh how the board? No, our bylaws just pertain to like how we operate our meeting and that sort of

stuff. So I think one line in there about you know being respectful and but there's not Yeah. So I I have seen um the board u rules of procedure bylaws that have had uh codes of conduct in them. So and you're only going to 905. So I think we're pretty much done. You guys look pretty wiped out. So like I I'd like to ask the one thing we talked at the very beginning about what you hope to get from this meeting and without going back and revisiting them and going into detail and going down rabbit holes and getting in the weeds. Did you get what you wanted from this meeting and was it worth your time? I think it was absolutely

That's what we want. That's what we called for. All right. There's only one other thing that I would like. Could you email me the whole budget that you learned in your budget class? What a budget is. Oh, the definition. Yeah, I wrote that. You could send that to me that you don't think we're going to send you the smart worksheet sample social media policies and we'll send you the definition of a budget.

for what you intend to do. you intend to do express in terms of dollars. Maybe we do a banner I have a I had a favorite. You're all familiar with um Alice in Wonderland. Yeah. St. Clair. Yeah. CS Lewis. Um there's an illustration in the original edition that I really like. And so Alice is walking down the road and there's a fork in the road and she encounters a chaser cat in the tree and she says out loud, "Well, which way should I go?" Cat says, "Well, it depends where you want to get to." She says, "Well, I don't really know." He says, "It doesn't really matter." He says, "Any road will get you there." And I used that with the town council because for years, uh, we would start budget processes without a clear idea of what it is we wanted to accomplish. And it just wasn't working for anybody. Um, and we got to a point

where we were doing more goal setting and more um, intentional budgeting. So, and we're going to wish you best of luck with your 24th workshop on the 24th. 22 or 22. It is my 34th birthday. So, really confusing the numbers. That's true. Does that count as

This really is uh fun. There there's a little more I think that we um enjoy doing and want than to help you and community be successful. I know that sounds corny for people out there out there. We really All right, we'll see you soon. I'm sure. Yes, absolutely. Um, so next on our agenda is the consent agenda. I'm sorry. Yeah. Motion to extend the meeting till 9:15.

All right. Any discussion? All in favor? Any opposition? We extended the meeting. Motion by Josh, seconded by Till 9:15. Um the consent agenda. I wanted to remove um the uh I wanted to remove the application for appointments because I was hoping we could chat with the people who applied for the application for appointment or at least ask follow questions. I just don't want to vote on that tonight. So, do you want Yeah.

That's just my uh we just haven't had a turnover on the planning board in a long time. Um so I want to make sure we get a chance to chat with folks and then I know we have some heavy lifts coming up too. Um so hoping to chat with both of them.

will move to table part B of the consent agenda until next meeting with the intent of asking those individuals to come for us to speak with briefly. Do we have a second? Do we have a any discussion on the motion? All in favor? Any opposition? See then move that to the 22nd. That's a busy meeting, but just want to meet that first. Um, do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda as u

modified? So it just be a Okay, Josh. Second. opposition? Passes unanimously. Upcoming meeting solve waste committee on the 14th. Eureka center at 6:30. Select board July 22nd, 2025 here at 6:30 at the fire station. Planning board August 6, 2025 at the fire station. AD committee meeting August 6, 2025 at the Eureka Center at 7 p.m. Our upcoming meetings on July 22nd are going to be a board and committee goals where we hear from all of the different uh committees. And then August 12th will be our tax commitment and review of the employee handbook, which I'm very excited for. Do we need an executive session? All right, seeing none, we have a motion to adjourn at 9:10. Were we skipping the manager report? Oh, sorry, Jerry. I skipped right over your manager report. I flipped the page. Thank you. Um, so yeah, a couple things.

Uh, I got this uh contract for dispatch for fire chief in Chicago County that needs to be signed. So, I can have the board chair sign it. He give me the authority to sign it. It's for this year from January 1st, 20 uh goes from January 1, 26 to December 31st, 2026. I'm fine with Jan. They want it signed and it's to let me tell you what the price is. Um, it's in

Chief's budget. So it's to $224,912.81 Yeah. You to sign or I can sign it. I'm fine with Jerry signing it. Um yeah. Do we have a motion to approve Jerry to sign off on the uh contract for dispatch services? So second any discussion? All in favor? Any opposition? Seeing none. Um, so Calvin has hired a new truck driver laborer. His name is Jason Thompson. It'll start tomorrow. Um, he lives in Lewon. So, that's good. So, we're still looking for a mechanic. I'll just say that he had someone come in that was interested. They work for Lewon now. And when we found out what we can pay, you compare to the list, we said, "No thanks." So, just to let you know. Um, and I kind of talked about it a little bit um about the Eureka Center lumping that in with the cabin masters thing. And, uh, you know, when Deb Lar come in, we talked about that and some of the criteria on the form that cabin master is looking for is, you know, what's your

budget and what's your plan? and we really don't have one for the Eureka Center. So, we can't we really fill it out appropriately. So, we'll just move forward with a gazebo/band stand. I call it both because some people get angry if you call it band stand, some people get angry if you call it a gazebo. So, I call it that. And the uh last thing I have is um I won't be here next um on the 22nd. on vacation.

All right, we are live now with our new financial software. Kim's working with it right now. It seems to be going pretty well. Um there there's a there's a um you know, it's a lot of software, so there's a lot of learning and clicking and stuff, but she's she's doing really good with that. Um we actually staff right now has a lot of balls in the hand. Jess is working on uh 30-day notices with tax leans and we got the got the commitment coming up and Allen straight out the codes enforcement is straight out. Um

and uh I got a really George that guy he's a really good planner that guy can bag on some work. He's great and so he we are and even him and I believe it or not get into some what I call spiritual conversations because you know some of us philosophically may not agree but have mad respect for that guy. He's really really good at what he does. So but all staff's doing great. So that's

all concludes my report. I don't have anything other than looking forward to the next two meetings. Uh Josh second. All right. Uh any discussion? Seeing none. All in favor? Any opposition? Seeing none. before.