Androscoggin CountyMainePopulation 4,262Sourced from U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year estimates, 2013-2024
Durham in Data

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Select Board Meeting ~ April 9, 2024

2024-04-09 · Select Board · 1:34:53 · watch on YouTube →

The Select Board's organisational meeting after the April 2024 town meeting, with Deb Oliver attending for the first time. The board elected Joe Roy chair and Josh Klein-Golden vice chair, made appointments to the Planning Board and Board of Appeals, and set a joint workshop with the chairs of the town's boards and commissions for May 7 at 6:30 at the fire station. Josh Klein-Golden and Heather Roy both objected to the Bible verse read at the town meeting, which Josh Klein-Golden said was antisemitic, and the board discussed how the opening of future town meetings should be handled. Members went round the table with goals for the year, which included police coverage, solid waste, a town charter, the revaluation, board procedures and filling committee vacancies. Jerry Douglass announced a recount in the RSU 5 board of directors race and reported that the generators at both the Eureka Center and the town office failed during the storm.

Who was there. The town's written minutes record these people present: Joe Roy (Chair), Josh Klein-Golden (Vice Chair), Joe Tomm, Heather Roy, Deb Oliver, Jerry Douglass (Town Manager). Names in this summary are checked against that list.

What was discussed

  1. 2:10
    Opening and public comment on the town meeting prayer

    Joe Roy called the meeting to order and welcomed Deb Oliver to the board. In public comment, Josh Klein-Golden said the Bible verse read at the town meeting was antisemitic and inappropriate, that he believed there was intent behind it, and that he did not want an explanation. Heather Roy then explained for the new member that public comment is a statement rather than an exchange, with any response at the chair's discretion.

  2. 2:10
    Election of chair and vice chair

    Heather Roy nominated Joe Roy as chair, saying she had wanted to nominate him the previous year and still thought the leadership belonged there. Joe Roy said he accepted the nomination and abstained from the vote. Josh Klein-Golden was then nominated as vice chair and accepted.

  3. 7:36
    Orientation for the new member

    Jerry Douglass gave Deb Oliver handouts on the roles of the board and the town manager, and said Jessica would set her up with an MMA account. He noted the Freedom of Access training must be done within 120 days, recommended the elected officials workshop and the MMA elected officials manual, and members suggested contacting the GPCOG staff member who meets newly elected officials.

  4. 13:25
    Deb Oliver's introduction

    Deb Oliver said she has lived in Durham since 2002, works at BIW where she is a process manager in an engineering division of more than a thousand people, and has been there 35 years. She listed service as a Girl Scout leader, a Big Sister, and BIW's representative on the Maine Maritime Museum board of trustees, and said she had served on the town manager hiring committee.

  5. 13:25
    Town meeting debrief

    Joe Tomm (?), who chaired the town meeting, said it went well and attributed that to the amount of information put on the website beforehand. He said solid waste will be the big subject this year, and that he was surprised solar drew more attention than the housing article. Other members said the opening overview set the tone and that a former board member had told them the website material let him get up to speed without watching a meeting.

  6. 18:31
    Solid waste and capital improvement at town meeting

    Heather Roy said she was pleased at the engagement on solid waste and that people had come forward for the committee, and that public education will be central to where it goes. She said she was surprised there was not more discussion of the level funding of the capital improvement plan and its trajectory.

  7. 18:31
    How the town meeting should open

    Heather Roy said she had raised the prayer as a concern several times before town meeting after residents told her it was not appropriate, and did not feel the concern was heard. Members discussed whether the opening should be non-denominational or a call to community, with Joe Roy saying an opening prayer is constitutional but is supposed to be non-sectarian, advancing or disparaging no religion. Heather Roy asked that whatever is to be read be reviewed beforehand; Josh Klein-Golden cautioned that a governing body cannot act as censor of religious speech.

  8. 29:50
    Thanks to town staff

    Heather Roy and other members thanked the town staff, naming Jessica, Jerry Douglass, the fire chief and Calvin, for running the town meeting and the election during a storm that left much of the town without power for the previous 48 hours, with the election run using a space heater and shop lights. Members also credited the finance consultant, Mark, with answering budget questions at the meeting.

  9. 35:59
    Appointments to boards

    The board reviewed applications and appointed new volunteers without going into executive session, as there were no concerns raised. Heather Roy read the motion, which as spoken covered a full voting member of the Planning Board, an alternate on the Board of Appeals, and a member of the Conservation Commission. Members noted at least two of the three were new to town boards.

  10. 35:59
    Select board procedures document

    Josh Klein-Golden explained to Deb Oliver that the previous board had drafted a set of procedures to sit alongside Robert's Rules, covering matters such as absence, and replacing selectman with board member throughout. Adoption was held so the new member could review it, with comments at the April 23 meeting and adoption planned for May 14.

  11. 41:14
    Goals: police coverage

    Josh Klein-Golden said he wants to explore a police presence, noting the sheriff's department had provided a breakdown of calls and that the sheriff and chief deputy were willing to come and speak to the board. He said Chief McGee had raised the issue and that about a thousand incidents involving police response in Durham had been quoted at town meeting, which was more than members expected. Members said the fire chief's input would also be useful, given calls where volunteers are left with a combative person.

  12. 46:21
    Goals: solid waste, committees and a policy inventory

    Heather Roy offered to act as liaison to the solid waste committee if the board adopts liaison roles, and said composting should be tackled before the end of the five years. Her other items were the fee schedule, a resiliency committee, bringing in the agriculture committee as part of the comprehensive plan, and a policy inventory surveying department heads on what they need to do their jobs.

  13. 52:20
    Goals: grants, benefits and public education

    Deb Oliver asked whether the town is taking advantage of everything available to it, giving the Homestead Act as an example, and said committees should be prepared in advance so they are ready when grant windows open. Members discussed communication, including a video that had explained the revaluation, and said education will matter as residents worry about what a revaluation does to their assessments.

  14. 57:46
    Goals: a town charter, revaluation and vacancies

    Jerry Douglass said the town needs a charter, noting that when he applied for the job there was nothing setting out how the town runs. Joe Roy added the charter, exploring a police presence, and getting the revaluation moving, which he said could take until about 2027, and raised how the town recruits for committee vacancies such as the budget committee.

  15. 1:03:11
    Scheduling a joint workshop with the boards and commissions

    Jerry Douglass said he had met with George that morning and proposed May 7 for a workshop bringing in the chairs of the boards and commissions to discuss what ordinance work should be prepared for the next town meeting. The board agreed to hold it as a separate meeting rather than within a regular one, starting with the committee chairs and continuing with the board's own goals afterwards if time allowed.

  16. 1:08:15
    Streaming the workshop

    Heather Roy said the workshop should be streamed because there had been feedback that town staff was directing boards rather than the other way round, and that a discussion about what the board directs should be available to residents. The board agreed on May 7 at 6:30 at the fire station, with a round table layout.

  17. 1:13:20
    Town manager's report: recount, codification RFP and revaluation bidders

    Jerry Douglass read a notice from town clerk Jessica Lambert that there will be a recount of the RSU 5 board of directors race from the April 5 municipal election, at the town office on Tuesday April 16 at 2 pm, with limited space. He said an RFP for the ordinance codification is being prepared and will be posted for about two weeks, and that the two revaluation bidders will come to the May 14 meeting, one at a time, with questions circulated to the board in advance.

  18. 1:13:20
    Generators and town buildings after the storm

    Jerry Douglass said the generators at both the Eureka Center and the town office do not work, that the town has been paying for emergency service calls to keep one running, and thanked Joe for bringing his own heater to the Eureka Center for the election. Josh Klein-Golden called that unacceptable. Members recalled the town office generator was on the capital improvement list last year and did not make the cut, noted a grant application by the fire chief for it, and asked about the $50,000 recently put into the Eureka Center fund.

  19. 1:23:30
    Board member reports

    Josh Klein-Golden asked that the town document its policy for storms and whether meetings or voting can be postponed, and was told that is set by state law. Joe Tomm raised a regional resiliency effort he and Jerry Douglass had attended a session on. Heather Roy clarified that by resiliency she means practical support for residents without generators or water during outages, and members suggested the Conservation Commission be asked to come in and report on the related grant work.

  20. 1:29:28
    Consent agenda, upcoming meetings and executive session

    The consent agenda was accepted with one abstention from Deb Oliver, who said she had not received the packet; members explained that minutes are posted only after they are approved. Upcoming meetings were given as April 23 at the fire station at 6:30, May 7, May 14, and planning board meetings on April 10 and May 1. Joe Roy said he would be away for the next meeting and Jerry Douglass said he would be on leave from April 12 to 22, with Jessica in charge. The board then moved into executive session; the statutory citation is garbled in the recording.

What was decided

An outcome reads "unclear" where the recording does not state it plainly. The recogniser drops short words, and "the motion does not carry" is one missing word from its opposite.

Motions the minutes record

The town's own written account of what was decided, taken from sb_meeting_minutes_04_09_24.txt. It owes nothing to the recording or to a model: the clerk typed it, with the vote. Where the summary above claims a decision this list does not carry, the summary is the part to doubt.

Worth knowing

Motion language found in the transcript

Located by pattern matching, with no model involved: "I move that", "I'll second", "all those in favour". This is an independent check on the summary above: 2 passages of motion language, against 9 decisions summarised.

Show the 2 passages

Elsewhere

← 2024-03-26 Select Board2024-04-23 Select Board →All meetings

Source & method

Town of Durham meeting recordings, YouTube auto-captions, and the town's written minutes
Captions cleaned into timestamped transcripts; topics and motions found by pattern matching; summaries written by a language model and required to cite the second each item begins. Every name attached to speech is checked against the attendance list in the minutes, and marked (?) where no record confirms it
https://www.youtube.com/@durhammaine/videos
Summary written by claude-opus-5. Attendance from sb_meeting_minutes_04_09_24.txt.
Data as of 25 August 2026 (the date of the newest recorded meeting in the index); retrieved 2 September 2026.