TranscriptTown of Durham Select Board Workshop ~ June 13, 2023

officials to meet Jerry was at the southern Maine manager's Zoom meeting this morning that we've been doing every month an opportunity for managers to hear about what's going on in their communities but also talk about issues that may be coming up or things that are before the legislature that are of concern or interest today's topic was AI today's topic was Ai and I wasn't quite sure how to introduce a topic so I asked chat gpt4 to write me a summary of developments in

the pros and cons of yeah I know right of AI I asked it to do this for me in 250 words or less it failed uh it was 290 words um but otherwise uh it was pretty good so also other um things uh planners and sustainability staff for communities that have them uh

one thing that we like to do every January or so is what we call chairs in the circle this is an opportunity for board chairs and vice chairs from around the region to get together because we limit to no more than two from each board it's not a public meeting it's not a publicly noticed meaning it's an opportunity for cares advice chairs to be able to interact freely and understand you know what works in their communities or hear from others about their challenges and you know maybe share a little wisdom we also are a vehicle for bringing communities together so that you can have an impact on decisions in Augusta and Washington

um somebody I worked with once said that if you're not at the table you're on the menu through us um Durham and the other communities are at the table in many of these discussions we're careful about how we approach issues with the legislature with Congress because we serve a diverse range of members but we make sure that as a region as a membership that we're bringing your interest to decision makers in Augusta and Washington so having introduced us to you our agency to you are actually your agency because you're one of our members and having us get to know you a little bit about tonight's meeting what would you like to get out of it what are your desired outcomes so what I'd like to do just to go around the room and just quickly write some things down on the flip chart and then we can come back to it at the end of the meeting and see whether we accomplished what we thought we would accomplish

yeah so my goal not by knowing as as much as I should have about what you're presenting was really to learn about GB COG and what dirt can get out of it and how we can take advantage of what we're what services we're not utilizing at this point and steps towards taking advantages of the services you provide that we can use okay

um I'd like to facilitate a discussion or have you facilitate a discussion so that we can arrive at what our board's priorities will be for the year or a determined amount of time going forward would be yeah it's important faster

um develop some general knowledge just base basic knowledge on how the board should be interacting with other boards and what how they should be facilitating things within the town and acting um and then the confines of a select forward per se rather than

board itself and the structure of that and how that structure is um executed on a weekly on a daily basis communication wise and communication are very important so how to communicate with each other Yeah well yeah the lines of communication yes okay well going last I have the smallest plot to pick up here I kind of echo uh rich

and Joe's topic of roles prioritizing um things and maybe facilitated discussion or something along those lines so nothing new but we'll definitely agree with what's up there form of government of the town there what's the expectation and how do we manage those expectations between professional today that's all we ask for is not it's not a lot yeah so basically managing the expectations of workloads and and that sort of thing okay so I got it and Jerry you're talking about creating expectations that the board and you have of this new form of government but also expectations that the board may have with you yeah in the day-to-day operations and how much we can get done in a year and yeah with the staff that we have and that sort of thing I'm just going to add setting reasonable expectations because I think that's what you're getting out there isn't it

from this meeting is having you all feel like you're uh in a better position to operate as a board that you're feeling um stronger more confident in being able to take on the challenges that you've all picked on some of you have no more experience than others but this is no easy task that you've undertaken and you know I commend all of you for being willing to take it on it's not easy and I'm guessing that every one of you has had the experience of learning that everybody out there knows how to do it better than you do oh yeah maybe by the end of the evening you'll have a few things up your sleeve that you can use um so to get through this and actually we did start um pretty much on on time I want to take a little while to give you some background about local government in Maine and then transition to local government indoor so going from the general to the specific and we've structured this so that you

know we have space for uh q a and discussion and a couple of discrete places but it's a small group um so as questions come up or if there's a point of discussion um we can take a moment but we don't want to get too far off track so that we can still manage to get everybody out of here at home at a reasonable time does that sound like a reasonable plan I think we've set a reasonable expectation yeah I just wanted to add that I'm hopeful that at the end of this we probably won't be able to actually do your prioritization and we probably won't be able to Define all the ways that you want to interact with each other the manager and the public but we I hope that at the end of this we have some direction about what the next steps would be and chibi Cog or others could help you with it or you could do it internally but that could get you to the place where you know you're operating with confidence and with clarity about

how everything should work together and how you work together okay so we'll talk a little bit about uh local government in Maine we have cities we have towns we have tons of different forms of government we have cities with different uh forms of government but why do we have these at all and what you'll find is that throughout all our history you know people have needed to have some kind of rule some kind of structure to help them live together in community and to provide services for the common good three examples I chose come from our own tradition the Declaration of Independence the U.S Constitution and the main Constitution all of which speak to government being instituted for the common good or words to that effect you can reach further back to ancient you know Babylon Egypt Rome and these societies these um

cultures all had some rules about how Society operating how communities operate how cities operated the thing that sets these apart is that they are based in forms of representative government that derive their Authority from the consent of the government

so that's really what sets uh I think um our systems of Government Federal state local County apart from some of these earlier ones so obviously a lot of countries have gone on to implement representative and other Democratic forms of government but this is where we are and this is what we're doing so government is people government is people coming together to solve problems to address issues to make rules for

everybody's safety for everybody is common good and to provide services collectively that can be provided individually self-governance isn't new this goes all the way back to pre-revolutionary times to the time when we were still part of

the Obama wasn't called the United Kingdom I think at the time but um part of the British Empire and Royal Governors were appointed to govern various parts of the colonies of colonies often have General courts which are analogous to legislatures say and they have certain degrees of authority to make laws and they granted Charters or

they Incorporated and I want to use the word charter because that tends to mean something else now but they Incorporated talents and they allowed townspeople or at least some terms of people it helped if you were you know a white male over a certain age or own property in some cases you had to belong to a particular Church um remember all pre-revolutionary time but there was still a recognition and a need for people to come together to solve common needs and address common problems they could establish officers to carry on approved purchases purposes some of which might have been first and make decisions so even going back to previous revolutionary times you'll find if if you go back and read

Old Town Meeting minutes as I have been in some communities you still read the same language from you know 300 years ago that you'll read today in the morning we tend not to talk you know so much about constables anymore but there's usually someone who's charged with you know giving notice to the people that you know there is a meeting on such and such a date so then you were talking about the warrant earlier you know for accounts payable but same thing for uh town meeting following the Revolution and getting to

the statehood We inherited a lot of our forms of local government from Massachusetts we were part of Massachusetts up until 1820 remained largely unchanged uh through the 19th century where the legislature could incorporate towns and then the

legislature could Grant Charters by legislative act to cities towns didn't have Charters said it's had Charters and those were granted solely by the legislature there was no process other than that I don't like there is now

governments took on more responsibility and became even even then even in the 19th century more complex and the public expected more services schools and this goes all the way back again to pre-revolutionary time roads and bridges some of the earliest expenses you go back towns needing to spend money to fix a road or fix a bridge and it wouldn't surprise me at all if you had similar you know articles on them no more time meeting I didn't read it in preparation for this but care of the poor is something that has

traditionally in Maine anyway in New England states been primarily the responsibility of local governments Jerry do you have the title of overseer that's a Vestige yeah been there on that um and of course Public Safety and you could have you know Public Health there as well but Public Safety uh fire police and so forth

continually growing needs on the part of the public before Services growing towns growing cities Transportation networks that require more professional management of local government and this started really in the early 20th century if you're familiar with the period the progressive reform era of the early 20th century was a reaction to the machine politics and just the the really awful

conditions that a lot of people lived in you know cities were not all but many of them especially the largest ones were run by corrupt organizations we might call them you know crime families now but um the progressive reform era was a response to that was a move to create more professional government at the local level particularly in cities the establishment of non-partisan Elections to take part in politics out of it and some of the Dynamics that go with that but also the Advent of Professional Management early on a lot of talented

city managers were engineers because a lot of where tons of City spend their money is in infrastructure roads Bridges and other um other infrastructure other aspects of the progressive reform area included the institution of civil service so the notion of people being hired based on qualifications and promoted based on Merit as opposed to patronage out of this also came the council manager plan and I'm just going through all this to give you a sense of where we've come from where we've gotten to with local government the First Council manager city in the

United States was Staunton Virginia in 1908 and Auburn Maine credit there was the first one in Maine in 1917 and as a graduate of the University of Maine public Management program when they still had one at the Orono Campus we always were you know pretty proud of yeah we had one of the first ones in the country it's Auburn and having grown up in Auburn I felt particularly proud of that um and the the town manager plan which extended the role of time manager to communities that wanted to adopt it was first enacted in 1939 so we've got a long history of local

government local self governance and Professional Management in Maine detailed parts of local government something that I took from my earliest days as an undergraduate student at the University of Maine and throughout my career and something that you come into contact with on a regular basis Jerry comes into contact with on a regular basis there's a fundamental differences between government and business between the public sector and the private sector I'm sure you know we've all heard it said I'm sure we've probably all said that you know this excuse the government should operate more like a business and I think it's fair to say that there are many principles that we can take from business to use in

government there are a couple things that set government apart one is operation in the public interest that public benefit has to come first in any decision that is made in this case by an elected body somewhere underline all that there has to be public benefit involved it has to be a legitimate public interest in a decision you know regulation in in a purchase and a contract you don't have to overthink it because it's usually pretty self-evident but underlying everything that cities

and towns do is public benefit another thing that makes cities and towns different is the ability to regulate to control certain aspects of how businesses can are built what people can do when where and how this is the the police power this limited ability of local government to adopt regulations to protect public health safety or welfare and that's another term that you'll hear regularly is protection of public health safety or welfare that's synonymous with public

benefit if you can't at the end of your Urological chain come down to some straight faced definition of public health safety welfare benefit then you might have a problem local government is also charged with protecting constitutional rights

employees for example who have served their probationary period of employment under ruling of the United States Supreme Court have deemed to have acquired a property interest in their job and as you know some of the the language of the Constitution I think is the 14th Amendment um prohibits the government from depriving anyone of their property without due process of law so once someone acquires a property

interest in their continued employment you have to follow due process steps if you're going to suspend them on a pay if you're going to um demote them or you're going to fire them you have to there are specific steps that you have to go through to demonstrate due process I don't want to get derailed into the details of all of that but that's a fundamental difference that makes being a public employer and being a Public Employee different than being a private employer and a private employee very different employment environment so those fundamental differences

um you know set those aside for the moment but I think they're really important for you to understand when you try to wrap your heads around why cities and towns operate the way they do compared to the way private business or non-profit non-profit organizations operate so those are all things that cities employers have to deal with

shapes and different sizes local governments have essentially the same purpose so in Maine there are really five major ways that local governments are structured so town meeting select them are more inclusively time meeting select board and actually they did update the law I studied local government law in Maine when it was still title 30. they hadn't Rewritten and re-codified at this type of Serie A but in the process they've also updated the language to make make it more gender neutral and make it more inclusive

manager which is what I know there's Town Council town meeting Council manager this is these are communities that have Charters but still have town meeting I've worked in one of those Windham is one Standish is another there are a few others that still do that town meeting still is responsible for adopting the annual budget and really not much else

Forum mayor council also a city Forum there are some variations on this I know um a Durham had a ton administrator before you had a town manager that's common to also here administrative assistant to the select board similar idea so Tom meeting Council manager the town meeting approves the budget but other things that we have on our warrant that like to buy a fire truck or should make changes to our land use ordinance that all happens at the council level generally it depends on the community's charter which will and which we'll touch on but really a charter is essentially a local Constitution that much like the federal or the state constitution do in defining the roles of the different arms of government Charter does the same thing at the local level typically in a time meeting Council manager Community town meeting adoption annual budget any amendments over a certain amount uh the issuance of bonds again typically

over an amount so it can vary somewhat from town to town but a lot the the major appropriation and um Bond issuance or debt decisions are reserved two-time media voters at the Town Council does everything else it hires and hires and buyers a ton of

manager it may appoint other officials they adopt and amend ordinances so everything else the city council would do worth spending a little time on the municipality syndrome happen doesn't matter so if you're if you're reading through title 30A or other sections of main law that deal with municipalities they're talking about you um so yes legislative body whose legislative body in Durham

the voters that the polls or referendum it's time meeting that's when they're assembled whether it's a regular town meeting or a special Town Meeting those voters gathered as time meeting are the legislative body you are the municipal officers so whenever you run across the term Municipal officers in state law that refers to the elected governing body the elected um executive money typically covering the money so you're in a small office don't have to be elected yes yes except in the case of um

yeah um then somebody can fill in but it's usually just for the next election governing body refers to the select board Council same thing executive body isn't one that you'll run into very much but that would also refer to the select board in this case Municipal officials um pretty much everybody who is appointed to a position for the town or works for the town can be called a municipal official the line between Municipal official and Municipal Employees kind of blurry um really kind of depends on the position they hold and I'd say if it's you know a department head so you know a road commissioner or fire chief you know anything you know department head level or higher or a special position like assessor is a municipal official as well

as being a employee so I don't think you you probably wouldn't do this without a paycheck I wouldn't like no no okay so um a trivia question what's the difference between a town and a city is it population not uh part of it um though right you know it's very easy

to think of it that way because large towns often take on the aspects of a city they have you know built up downtowns they have the infrastructure they have you know more services and so on so not in any way an unreasonable yes and that's what most people would think but it is the way they were Incorporated and where and how they got their Charter since constitutional and statutory home rule some of this home rule I should have added to this is

cities and towns to determine how they will govern themselves um cities and towns are creatures of the state remember I said earlier that towns are Incorporated by the legislature the only reason cities and towns exist is because the legislature has said they exist for those towns that had um you know Royal grants and charters before the Revolution or weren't granted by the

Massachusetts General Court we were still part of Massachusetts were assumed to have been granted Charters by the legislature when we became a state 1920. um and from 1820 until constitutional and statutory home rule were adopted by Maine in the late 60s the only way you could become a city is by special Act of the legislature the legislature had to Grant her Charter and you became a city now so now the distinction is a little fuzzier because um when home rule was adopted by the state all the cities that had been granted Charters up to that point were deemed to have been granted home rule Charters and now they can amend their Charters the same way everybody else could probably more detail than you really need but it's really all in how they came to

be and what their former government is in Durham as I understand it before 2021 Durham was a town meeting select board for comedian select the former government at some point the town decided to hire a Town Administrator and after 2021 you have had a Time managers

position so um aren't an administrator and a manager of the same thing another trivia question no no how are they different does the manager but the manager be bored by transferring power over to the manager the manager is now responsible for the employees accepting of the time we're just more on policy makers now

um yeah so an administrator and a manager often um you know look and sound the same um but in fact they are different managers derive their Authority from Charter or in the case of a town that's adopted a town manager plan those sections of state law that Define what the town manager does and what the relationship is between the time manager select board staff and so on um I've been an administrative assistant to the board of Selectmen in Canton New Hampshire in Bristol New Hampshire I um became Town Administrator in Bristol New Hampshire any real difference no no it was a shorter title of a business card and I spent 22 years as Town manager in

Windham a lot of what I did from one Community to another really didn't change very much the degree of authority I had to do things on my own did change and that changed particularly as Town manager as Town Administrator or Administrative Assistant your Authority is whatever the select board

um delegates to you that they can delegate and I remember I said before whenever you encounter the term missile officer and that refers to in this case the select board if there is something that the state law that state law requires the municipal officers to do unless it says or designee or delegate

you can't delegate it to anyone else that's reserved to the select board and you know likewise where it says you know the town manager manual Rochelle then that's the responsibility of the time of manager one thing that I value very highly in my

roles was the um respect for each body's part in the work the Council of the select board I was very jealous of protecting their Authority that if it was something that the council or the select board was supposed to decide I made sure that I protected that that I

you know that it didn't allow somebody else to kind of make that decision on an ad hoc basis and kind of skirt around the boards like no we don't do things that way this is a decision the board has to make I'm going to make sure that the board has the opportunity to make that decision whatever that decision is I'll give them the best information I can I'll tell them what I think at the end of the day it's their decision so um no administrator manager or not the same thing

either at the polls or as town meeting elect the municipal officers that's the five of you they also lacks representatives to the school district board of directors and um in Durham as in many but not all other communities the budget committee so other things that the voters do is approve the municipal budget and enact an amend at ordinances they can also approve the issuance of bonds I didn't go into all the detailed a piece of the big things

approval by town meeting I know you have a budget committee and the budget committee conducts its own uh review of the budget who makes its recommendations an interesting aside is that there's very little mention of budget committees in state law it's only in passing when it comes to um articles proposed by the select board is if a community has a budget committee established by ordinance by town meeting article Vote or the voters otherwise

it has to carry their recommendation doesn't say how budget committees are set up doesn't say what they do doesn't say how they should be made up just as if you have one they have to have an opportunity to weigh in and recommend make a recommendation on select boards proposal

about appoints the town manager and other officials that are prescribed by law ordinance my understanding is Jerry As Time manager and the time manager's position in Durham is kind of manager Treasurer tax collector or town clerk of course

subordinate to the town manager as other Deputy Town officials or town employees there may be other officials that could be prescribed by law or ordinance this is the case in some communities that the select board would still appoint you can adopt policies bylaws that would be relating to you know kind of the the administrative operation of the

that you may have things like a fund balance policy or a purchasing policy or a Personnel policies those are all policies that can be adopted by the board as administrative tools that help provide direction to manager in conducting the Affairs of the town one key point about the select board and this is true of councils too is that as

a collective decision-making body you only ever act as a body board the board decides that's the decision and that's uh what you know this hypothetical situation is Jerry's responsibility to carry out and I I know that um you know boards don't always agree on everything you know it could be you know 4-1 folks it could be 5-2 votes it could be you know not five two three Deals

but what um we come away from that decision-making process with is not the vote count but what was the decision that is the select boards mode it's the select boards decision you have your debate you have your opportunity to you know hear about the issues to learn about the issues to gather information but you make a decision as a board and that's the decision uh that goes out the door

um among other things uh proposes a budget for review uh by the select board appoints officials the employees that accept those reserved to the select board if any uh carries out laws ordinances administers policies plans that the select board adopts and serves as chief executive and administrative officer of lieutenant staff everybody else the people who are hired well people who are hired by the time manager and work for the Town volunteers boards committees are either elected or appointed as I said earlier you've got an elected budget committee these are established at the municipalities discretion they're not required to have one but I know Durham has had one for at least 90 years I think the 1930s yeah so you know it's it's you know long held as part of the structure it's part of the culture these are positions that are elected by the the voters in April as other officers are and they are

charged by state law to make recommendations on budget proposal not by the salon board and really nothing else that's the only that's the only place they're mentioned uh in state law but I know um you know committed in many communities I've worked in communities that had budget committees and you know they've become part of the fabric and part of the structure of how things work and you know either you know you you figure out how it works or you know there's some definition about you know who does what in the process between the you know this has the ability to find the relationship in some way with a with the budget committee yeah the only thing state law says is that those articles have to carry a recommendation by the budget committee so you can work with them in ways that you define right I have a question about this it's not an appropriate time so we it's often said that the and and this clarifies it a

little bit but before something that you said was the opposite of of this it's said that the budget committee makes recommendations on the select boards budget so and the way that we do it is that Jerry proposes a budget we make we we go the select word goes through it it then goes to the budget committee and then it comes back to the select board then that that is consistent with state law is that correct well it's the select board that proposes the budget that goes to time meeting um state law isn't that specific about the order in which things happen except you know in the town manager plan it says the town manager shall prepare a budget for review by the select board what happens to it after that uh can vary a little bit so we'll select board you know can review it can not review it and send it straight to the budget committee that's you know entirely up to you to Define how that part of the

process works but the budget that goes to town meeting is your budget it's your proposals the budget committee gets to weigh in and say whether they recommend what you've proposed or whether they recommend something different okay so the process You just defined is how you've always done it right it doesn't necessarily mean it's always it's how it's always going to be done it's up to you to decide how you do it and our budget committee does have bylaws I I don't know them um yeah I would like I'm going on YouTube or view them just to see what it details in there um but I think that yeah yeah absolutely

no it wasn't that it was the when you said it before it just you didn't say that that's the budget committee reviews the select boards proposal and so I just wondered if that step had to happen in between well again Allstate law says is that the select women's proposals if a community has a budget committee have to carry the budget committee's recommendation how they arrive at that is really however you and the budget committee Define and excuse me the the budget committee's bylaws are the budget committees um you know they they adopt them and that's how they choose to conduct their business they aren't law for the rest of the town they don't control how you do your budget it controls how they operate as a board yes and that's how the you know those those rules are written if you look at them and read basically how they are supposed to govern themselves and review what the slack board gives them and make a

recommendation just as he's staying here and basically uh it's one recurification of what this is yeah so the reason why I was asking just in case anybody cares for contacts is because right we're on a your our budget year ends in December and then we you know work we have time meeting at the first of April and so there's it's a very very very tight window and there's a lot of um issue I think around how tight that window is um and so I was just wondering you know what the process was by law versus and

if that's different than what we do just trying to like maybe I think what the outcome should be is that we move our fiscal year to a June July um but in the meantime I just didn't know if there was any you know discussion to be had about our process the only things that really control um the process for municipal budgeting um are when the warrant has to be posted for a town meeting when you have to hold public hearings on the budget um how you come up with the budget other than the fact that the time manager plan requires the town manager to prepare and submit a budget to you how do you get from there to public hearing and a budget that you've adopted to send the town meeting is entirely up to you and when you say public hearing do you mean a presentation of the information or just public hearing include public input well this is the legally required when I talk about public hearing I'm referring

to the legally required public hearing before um uh the budget is adopted and at public hearings um the public is allowed to speak um that you know a public hearing we're there to hear what the public has to say whether it's and you'll encounter this

um with other things that you know maybe the select board has to hold public hearings on before a vote those are all opportunities to hear from the public about whatever the issue is at hand so does our town meeting count as that because they get

people to make comments on the on the budget they could make comments after the budget is done yes well so in a town meeting Community uh see the difference here may be that with a council before the council can adopt the budget they have to hold a public hearing in this case I'm not sure if there is a public hearing required on the warrant before it's posted or on the budget time it's sent to Tommy but remember in the town meeting

tax as the legislative body so that's not a public Hearing in that instance they are the decision makers they're the ones who are considering the articles on the warrant and whether to approve them they are the legislative body in that instance yeah so we really need to just make sure we're checking all the boxes with that yeah one color I'll make the part of the reason we're so tired it's because we choose to be that tight because we don't they want actuals yeah and that's what makes it extremely like time right and you did a really you did a really good job advocating for projections and I'm totally in your corner on that um if you go to if we go to a fiscal year you won't have access right so and I might say that if the issue is that the window is so tight start with that question how do we make it less tight well maybe it's projections maybe it's changing fiscal year maybe it's changing

the process so you know so that there are fewer steps or you know perhaps your budget committee meets with you early on you set like parameters together you meet together like there could be other ways that you can you answer that question so start with a big question and be open to multiple ways to solve it and we have started that because what we have an Institute in the last three or four years now as a CIP capital um uh committee that looks at all the capital approving projects back when we try to start in August and then we end

up you know uh bettering out all those in infinite questions that you get of why you need this what are you doing with this that gets presented to the select board and that then becomes the priority of the rest of us we recommend to select a priority list to the select one but the idea is like like a whole other people from like the budget committee back into that CIA process early so they get that View Early even though they don't have the projection on the budget items that you just don't normally have to go and fulfill like it's all open stand and whatever else and others Topic at least get the capital stuff out of the way early is where we're heading to pull those people in because a lot of times that's where most of the questions are why do you need a fire truck well I need a plow truck you get that done early with those budget committee members or a few that can bring that message back that'll make

the process more chilled out or not so you're really then starting in August you're not starting in January and quite quite frankly the actuals is Jerry's problem he's the town manager right just like you just said all of those actuals belong to him he needs to be able to sell that to the select board the way he presents that budget right and then we sell that to the public you know the rest of the town at that point right we either say yay or no and with input from the budget committee so that's kind of how that all is is supposed to work I mean the budget committee really doesn't get into or not really supposed to get into all the myths and that's of what he actually goes and presents but they do but they do and that's a problem because that that's what we have to start dividing and getting that all separated because it doesn't matter how many rooms to pay for Jerry buys out back it really

doesn't that's not where the money is the money is with the capital stuff and if you look at the budget committee rules and regulations it kind of focuses on the capital projects the most the rest of it is in the grass you know raise the you know whether the state goes and allows everybody to make another dollar a novel really isn't the budget committee's problem you don't want to select boards for that matter right that's just something Jerry has to deal with it with funding his people properly to keep us and all the employees happen

it's really about the at the end of the day for the managers it's about the tax impact where is there an impact right where is that the budget let's talk about that and see what we can do about that but so I would just like to make sure just to reiterate the fact there is no opportunity ahead of town meeting for the public to weigh in on the budget and I just want to make sure that we're doing that properly because I that is a complaint of residents that they don't have the opportunity to do that and if we're supposed to be making sure there is an Avenue for that I think we need to make sure we are yeah I mean I can double check that and I know you know Jerry can check that as well one resource that I'll I've listed them at the end of um this slide deck um they may already be familiar with um in and they're both from the municipal Association the um first part of the conversation time I was drawn in large part from a book that

the main Municipal Association last published in 2016 an updated version called local government in Maine uh Governors people that lays out a lot of what we talked about tonight um and it and it's a great resource one of the things that it's I think really um useful for is in helping to have conversations like this um because I'm sure we've all been confronted with a device or

the device on that somebody handed to you and you didn't know how to use it or you get in a strange car you know you're driving a friend's car you've never driven this car before and you're trying to figure out where the wipers are where the lights are um because you didn't have any instructions or somebody handed you this and said here you figure it out it's really frustrating to be handed

um a tool or a device and not know how it works um so part of you know what um I used to do with um you know my counsel and I hope something that you take away from this is a better sense of how it works um and why it works the way it does because I think many times people and I've seen it happen countless times people come to the podium and have a certain set of expectations about how something works or why it works the way it does and it's not their fault they just don't know so part of what we deal with is the fact that people don't understand how it works don't know that um you know public benefit public health safety and Welfare have to underlie all the decisions that you are bound by what you're bound to observe and protect constitutionally protective rights for employees and others it doesn't just apply to employees that it Implement in applies to people affected by regulations for example that that you

might think so that's a really useful resource the other is much longer than the 60-page local government in May is the 600 page Municipal officers manual that MMA puts out there all on their website they're all in PDF so you don't have to print them out in the DeForest anywhere but the municipal officers manual is a great resource it's much more detailed and even as detailed as it is you kind of have to take them say okay how do I apply it how do I apply that in the local context because there are 491 cities and towns in the state of Maine we're all subject to the same state law but because of differences in formal government Charters some of them might take a slightly different shape that you don't expect so again two really good resources one more contractory really in depth not recommended for bedtime reading but you know if you have to look something up quick and understand how do we appoint an animal control

officer again you can look that up I mean I found it as a resource having been doing this as long as I have because things are always changing and it's hard to keep up with everything so did you have that yeah I had a question um second legular desired outcomes understanding responsibilities you touched a little bit on like the bullet points of Psych board and time manager are we going that further or would now be a good time to ask questions about Claire actually it's my first slide right um yeah um so the the idea was to cover really most of uh the mechanics in the first part of the conversation then you know talk more about how um you go about navigating the different you know roles responsibilities and relationships I mean some of the mechanics we've already covered but Christina will get into some more of the the Nuance of it we've also capture some of the questions that you have I think I

capture yours about um about the public hearing things like that so if you have questions that aren't answering you know you don't know the answer yet you have to figure it out yourself we'll make sure we note those down yeah if we have a question about like so like maybe something that we just would like your opinion on oh and it goes back to the how it just get the language gets carried over as a tradition um a few people and I never even noticed it until somebody pointed it out to me was that we always say a prayer before our town meeting starts and a few people have taken issue with that and I know that that's something that we continue to do because that's just what we've always done I don't personally take any issue with it but I can understand why people do and I just wonder either if you have an opinion on or if you see that other municipalities are updating things you know in that sense as we kind of evolve or I

do Allegiance but yeah we do well we don't do prayer before select board but before town meeting we do we do have a we do start the meeting with a prayer yeah I mean there's are still some um Republic I mean legislature I believe

still has I don't know if they have a a chaplain but they will invite um you know Faith leaders from all different denominations or or phase to offer you know reflection I've ever prepared before the session starts um I'm not I'm not an attorney so I really can't um give you an opinion about that but um

there are instances where uh even in governmental functions um those things are done they tend to be more based on custom than anything else and then um I think the Supreme Court has said that you know that's generally fine but I know again without pointing too much at the main Medical Association we try to work to complement what MMA does we're not here to try to duplicate what they do and I'm more than willing to give them do credit for the work they do and the materials they produce so uh I would check to see you know there's I know there's a moderator's manual that may address that and you know more stops to worst elephants um you know talking with the town attorney can help provide some guidance in those areas okay thanks what about the being supper knowing the towns that are having those after town meeting still after Tongan what about during during yeah are their towns still doing that well I I don't

know but I worked in one that did yeah and that was the highlight of town meeting yeah yeah have lunch and then come back a lot of people want to do something with Allegiance anymore yeah and I don't personally take issue with it it's just been brought to my attention and so people bring things to my attention I assume that it's you know important to them and therefore I feel like there should be a voice at the table for yeah for people that have brought an issue to my attention communities do things so differently from each other you know yeah so it's really up to you okay thank you so we talked about the mechanics of uh local government and you know Christina likes to refer to a GP Cog is the the plumbing and wiring um and so we can talk about how things

work in statute or how things work in in law and as I was talking about managers administrators administrative assistants doing still a lot of the same things they're not the same but they do a lot of the same things it's understanding how things work and what the different roles are with the different responsibilities are but then there's the relationship piece and how you want things to work and how you you know within those confines I mean obviously you still have to deal with the reality of the way things are but given all of that how do you want things to work and how do you want to work together yes so Tony yeah great segue so Tony basically gave you the framework within which you have to operate and then you have a lot of freedom within that that framework to Define how you want to be together so how do you want to set your priorities how do you want to go about developing your agendas and

setting your agendas how do you want to interact with the public and communicate with each other and with Jerry all those things usually benefit from Clarity and Durham doesn't have a lot of that stuff written down yet which is what what I understand from looking at your website so what we thought we were doing this section is to talk about what some of the habits are of highly effective boards and go through four kind of topic areas here Jerry sent you this great little handout from the main Municipal Association which I thought was great it's the top 10 things I boiled what I thought out of that down to kind of four major areas and for each one I thought I would start with a question for you so you could Define how you do it right now and I'll be interested to know whether you all have the same answer on how you do it right now because sometimes what seems obvious to you might not be obvious to Joe for example so we'll

we'll answer that question and then I'll share some examples of how other cities and towns do things and um I'd like to kind of highlight and I'm going to flip this up highlight areas that might be gray for you right now like things you want to clarify or questions that you want to answer together so this is more workshoppy

first to honor kind of the boundaries of that framework so be very clear about what Jerry does what you do as a board and what you can do as individuals and what you can't do as individuals and then we'll talk about how to prioritize and I experienced this in Freeport when I first got to Freeport week didn't really have annual goals a lot of towns still don't have annual goals and so you don't really know what you're trying to accomplish throughout the year and when that happens you get focused on really small stuff it may not matter all that much so um one of the one of the things that's really important is to kind of spend some time figuring out what you want to do to leave this town into its future then how to have productive meetings I'm going to spend some time on that because um a lot of meetings can go off the rails they can go really late they can go down rabbit holes they can cope with some

things that aren't important that they can forget about things that are important um and also they can get really rancorous hopefully you don't have that here but we watch the press and we watch the council and select programs around their region and with the kind of increase in polarization that we're seeing at the local level things can be really raw and awful out there so how do you get ahead of that and make sure it doesn't happen to you and then how do you have healthy communication both with each other with staff and then also with the public and we'll share some best practice later on now so we'll go to the first one on honoring the boundaries and I think this goes a little bit to Joe what you were asking to go a little bit deeper this is a simple simplify probably oversimplified set of rule set of rules um and you have other actors in town so what I thought I'd do is just run through it real quick it's basically a

review of what Tony said but in table form and then have you identify what isn't clear here for you in Durham so if you think about your role as a select board again you can only act as a body in telling staff what to do right there's like one of you individually can't say hey we really need to buy a fire truck Jerry go buy a fire truck right that has to be a group decision that you make same thing about the tax rate same thing about policy you have to act as a body together and but the manager has a lot of expertise and he is in the details so he can provide some advice and input to you as you're thinking about what your priorities are um and also like you you need to think about what's the level of service that you want to deliver to your residence is it Town collected trash I don't know probably not but you know you get to decide what kind of level of service you want to provide to your residents

um and this is a this is an issue in a lot of our cities and towns because as you have more people moving in some of them come from other places that have higher expectations about what towns are going to deliver right and so you're going to have some constituents that are going to ask you for trash trash collection maybe they'll want curbside composting who knows right and you have to figure out what you want to do within the tax taxes that you want to raise so those two things are related what services you provide and what tax rate you set so that's like the overall guidance that you can provide as you're developing the budget and then Jerry's there to execute it for you but he can provide you advice as you're thinking through so that's why I'm kind of budgeting high level policy then um and I'm sorry and then you're also going to be recommending the budget to town meetings so you don't actually get

to step the budget like lots of councils they just said that it's done you then have to recommend it to tell me you also have a bunch of committee that weighs in but the manager is going to originally draft the first budget and then once the town meeting has adopted the budget the responsibility goes back to the manager he's the one who figures out how best to use those resources that were adopted in the budget then we talk about ordinances so again your town meeting is going to adopt your ordinances but you're going to want to use Jerry's expertise or whoever Jerry wants to pull on maybe your planner or maybe you're going to be working with a planning board or maybe it's somebody else right that you're going to bring in to help make sure that the draft the ordinance gets drafted and then it comes to you to recommend Italian but once it's adopted adopt it it goes back again to Jerry because Jerry is going to be the one who

has to implement that ordinance and with policy it's a little bit it depends on what policy it is if it's like a Personnel policy review some good examples of other policies like fund balance policies yeah again you might want to draw on Jerry's expertise to perform it and and you get to actually adopt the policy but then he has to implement it and then yeah I have a question about that yeah so um when we talk about adopting policy just like board adoption policy recommends on this is time meeting obviously a lot of work has to go into developing the ordinance before it's recommended at town meeting um is it the purview of the select word to be the people who initiate saying this is a policy we would like to see Municipal officials work on development and kind of give that talk down yeah you should be when you're thinking about what policies Durham needs you have that overall responsibility of setting the

direction for it so you could say to Jerry hey I really think we need a fund balance policy and you can even set some general parameters around it right you could say we think the fund balance should be what's a good example you know 15 15 or you could say we we'd like to know what the um what the options are that many towns around who you do research on this bring back the best practices you can have a very collaborative um relationship around that and Jerry you can be drawing on his technical expertise his ability to get research or other speakers in to help you understand it but then ultimately you're going to make the recommendations so in the record like if I'm hearing from

meeting to say I want our board to discuss this if we vote that the board wants to see something like this get worked on Jerry can say okay this is who I think we have in town whether it's a planner or the planning board that can develop that policy or we need to go outside and get some more help but that can come from we can and and you said something really important which is that you come to the board to suggest that it becomes something that the board does or directs jury to do you couldn't come and say in a meeting I want Jerry to do blah blah and then Jerry has to go do it it would have to be the full board to size that yeah so in this example would that like if I wanted to recommend that we explore a policy yep would it be my job would I have to come during the public comment period or come as an ended while on the board say I'd like to discuss this at the next meeting could we put it on the

agenda excellent question so it will get to that which is how does the agenda get developed all right we'll we'll come back to that because because I'd like to hear how you do it right now because they're they're you can set how you want to allow for agenda items to come forward you can always say something in a meeting and ask for it but again you'd have to make sure that it was within your accepted process for putting it on the agenda yeah that's just what I want to understand yeah we'll get there yeah no it's just a circle back on that in regards to I think sometimes people I don't want to say in general but in regards to ordinances or ordinances aren't always cited um they don't necessarily develop over a board let's say a planning board our our Charter in the past I believe we've read the planning boys playing boys so another example that might be as far as an ordinance like a like a

fireworks that's been brought up to us in the past it doesn't necessarily entail that it goes to the plannable that might just stop that Discord um so one of the things that we've always been cautious of is interfering as individuals like for example it's easy for a person to say I've talked to some people and I want to implement this but doing it in a way that it doesn't look as if it's your personal feelings you know you should it shouldn't be well I talk it should be I've gotten five or six letters I've gotten this and so forth I think we need to look at this so it doesn't come off as a personal agenda we need to make sure that we're not ever being looked at as we're trying to stir our own personal agendas yeah and when you see a Personal Agenda I'm assuming like your own personal interest your own Financial interests or your own or your family yeah or your own beliefs distinction here and different so and

this is something I encountered when I started on the Town Council um when you become an elected official you have an understanding of what that could be some people may take kind of like a approach where they think of themselves more as adjudicators like they're the ones there to administer the law and other people run on a platform and say I'm going to lower the property taxes elect me right and and they have an agenda because they've articulated it and they feel like they may have gotten it from the voters it's okay okay it's a different way of being right right different people can bring different things if I my personal feeling is it's okay to have your own personal beliefs it's just that you have to have the whole board agree with you before you take action so if you really came to the sport it's like I'm saying I'm going to lower taxes once you get you and maybe people elected you because once you get here

you have to convince four other people right for you to have that opinion you don't have to say [Music] to be to be an elected official right and my my feeling is like being let me right people are going to have a different understanding of what they think they are their role is and that's okay yeah in the previous meetings that we've had um we're not Town consoles or we're not older than other thing we want to put our best interest in the interest of the Town not into our personal friends agendas or maybe our political party's agenda or our our for example we had an issue with one time with his particular streak you know they didn't want so that's your own personal right that becomes a personal so you need to make sure that you're acting on if we're a board that we're acting on the vet which goes back to what Tony was saying for the welfare the public welfare of the taxes yeah people shouldn't be

getting elected to change to get the town to plow the road better exactly right but it really does depend on the individual community of Portland for example has customers that are elected by Ward right and counselors that are elected at large so for those who represent a particular Ward I think it is appropriate for them to represent the interests of the people that live in that particular geographic area but um you know they also have the responsibility for the city as a whole at large counselors much like you their

constituents are all of the all of the city of all of the Town not just the people that voted for you correct or agree with you serving everybody right even if you're a board counselor I mean you do have the interest of the people in your ward or your District but you know there's still the underlying interest of the city as a whole but our wood is the whole path yeah you're all elected at large the street you live on you know whatever so all elected from Ward one yes so something else that um that you kind of touched upon you may go into a little bit more is that everything that we give to the manager causes us to spend more money so if I do five one inches I need five planters that Winners is going to come I say five yeah an example you you can't over tax the actual Department staff that you have to go after some of the things so when we prioritize our list it needs to be like a top one and two it's not the

top 15 that get acted upon so so interesting what Joe was saying before about reasonable expectations you you know affordable housing is going to take up 99 of of this year's planners time another thing we deserve you know got to be you know off to the side at that point so when we start setting the expectations well or you go higher excuse me or you go higher out other people in which case you need more money put in the budget and you then go and do that in the next cycle or you may decide to use some of your your expenditures that you already have allocated to do that but it's really a deliberate thing is

counselors actually took on a lot of work themselves because their staff was really over taxed and they they developed a spreadsheet that was like okay we want to do this this and this their spreadsheet grew really really large and they had and part of their annual priorities is choosing what they're not going to do that year because that's just like you know because the demands are are a lot yeah they're in the job so just going back to this it I I hear kind of a little bit of the conversation that we've been having recently about the ordinance thing and what I think is important to like reiterate is that we have a town manager that we've hired to do some of that um ability to Outsource or find resources we have a Conservation Commission that took on the huge part of the resource protection changes that we just did um and so while I agree with both of them with you guys not having context

about what it is that we're talking about which I'm sure we're going to get to um you know I I think that it it it's a mistake to write it off because it's I think they both have extremely important implications and I think not trying to address it through either people taking it on or finding other avenues to be able to accomplish the goal and just writing it off as we have too much other stuff to do without trying to pull in potential resources

issues that you have to decide but what I hear is that there is a need to do work that's being asked of the Town rights residents and there's also a need to prioritize and and the thing that this says is that you as a board need to do that prioritization and Jerry needs to give you his assessment of what he his staff is going to be able to do with the resources right and so you you have options right you can either have Jerry do it which means he's not doing other things you can have Jerry hire more staff which will cost the town you can have that like Jerry hire Consultants which will cost a town or you can delegate it to a committee or a task force and see their volunteers can do it right so you have ways to do it but you you have to decide as a group what's going to work best with Jerry's input on the resource side so I'm just gonna is that am I capturing this okay remember this conflict is about yeah

okay so it's about you know what work can be done and then figuring out how you how you get there and how many how many things you can do in a year right because you may be really ambitious you might be cautious okay I should say ambitious cautious so not like actually pointing at anybody but you need to work that through together yeah okay I have one last thing right here do I oh just I think Tony said this before but your job as the board of segment is to appoint the time manager to evaluate him to direct him and his job is to direct everybody else in some places have really strict rules about that like no counselor in in

Portland under a previous city manager could even talk to a staff person that sat under that manager other places are a little bit more you know if as long as Jerry knows the conversation is happening you're not directing that person's work you're just getting information and sometimes that conversation can happen at Jerry's in the room that's something that you might want to also work out is exactly what kind of level of contact you have with staff um but really Jerry is the only one who supervisors and directs staff can I bring up a situation really quick that happened at our last meeting so we need some more information from the fighter Chief the fire chief was sitting here at the meeting and we were having a discussion and I wanted something information from the chief yeah and I asked for that and then immediately retracted and said I should have asked him to ask for that is well you're all sitting at a meeting

together you can say hey fire chief is this information something you can get and you know and the fire chief can answer for him or herself right right that's okay when you go to the fire station and ask her yeah okay if you were to ask outside the context of this but the other thing that I would suggest you consider is that if you wanted to say ask for information of the fire chief and it's not in a meeting in front of everybody you would go through Jerry Jerry would get the information but the information will be shared with everybody so that there's not so that all of you you're all coming here as equals you've all been voted equally you all have an equal voice you should all have equal access to information it's like a competitive bid with biddish questions the bid is going to all ask individual questions but the answers go to everybody energy yeah that's a great analogy so is that something that we have this written

everywhere anywhere about how you know there's not a lot written down is this something that you wanted yes please [Music] please yeah we don't have any written policy in the past ever since we've hired the town manager it was essentially you know other than being cordial High how are you how's things blah blah blah how's the family Etc as far as any input towards their work or things of that nature they're good to be time managers right yeah and explain to us in the past yeah and that's totally appropriate and the only thing I would just say is just make sure you all have equal access because I've seen this happen also where you know a chair might keep information close and use that as a way to kind of develop more power for him or herself and and really what you need to be doing is working as cooperatively given that you're all going to have different opinions on different issues you really want to have

a spirit of cooperation here for the good of your residence well that's the other problem too yeah so I have a question about the way that our email is set up if you use the board select board at Durham whatever does that give the individual the ability to respond maybe if we made it so that you can't respond to that email address instead of it coming to our individual control you can't respond yeah no I I I understand that I just think that that might be a way to disseminate information to everybody instead of just look at whatever apply can I make this meeting absolutely yeah okay we're going to have an executive session what's it about no right right yeah I mean you don't want to go crazy about it and make so many rules it's

that policy should exist if that's your recommendation I think that's your policy Yeah the more clarity there is the less room there is not necessary assume that things are done behind a closed doors so there's people who are saying I don't see what the town's policy is on communication so I'm just assuming that they're talking privately before the meeting and then people come in even though that's not happening people can have an animosity yeah and conspiracy theories yeah well and in that case uh what you have um is mainstream Road access act which you could point to and say we can't make decisions outside of public meeting which is why you can't uh do it by email which is why you can't do it by social media which is why you can't do it at the coffee shop if you're going to meet you know more than two of you are going to meet you're going to talk about town business it has to be publicly noticed meetings

in the public and has the right to attend public does not have the right to to participate but they do have the right to attend the only time they have the right to participate is in a public hearing or some other um required situation where you're expected to hear from them and I think that uh be helpful to have policies like that so like people know if you email Josh and say I want to talk about this at meeting Josh could respond to that person yes you're more than welcome to join the public comment and that's a response that doesn't seem like it's like doing select or business it's just providing information someone says how are you going to vote on this that's a kind of a difference

you guys going to vote on this stuff right right yeah but we don't judge but we do that hey now okay no I did not but thank you for asking okay regulate the public comment great question we're gonna get to that too talk first about priorities then we're going to get a little bit more more gritty um so my first question to you is do you have a process for studying priorities and if so what it is what is it that's what we thought we were doing tonight yeah yeah I don't feel like we have

and then coming to us where it's rather than us saying Hey would they see these things explored and here are our priorities in Jerry City we can only tackle two of those this year it feels like it's the opposite for us where we're kind of getting the presentation from others and um like okay to Joe's Point like oh yeah you know the town planner might use up 99 of his time on one policy but we haven't discussed as a select port and and shared with Jerry what our priorities are I mean I think we are under the assumption most of us are prioritizing the housing bill but we're not just discussing the other things and we're not getting feedback because there is another available so we're not quite there I don't think the problem is keeping the keeping the boards I mean it's very hard for abortion a particular time managers also I'll put them in there too is when a board switches you you don't just switch the whole town and

say we understand you're on this directive all of a sudden we want you to do a 180 if we want to do with this one same thing let's take like a plan board they've been on a specific Mission or like affordable housing for example I can only think of one time we've got involved and said hey playing board you need to stop what you're doing and that was regards because we had to make a decision on marijuana so we had to really act upon that because typically like for example the planning board being one of them you would typically let them act as an independent board um unless there was something that warranted or had a concern with like an immediate concern coming from the state level things of that nature yeah okay I want to know one thing that I heard from you Joe which is that it does sound like you've been doing prioritizing around Capital expenditures yes okay so there is something and how does that process

work like how do you prioritize we have a small board um then we have a um a worksheet that we go through and probably prioritize we're going to uh does it help the public does it help the roads does it help there's like things yeah yeah so there's like four major categories and then we rate them on you know does it help the uh elderly does it help the disabled is it this board that does the reading no no it's a separation so you have your own communities they rate the issues basically the way I describe it is the department and it's Jerry and his staff put together a Christmas list of what they're looking for for the year yeah and then that Christmas list will go down to this and they will prioritize what is the what what gift we should buy the most what is the most important difference you buy and then rank them in that and I've been serving on that voice the assistant chair so it was it's yeah

it's it's a it's a wish list and that we've prioritize it has historically only been the um the apartment heads that have sent applications to the capital Improvement committee yeah um and I think it's worth entertaining

um allowing boards like the historic commission what are they called uh like that type of thing if they felt like that they needed to to be able to submit an application or you know whatever for something that has longevity to it yep um I I think that maybe we should discuss that they have the ability to also would that be like the planner's role they do though yeah that's what I mean like so for example the plan board wanted something that goes to George and what's it called and they put it on their wish list like last year for example the playable and um the plane I wanted a scanner right because of these big things but does the does George put oh so then George gives it to him and then we will do it and then there goes so it's still going to come basically basically through Jerry I mean all the department heads give those to Jerry Jerry works with them

go through like something papaya Chief needs a truck or a playing boy needs something or that's fair I didn't think there was an Avenue for those other anyone other than the CEO is that a procedure documented anywhere the cip's got a pretty extensive procedure yes so that they follow so it seems to me but if you were looking at so for the CIP um you've got a way to figure out what you want to prioritize but as a town you don't yet have a way of saying we're going to be working on affordable housing we're already and I'll give you some examples from other towns here um so for example gray they do an annual

retreat that um involves like chairs of different committees as well as all the counselors and key staff and department heads to kind of like put everything on the table and then the the council will actually make their priorities for the year in Freeport when I was there we got to a place where before budget season started we had three to five goals that every counselor would email them to the chair and then the chair put them all together in a compiled list and then there'd be a workshop to get to a final set of goals that kind of reflected everybody's perspective not every issue but it compiled and made it made it small so here are some priorities that gray identified in 2022 they wanted to improve their infrastructure in the village and they wanted to have an inspiring place to work for their employees because they were really dealing with workforcement retention in South Portland they had a goal this

year that they wanted to improve their Communications with residents and they wanted to expand affordable housing in Freeport last year their goal was um if typical that they wanted to deliver the highest quality services within a stable tax rate and they usually Define with the state stable tax rate looks like they wanted to have more transparency in how the town made decisions they wanted stronger attendance at their Council on command meetings obviously a problem there and they wanted to have increased their stewardship of freeport's Natural Resources that's just a handful of things and then once the goal is set then the role of the select board is to

kind of keep you focused on that for the year but it allows you to think a little bit beyond just budget season or you know what the what the budget is for you know your road paving or whatever 20 years yeah and you can really think about the teachers yeah and you know at chippy Cog we're really in the business of thinking about the future because the world is changing so fast right and towns need to be ready to be able to respond to things that happen but also to be able to like proactively plan particularly for growth and development there's a lot of pressure on every single City and town in this region of growth and development so you're thinking about affordable housing and thinking about how to preserve your Open Spaces your Farms how to preserve your rural character those are all things that a lot of cities in town schools so um I'm going to just say that this is something I know some of you expected to

do that to me it's a completely different Workshop because it no this is fine I'm very happy that I saw something it's something that sounds like you want to do it and one thing that you're not aware we do have a comprehensive plan that they went through exclusively I help facilitate your community so is that like a road yeah you know a shot with a spot you know doctoring per se but it's uh it's goals for the longer yeah but the only thing I'd say about that is that call plans are comprehensive so you want to think about like if you really want to achieve something you got it like an narrative you got an hour account so you can't understand go after the complex but you want to also do it in a way that you got to slice it up exactly yeah my my issue with the comp plan is that it was 2018 the world's changed a lot and

in the comp plan said that our growth was supposed to decline by 50 five years out and there's I mean we're obviously going into completely opposite direction as we're making ordinance changes that our order of operations is correct and yet this isn't maybe something that we need to revisit because maybe is it already to outdated yeah that's a great that's a great Point like what Heather is alluding to is is really great and that's typically All Aboard in the past or like the select forward will gather we put four or five it's spitball four or five items and we prioritize those on the attack and examples of the password the roads are a mess we have a couple Road bonds out we fixed them that was a high priority another quote-unquote high priority the human resource side of the house from the selector is giving a little over the top I think we need to move in the direction of a town manager yeah um

so you have done this it just might not be documented or regular I think sometimes with this particular what we're looking at here is are the priorities going to be what the select board should be focusing on or are we going to you know focus on that or do we want to focus on what other board should be focusing on

worked with the planning board directly except on marijuana case we have we don't interfere with them in terms of because usually they're the ones dealing they they're getting the input from the codes they're getting the input from the planner of what they're doing same thing like any other board in the town of historical we don't they come to us if they need something per se but we don't set a direction on hey I think you're not dictating God typically for example this year we haven't asked the pursue anything they've told us what they felt like they were pursuing and we ask them to produce who to stay past office well any other thing so the feedback if it's appropriate to ask the time management and pursue certain things or if we need to wait and let them decide what they want to do and then tell us you are the governing you are the highest Authority inside from town meeting right so you if

you chose to could give direction to the planning board now they have a a Judicial kind of role as well they have they have two roles yes an advisory role and a quasi-judicial role and they're dealing with an application that's before the planning board then it's hands-off right they need to be allowed to their independent their work yes yes but yeah yes but in their advisory role and again I think this is where it becomes interactive can be collaborative they may have based on their knowledge of how your ordinances work or changes in state law they may have knowledge of areas that they think the town needs to work in with respect to its ordinances so you

can collect that information from them but then go through your own process of saying you know right we know we've only got so much time we know we've only got so much staff time we've got all of these demands on all of our time how are we going to use that how are we going to use our meetings how are we going to use our staff time um what are we going to focus on to the extent we want to spend money beyond that what are we going to spend that on uh and chances are you're never again what about you I never will be unfortunately for us our planning board is the most taxed board it's taxed twice as much as this particular board believe it or not because it's the most taxable and that's common in most municipalities I think the planning board is the most uh rigorous and um so

where it's very important for us to I just want to clarify to make sure we all are on the same page um it's very important for us to avoid getting involved when they are doing things like reviewing uh subdivision application or something like that that's where it would be an appropriate for us to step in yeah but when it's determining their other workload like what they are going to work on that it is acceptable for us to say we want to have more of a top-down approach of these are the things that the slight board has prioritized absolutely rather than saying tell us what you think you should do input from them yeah obviously it's a discussion yeah here's what we prioritize as it's a reasonable expectation not enough time not enough resources we'll get these three different things that the planning board thinks we're going to work on yeah we know we don't have time for all of them they can express a preference if your

judgment is going to be this one instead of this one then I mean that's something that you and the planning board you know kind of have to negotiate in a way but you are as uh Christina said you're the governing body policy maker so just one second here because you keep talking about planning board and planner in the same sentence that's incorrect we keep just it keeps coming up that way our planner reports to the town correct pressure I just want to make so when we go and give the planning board a direction that doesn't mean the planner automatically shows up to do stuff that's part of our issue that we need to separate it out because the planner always right but that's what I was like but this is what it's alluding to every time we talk about it so I want to make sure we're separating these things out for direction and when we say planning boy go do this and then John says to the planner hey I need you to go look at

this now okay we've got our planning War chair that becomes as an issue at that point because that becomes a budgetary issue because we don't have enough planners time and enough I want to make sure we keep this whole alcohol well you're bringing up an issue that could emerge it continues to be an issue where we run into I mean our reports to Jerry yeah um

where you know kind of the uh iterative part of the conversation takes place where the planning board comes to you and says these are the things we think are important for the time to focus on and you say as a board well pick one because we don't have the resources you know Jerry and George don't have the time pick one so you can give that direction to the board and in that same sense you know you can give direction to Jerry saying okay through our priority setting process the planning board came to us with these three things we picked this one so Jerry and through Jerry George these are the things that you're going to work on to support the planning board in delivering on the thing we asked for I'm gonna go to Josh I was going to say if we're given the planning board Direction then I think Jerry needs to understand that's where the planner should be focusing exactly so everybody needs to be on the same page you know on

this go ahead Jerry I think after town meeting there should be a meeting facilitated by Georgia myself with a planning moon and the select board and that's where you talk about it and you're all in the same room you know you just hammer it out it takes one meeting and now we get it done yeah I think we need as a board need to start having more workshops because that's exactly right I agree so I just want to go back really quick while you're writing what you're writing because facts are important to me I I combine two statements in our comp plan over the past five years the rate of new housing construction has dropped by about half that amount to 12 units per year the next line Regional demographic projections indicate the number of news housing starts in Durham could decline by half over the next 20 years so I took the five years from the top sentence and replaced the 20. so even still decline by half over the next

20 years I think it's not even close to realistic and and five and 12 housing starts five years ago where we were way way past so anyway that yeah that was my point about just making sure that our order of operations is correct and we're not updating ordinances to an outdated comp plan yeah I would agree with that I'd rather I'd focus on it I have no problem and I think what is going to facilitate that exactly what you just read is what comes down from August that's what's gonna that's what's gonna take us I'm just gonna say ordinance should be based on fresh data fresh data correct that's 100 okay so when the call plan was developed that's what they thought was going to happen and maybe in the mechanism for that thinking was we're going to have ordinance to slow that down

ordinance you no longer can put a moratorium on building permits unless it's enacted by the select board which I actually wanted to do so that we can press pause to try to get our ordinance updated to be able to deal with these things but I know I'm not going to sell that to anybody but I think it happened I think it had to as a legal issue there too where we set up a growth industry or a growth Zone where we didn't have we didn't meet the criteria right we didn't have a section of town that had x amount of water sewer facilities so what I had

to just say about that that's a whole discussion about how Durham approaches growth and development prior because if they're trying to develop audience to slow down growth if it's not happening well part of the problem okay I'm gonna put my like little Hand of the rabbit hole yeah that's my next thing which is like because this is a big big discussion right okay and I want to keep us at the how are you guys going to work together because you can take this and put this into it yeah okay and I'm going to skip to my last bullet which is uh radicals I wouldn't actually call growth and development a rabbit hole but it can be something that can take you off um your topics of what you're trying to do I I will share when I was on um in a bunch of discussion Workshop in Freeport we literally spent a half an hour debating whether the planner should have 500 or a thousand dollars traveled with it and and I don't know if you've ever

done anything like that but I'm ashamed of myself for being a part of that but I've also watched other boards where there are really big things out there like growth and development or it could be AI it could be whatever and it makes it like the human nature is to go to the things that you can control and sometimes you go to the micro and I've seen boards waste a lot of time on very small my new issues and there are a couple ways to avoid it one is for the chair or even the town manager to say okay I think we're in a rabbit hole right it kind of gives everybody a moment to pause and be like is this really what we want to be discussed and the other way is to like recognize whatever the issue is and if it's something that staff really should be dealing with take it off the Border select and discussion and say hey Jerry I've got this constituent that's mad that they didn't get that road plan on

time this is this is a administrative function this shouldn't be discussed to the board so I just wanted to bring that up because it can be a real time waster and the reason I have a clock up here is because you as a board of Selectmen have a very limited number of hours every year that you can meet together and you have full-time jobs which means you have limited energy also so you can't go to midnight and do a good job right in fact you'll get you get irritated with each other around 11 o'clock right so you want to try to really stay focused yeah yeah do you think that when you

have a plan and you have other priorities that helps avoid rabbit holes because I understand what you're saying is like when you just feel like you're showing up to a meeting and Treading Water yeah finding something comes up and you feel like you can make a change and then you want to jump at it whereas if you have those plans it's like this is minor we're working on this big thing so we think that can help avoid because it makes you feel productive every week versus you know any kind of electric for a reason you you ran for a reason at some point I'd love to know what each of your individual reasons are for running but you ran because you wanted to give something back you know I think that probably covers all your individual things you wanted to make a difference and so when you're sitting here talking about something that's really relevant to people's lives it's going to be frustrating right for you it's going to

be frustrating for the other people so to have those priorities set whether it's like you want to affordable housing for our teachers and families or we want to preserve our world character whatever it is that we decide it's really important for you the more time you spend on making that priority is something making a difference on the more you're gonna come to these meetings right so the rabbit hole is really kid they're like the energies suck for the for the meetings all right I'm gonna go to the next one is that all right so we're going to dive a little bit into how do you have good meetings and the first question I have for you is how does your board of selection agenda get set what's your process Jerry take the blow off whatever the issues are the flavor of that two weeks was was on the agenda but who writes it I do and how does the chair or vice chair have any input into it um

wanted to get something onto the agenda um we've talked about that but currently not they haven't asked since I've been here we've talked a lot of how do we get down on there yeah okay so I'm gonna I'm gonna stop here and say this is a great thing for you to clarify because and Joe this gets back to one of your original questions where you're like so if what if I think that there should be this fire ordinance that should be explored right so maybe if it's really informal Joe would go to Jerry and say hey can we talk about this and you'd be like being an Apple guy yeah let's put it on the agenda that can work you could also do it in a way where if a counselor sorry if a select board member wanted to put something on the agenda um you could email the chair in the vice chair and ask and then the chair and the vice chair can confer with Jerry there are many different ways that you can do it but it would be good to understand

what the process is before it gets to be a place where say Heather says I really want this thing and and Joe really does doesn't want to talk about the thing and you don't have a way of figuring out whether that thing gets talked about we're kind of there in the past it's just been a simple email anybody could add anything to objective as long as it was requested prior to the agenda sure people have a chance to actually look at it and understand it before they walk into the meeting that's not the impression okay well let's clarify this now

board members not necessarily email the slight board member they could email that they would typically like for example myself I was in the vice chair I was actually the last time I'd emailed something it was a letter to the chair and a letter to at the time rude claysia at the time administrator hey could we add this to it might not be the next agenda it might be the next financial agenda on the 21st because I had 32

phone calls about kids racing drag bikes so [Laughter] you know something like that that was my depression too so I just want to make sure that we all have Clarity on whether or not that is in fact the case um okay what Authority does the chair have yeah because I think in our meeting it was said that the chair and if I share no different authorities in the morning yeah so in this framework the chair would have the authority to say yes or no adding this or that on the agenda which is kind of difference there's too many things on the agenda then Jerry may need to know what you were really doing this month next month and the month after for the 15 issues that share a lot so it's more of a more of a I think a priority thing over yeah

something that somebody doesn't want to talk about hopefully that's only your only issue right but you could have a bigger issue and so different towns will do it different ways right so we're in Freeport the the rules said that the chair and the vice chair worked with the managers at the agenda so it was more than being equal when you elected a chair in Freeport that person had some additional Authority and and then there's other places where the chair will never speak until everybody else is spoken and that's more of like a custom thing and everybody else gets to say their opinion and then the chair weighs it at the end sometimes the chair will actually frame the issue before other people talk so this is actually a thing to understand what the role of the chair is Tony do you want to add anything like this well and I think good practice is that everybody has access to the agenda and what I've seen work is opportunities

and you know whether it's at you know regular meetings or workshops however you want to do it you have an opportunity for any member of the board to say I'd like to see this on a future agenda and maybe there can even be a little bit of meeting and planning and scheduling that goes on in that conversation because these are your meetings and you're the ones who decide what the town's priorities are and work through the area of the staff to deliver those that just being collaborative process but it's still your meeting there's some of your priorities it's still your agenda because they just saw that I saw that hand first my question with that is with everyone having the opportunity to see what is on the agenda Jerry does a great job on the internet with the meeting but are you saying that everyone has the opportunity to see what the other members have asked to be on the agenda as well so if I I

get to see you Jerry says here what was requested and uh here's what we put on the agenda so I at least know that Josh has been asking for three weeks to do something about the trash pickup or whatever job score is yours

agenda item I think that lists the future topics to be discussed it was a it was an agenda item yeah to talk about what you wanted on the future that's a great fact and so I think to me to address that whole issue is are there any amendments to the agenda and then we could talk about it and vote on the Amendments of the agenda and that addresses the only thing about that that was that was unnoticed if you bring up a new topic

comes at the end of your meeting right and you say what are the what are the agenda items that you'd like the time manager to put on future agendas you guys can brainstorm he can put it and then you can calendar them yeah that's a wonderful breakfast I mean that's like a second practice because the first one the email practice is probably fine for most items and then if there was a walk-on item per se at the meeting that you could bring it up during that time period you know mostly everything else you usually gonna know ahead of time what you want to possibly put on the agenda um you know and again emerging agenda items or you know I don't know to me become emergency items right not necessarily just run the

mill business items that we should put on the agenda for for some topic that comes up at night yeah yeah are you sure give people a time frame to say hey we're going to be discussing X so they can put the air yeah it shouldn't be a spare the moment tonight we're going to be talking about yeah

public to be able to see the agent I know it's going to be on it so you're not introducing agenda items from the floor it's like that's different than private world like everything else I do we introduce new business agenda items from the floor at that moment

know ahead of time to be able to make a public comment on it if they want if they see an agenda item that's of importance to them well for example if there's an emergency item that wasn't on the agenda when it was published it can't be brought up which is uh or you're breaking your own rule is all I'm saying is a good point is it's careful we have to be careful as of how we're framing things yeah um and so I'm just gonna throw that out there and so um but I was with the title when for example the window's not unique in this respect um the council agenda was published on the Friday before the Tuesday meeting nothing could be brought up at the meeting on Tuesday unless according to the council's rules or procedure they voted to suspend the rules and add an agenda item so if an emergency came up they could deal with it right but as a general rule if it wasn't on the agenda that went out Friday afternoon from the town clerk's

office it didn't get talked about so what you're speaking of that rule we don't have though right that's where we're headed in this conversation because I think that what what you can do on a lot of these items is to come up with come up with um foreign

handcuff yourself so that you can't do an emergency at the same time you want to be able to provide ample notice to each other in the public there's a rule for that right and I think it's also related to him that when we do get that established that goes on the website so that residents can see that because policies have changed yeah I've only seen two and they and they it's emergencies there was no there's no there's nothing for any Resident to be able to refer to that that is actually the way that business is done and so I think that avoids that situation you're right it's really really important and Joe you made this point before about people thinking about how things happen behind closed doorses all the skull about everything that's going on the more you put it out

you the more you put out uh and the more you explain to people how the process works it makes it more transparent it makes it less frustrating for them and for you because everybody's dealing with the same information everybody's on the same playing field you know how the process works you know what the rules are this is like trying to play uh a game where nobody knows what the rules are nobody knows what the object is and everybody gets frustrated nobody wants to play anymore and people start getting mad at each other and you can you if you have the rules it clarifies everything

amendments to the agenda have typically just moving something out of the order that it was written that's typically when that happens like Town manager puts the board of assesses in the middle of the agenda and then they're back into being so like when you guys will just collectible he voluntarily always put the time managers meeting at the end so everybody's tired right and anybody any board member can make I do like his suggestion now about suspending the rules for an emergency situation like that there's been two that I can think of and one of them we couldn't do anything about it wasn't anything it was it was a house that whole possibly could have needed to be condemned and I was here I remember yeah the codes officer was asking he was just a little naive but it was really a good job to condemn the house it wasn't our job and then the other one is we had a really big Windstorm um in October maybe three four years ago

which knocked out power for a couple of days and we had to do something with the morning or something like that so we had to call a quick emergency about over a couple about defining a clear process for how an agenda item gets added we there should be some sort of oops sorry um you should have some sort of deadline that you've agreed upon after which you can't add an item because if there's not a public notice not enough time for Jerry to process it you also may want to consider being clear with Jerry about when he writes up a staff reporter provides you information do you want him also to make a staff recommendation maybe you do maybe you don't right but it's better for him to understand what's expected of him on something like that right I like that yep and then and I've had that when I've served words um you know if I'm not clear like okay we should staff have an opinion on this do you want my expertise or not right

okay um and then the other thing is that you should have agreed upon time about when the agenda gets posted in advance you said it when there was a Friday before in Freeport counselors had until the Tuesday before to provide things it was everything is posted on Thursday gave people so you just decide what it is that you want when do you host s Thursdays or Tuesday yeah so Tuesday very similar for sure and keep going on how to have good meetings um one of the things that's really important is to do your homework and my

question to you is how do you do your homework and get ready for meetings great sends as soon as you know the day that we get them and then the same thing I'm I'm new to the board and I have a lot of questions yeah um and so I try to get as much information on my own as I can ahead first years and then sometimes I'll email him and ask him ahead of the meeting because I don't want to take up people's time because I know that my questions are because I'm new yep um and then sometimes I do have to ask questions in meetings because I just think it's the most appropriate place to do that so there's I have a little the last tool here and I've seen this happen um for boards is that a counselor or a slight board member will ask a very substantive question in the meeting and then the board of selection says we don't have enough information to make this decision and it can make things draw out so one

thing is if you do read your board packets in advance it's a really great practice to provide heads up to the chair and to Jerry that you have this question because they might be able to get the information for the whole board to see before the meeting and in which case you can actually maybe make a decision now that's not always going to happen there will be things where you're going to want to ask the question in the meeting because it just occurs to you that's fine but to the extent that you can help move the whole process Along by getting things out in advance your questions out in advance it helps and that's one of the great reasons for having your packets published early because it gives you all more time to do your homework I have a question about packets being published so we see that information but that's not published with the agenda I have seen towns where that information is also posted with the

agenda oh yes so if you ask for information you get an email back to you is that what you're saying no so what I'm asking is we post the agenda on the web site yeah and some towns post the packets board members get it on the agenda oh like if somebody filed an application or something catering or whatever proposal or even like the town of Monmouth that town manager he like he every email that he gets from a resident he posts in his with the agenda like the

whole thing I mean I think that's excessive what he posts is like 40 pages a week I'm not asking that we do that I'm just saying sounds excessive to me yeah no I'm not asking that we do that I'm just asking like that question up there um and that's for you to decide if Jerry what what your preference is on that okay is there anything you want well I was just going to say when um you know we published Council packets uh what we published on our website was exactly what the council got yeah yeah and that way again your information has become powerful and some people have and other people don't have access to right right because the whole idea of local government is to be really close to the people and be as transparent as you can be you wouldn't you don't do payroll more and stuff like that though or did you no no okay accounts payable and there'd be certain applications that might have private information that you

would be discussing exactly because some of those examples like uh assistance for people yeah things like that you can't use this close you gotta you got to be careful what you yeah you can't put everything in there as well the public the you don't need all that information

yeah Department reports um any supporting material if you're making a decision on a particular thing whatever um you know if Jerry's making a recommendation or if he's done some research in his reporting back to you on something all that would be included yeah I never I'll be honest with you I never look at what you post because I haven't so I've never looked at an accident please

our public comment period is the beginning of a meeting rather than yeah discuss stuff so I think that if people can review that online it gives the public a better opportunity to give a more informed opinion rather than saying I don't know what you all are going to talk about on this issue but this is what I think and it might be something they don't have a concern that if they have a packet it wouldn't even be a question right that's great so just a couple more things on this about doing your homework so I got I got answers from the two of you from um Josh and Heather but one other way to think about doing your homework especially if you're new some of you are new is to really try to understand the budget because that's the most you know one of the most important documents that you've got and that will take some time sitting down with a Time manager to explain it to you to learn it and the

other thing is um this goes back to you represent the whole Community like every Durham resident is your constituent is for you to do some homework and talk to people you don't usually talk to you know we all get in our bubbles so figuring out like are there some people that might have a different perspective and it would be great for you to listen to them and and just enrich your understanding um this job is a job that I became humbler with as my time went on because there's just so many different perspectives it's hard to know everything and the more people you talk to that are different from you the better of work you are going to be when you're making decision

can tell if we've got a tired lawyer over here so it's gonna go to the next one is that right no billable hours it's not four minutes so um right now I wanted to ask you what what do you think is going really well right now when you guys meet

meeting are you able to get to decisions and votes are you feeling like your opinions are listened to do you feel like you're moving business along I feel like this meeting is was put on our schedule to get to get some of those to some of those points okay okay so well why don't I just go through some of those best practices and we can raise issues that you might want to our questions that you want to answer together as a board um you know you are again you're the a body that acts as a body and so when you're elected and it was like I was talking to the people at my door so I was knocking on doors I was hearing from them what they wanted but then once you actually arrive at this desk the most important people are the four other people here right like that you need to figure out how to move each other on things that you think need to move forward and you're also going to need to be connected to each other and have the

relationship so there are a couple ways to do that one is to always be respectful to each other always be respectful to stay and also be respectful to the public and who are tone setting right you you need to lead by example for your community but we've seen a lot of Commodities come fall apart lately you know uh the the the the tenor of discourse is low let's say and it's personal so to try to always be thinking about how do you keep it you know High High and um respectful and that also means bringing to this table a spirit of collaboration now even if you have your own thing that you really want the board to do maybe you have a Personal Agenda or maybe somebody else has a Personal Agenda and you don't think that's appropriate you have to cooperate in order to run the town and so being as open as you can in kind of a Cooperative way when you environment at the table you miss out a little woo-woo but it really helps if

the frame of mind that you bring to the table um the other thing I would say is that some people are naturally not going to say very many words and other people will see a lot and so one of the jobs of the chair is to make sure that every voice has at least the time that they want and that it's not being dominated by one or two people so be mindful of the air time that you take and if your chair or your Vice charity running the meeting make sure you're trying to solicit for people that are a little bit more introverted um be clear on how you take and also respond to public comment and I'll give you a couple examples here when I started Freeport there was no time limit on public comment and we had a few people that came and literally spoke at the podium for 20 minutes which made for very long meetings yeah so we instituted a timer while I was there with three minute timer and we also instituted a

rule where there was no back and forth between the council and that person so that person might ask questions the council chair would say thank you for the question and if you want to get back to them later you can promise that if you just want to say thank you for your question you can do you can do but you should be in agreement about how you handle that um and there are many different ways to do it you can take the whole comment just at the beginning of the agenda which I think you preference you can take public comment on every item you can take it at the end of the agenda it's up to you how you handle it but you should have an understanding of how you're gonna how you're going to approach it

I wish public that it's hard as a a person coming to the meeting to have to talk about what it is that they that is perhaps on the agenda before they hear the board discuss the items that started the meeting only yeah you don't do it on each agenda again no yeah another way you could do it but again you'd have to discuss it is that the item is presented by staff or whoever the person is who's presenting the item full thing then you have the select board members ask clarifying questions after that presentation and material happens you allow for public comment on the item you close public comment and then the board can then discuss in full right the and come to a decision then you're informed by the public comment and the Publix who's commenting is informed by the staff presentation and your questions of staff I do love that I do think it's a little bit more to your looking outside of your bubble because

you know everyone has their Circle people can engage with I think that sometimes folks don't feel as interested in coming to our meetings to provide public comment because they're like well I can say I'm very interested to hear what you're going to talk about on this agenda I don't know if they don't have any sort of feedback and uh you know we have like a big social media page where people close feedback but I talk to a lot of people that so they just don't feel that they can engage very well okay so I just gotta we won't make any decision today but I'm just gonna say if you might want to explore changing my YouTube level on can I just touch it sure I had a I don't know

they didn't want the public involved in the actual discussion they could give comments prior to that seems like it opens the door up into now you have a group discussion on whatever policy or whatever it is we don't want that yeah that's the difference between discussions

it is like you have the presentation of the content and you guys ask questions first then you open public comment the public commenters can say whatever they want you close public conference questions they're just able to say what they want to say about it so we get their perspective it would be after you ask clarifying questions okay so you yeah so I thought it was that's where I didn't think I'm going to reviews I thought it was before we start r thing like you open it to the public to let them say they're so the slack Court inherited impersonating the presentation here so they can address it yeah and then you close public comment and then the presenter presents or whatever and then the board I like to if they move forward to have discussion can go from there but not in the order now let me let me say one more time because it is a little confusing so I have a specific example that might

help okay so like when Chief was coming to talk about needing more money for the fire truck he presented that to us we asked him some clarifying questions and then we had a discussion about whether we would allocate up to 9.99 would this be like Chief presents and he needs more money we ask clarification why how much whatever public comment for three minutes for someone to say I don't think he should get it I do think you should thank you for your comment and then we discussed is that whole system I'm sorry but this I'm sorry to pick on you Joe but this is one of the issues we've been having recently is that there is a lot of interrupting and that is something that I mean I'm trying to listen I get distracted and and I know what happened to me and I know I was making faces at one minute because two people said something to me uh and and you know what nobody over here noticed other people know this

because you can't finish sentences without being interrupted sometimes and that is something that we need to work whose chair your chair no okay so you have you have kind of the responsibility for protecting everybody here ability to be heard I agree right so um if and actually interrupting we all do it right we all interrupt each other and it it's really annoying so if there's a way that you can set an expectation that nobody says anything into one person stops talking now if somebody talks a really really long time it means that other people want to jump in and interrupt so this gets back to the air time thing you need to be conscious of yourself of not taking a very long time to express yourself because you've got a clock right so I would say Joe this is your responsibility to try to um ask people to not interrupt and if they are interrupting you can come up with like a funny way to do it so you're

not like getting mad at each other but like if Bruce and daisies all right let Joe finish his thought let Heather finish your thought you know just so that you can um address this because it sounds like it's a cultural issue on the board right now so respect for each other and with zoom

issue question is something that we need to work on or it hasn't it hasn't it's been any type of what it is is the reason one of the reasons why I was more inclined with this is because um it's an educational component to especially people just getting on board um that I think needs to take place so you know when when you when you first like I'll use the school board I'll get the Discord out of that but typically go to school board they'll say hey just vote for about six months see the wings of things and see what's going on and feel the feel what's going on we can do that against your you know like I think I don't want to speak for Joe and I don't want to speak for this show but like for example that example I really wouldn't be inclined to that either as far as public comment because that's a select board decision not everything needs public comment um so that particular one of that example is

so the slight board has the discretion to stand up for that kind of money so it doesn't necessarily require Town approval or individual approval one yeah the the point of order and you know just the just the just the um how the meetings are conducted per se needs to be sharpened out so I just saw a great best practice here which is Heather you raise your hand and then Joe you raise your hand one way that you can handle this gel is you could actually recognize the speaker before and on the Freeport Council there's seven people so the interrupting thing is really a big problem so right when you have more people so you could say Joe you know select board member Heather Roy right or you could you could say you could actually do that and you can raise your hands to be recognized by the chair I often do that's how we do on the budget coming I was on the budget committee and we all we raise our hand

to speak on the budget committee and then the chair would acknowledge us um are you acknowledging me or no I am acknowledging you yeah yeah know well what I said on that particular one is when there's certain things that the public should have a lot of input in and I agree with that but there's certain things that people elected you for a reason that you should be making a decision and you shouldn't be tying down a board with lengthy public discussion for hours on end on something that a board should be capable of facilitating you can choose what to have public comment on I do and I think a better example might have been sort of the issue we're having about writing off some some of the EMT bills right right and and I think that would be deserving of some public comment oh absolutely and and so but I so I think I do agree it can be limited but I think

do have parameters right I don't think it turns into a discussion if we're setting it up the way that you're suggesting there is the three minute time limit right so it and no and I'm not suggesting that we allow for open Roundtable discussion I think no one attends our meetings and if a resident has come here and feels that it's important enough to come here and sit at this table which is not easy for a lot of people to do and voice their opinion on something that we should acknowledge that out of respect for that person I don't think I'm not asking to open it up to a Roundtable discussion I'm just asking for people to have the opportunity to be able to give an opinion if they feel strongly enough to come here in the first place to say something to us about it yeah so one thing I just want to point out this happens and I know I'm guilty of it but like I was asking clarifying A final question and before you can answer

we had an interruption they went into a substantive debate on the issue whereas and so and a lot of other boards I work with where we have the progress rules of orders you're asking a clarifying question this isn't where you debate once you get the information you then begin to debate I feel like sometimes we get lost in that it's I'm trying to figure out if I understand your statement and then it's like oh well I think we've done it this way and I don't agree with it that's not my question what's whether we should do it that way you're trying to understand so I think that more is structured in a way where it's like this is where you ask your points of clarification or your points of information and then you're moving into discussion and that's where I think like Joe as the chair to facilitate this is a discussion you're debating the topic we're asking we're saving debate till after we have the information you

know this is also an area where the board has to decide how it operates how you conduct your business I mean you've still got to deal with the the boundaries of the state law uh the boundaries of case law but you have pretty wide latitude in how

you conduct your meetings and that's for the five of you to decide um you know as far as agenda setting and some other things I mean you know by all means I don't need to exclude uh Jared I know you know as manager you know I was very interested in how the council did its work because the only way things get done really is if we work together so you know if Jerry is working on putting the agendas together having a clear process so he knows you know how

things you know come into the hopper to go on the agenda how it gets decided what goes on the agenda some things like routine stuff I just put on the agenda because it had to be done and what it didn't relate to a council priority it was just you know Visionworks permits okay but they're going to go on there the manager has a lot of attitude on them all right we're gonna we're gonna move on to a couple more slides and um oh except that I have one other things

roles you're using I don't know if you are you defaulting to progress rules I don't think we have okay Robert schull I think that's why I raise my hand was it's I can't tell you if we have these rules in place Robert tools is in place it's typically every year the chair will say hey we're going to buy around this room because they're not major yeah um I think I think what this board should consider if we don't have this is actually defining these issues because what I what I'm hearing what I'm saying is you know the board is you know continuity for just my sake seven years and you have continuity of the board and procedures have been X Y and Z for the last in my case seven years and then every time you adopt a new member or a new member is elected the whole process gets reshuffled and I think I think that's what some of the issue is is maybe maybe we didn't necessarily like the way the board was run before

and now we get elected now we want to change everything how it's run but if we could establish just what do you want to do and I don't know legally if that does that go on perpetuity for life could we set that as a can we set that as a Durham policy I know the next board could say hey we're changing policy but okay exactly at least there's something established yeah well the select board doesn't change all at once typically no it's been none to happen but it doesn't typically change all at once so if if this war were to adopt rules rules of procedures that established how you're going to set agendas how you're going to conduct business when you're going to have public comment on things and when you're not those rules are rules that apply to you

and to you know as far as agenda settings Jerry but they're really more rules and it's up to the next board um or even if you get to a point this year and say wow that part's not really working let's change it sure as long as the board votes to decide to change it that it's changed and a subsequent board could come in and say we'd like to change these rules but until the select board once you've adopted them unless the select board changes them

that we go by title 38 in its home rule that governs us there's a real opportunity here yeah I agree write this stuff down consider it we're not going to answer it we're going to do is we're going to say here are the questions yeah here answer these questions together and write it up adopt it and then modify it as you need to all right so my question is about is that something that generally GPS provides of just social services and helps craft those sorts of things because I think that sometimes with things that there's fundamentally going to be disagreement having to facilitator that's a third party kind of beneficial yeah we're happy to do that like this group and we won't go in a big rabbit hole here but you pay us dues and there's a certain amount of work that we can do for you within those dues like this Workshop is including you can use if you had a really big job for us right like you

said we want you to draft our entire rules and procedures we probably would need to charge a fee just to cover our time and we could facilitate those workshops even enjoying and we can talk about we can as a result of this Workshop we can give you a crib sheet of here are the questions that we heard that you still need to answer and you can do with them what you can and then if you need our help or you know on just a another night like this we can do that for free it depends on the how large the job is for us or even perhaps just provide examples of other towns that you think yeah you know because I didn't a board that has nine members is going to operate very differently at a board that has five which is also going to operate very differently than a board that has three and you probably have more knowledge of what that looks like versus me going in there and town by town trying to figure out who is what and

then if they have their policies posted online I think the written policy is beneficial position at that first meeting where you're adopting the chair of voting in the chair who then voting to accept the previous Awards written rules to adopt moving forward or you make amendments

somewhere but we don't know we know how we've done it and I think that gets back to the transparency I think the board is always trying to or have in the past trying to operate as previous scores and so forth to try to keep confidently in the past or we'd had for example four cabinets to operate than he was on this board or whatever so it was never and then there was just Edwin Kevin's buy the book you talk about a guy that does the homework he is he's going to go and read every single possible thing that you search stuff so we just we're not at that level yeah we're hoping to get there

that we don't really necessarily have a map to yeah about this is that like I joined the soccer booster officers right and nothing existed there was no and so nobody wants to volunteer because you're stepping into a role you have no idea what to do you have no idea you know and so Victoria Winters created everything in this Google Drive so that the next elected officer gets handed this packet where everything is clearly defined which makes the person stepping into that role and volunteering right and so I would love to see that type of thing for us to create that kind of thing so that as the board changes there is continuity as we go forward as you know

maybe we're all going to sit here for 20 years I don't know to get the feeling you're not but Ohio we've done no this isn't a site that your statement was saying you know we're just doing it the way all the other boards are done like there are people I know who were literally born in Durham and they're 79 years old so they've been here for 79 years they might have a perspective on how it happened whereas folks like reading you'll do in the last decade folks who might be moving in here especially girls to say well we've done it this way in the past and you say where's the written down procedure well that's just something we've kind of passed on it that's where it becomes a little bit more we do follow mma's advice and things of that nature that's right I'm talking about it here I know but let's yeah I don't want you to make it sound like we're running Rogue over here

know if we do follow a procedure that has been in place for years and we incorporate we we do a lot of asking and questions via MMA we do a lot of asking questions we have our talent attorney we don't just run a meeting at whatever will that we want to make them there is a there is a standard for lack of importance about the interaction I just saw there right which is right and um and the things that I just heard that each of you said they weren't at all incompatible oh yeah you both spoke your own truth and they were actually totally compatible so I I just wanted to point that out because I think it kind of comes back to thinking about this Spirit of cooperation and thinking that each of you is actually coming from a perspective it might be a different perspective but I can tell all of you are really good-hearted people that have come here to serve your community so just just think about that because

I think you guys could do a lot of great work together and I see this um Dynamic of people who've lived in town for a really long time and new people would come into town that seems to be Us Versus Them thing that happens in a lot of towns and yet like there's good stuff that comes from both and your job is to meld it because you're representing that kind of different those two different perspectives now I have a question for the chair and for Jerry who are over time we've got one more issue it's around communication so it's kind of a big one do you want to call it quits tonight or do you want to do one more one more slide along with that one side University depends on

and leave it at that without discussion does that something like that and revisit at a later date or will you talk with Terry about Jerry was going through there 20 minutes okay all right so the next one is ongoing Communications and I told you to get to social media um so there are two kinds of communications to think about one is the official Communications of the town to the residents and then the other kind is how you individually are talking to Institutes so this first one is about the town Communications so um I think I got to answer this question sort of shorten it short-term discussion how does the town of German communicate with residents at an age of three website and you also have a Facebook page yeah and news class okay so that's all really good because you are putting out regular information and you're doing it through multiple official channels you know so you're reaching as many people as

possible so that's a best practice you've already got down path um another best practice is to try to have a policy that that can provide some guidance to your employees especially as they're using social media because social media is set up to be interactive and just like your public comment period you've done some nasty stuff you get people that are throwing arrows personally you can get people that disagree with policies that you voted on so you need to figure out how you want your staff to handle that some towns have like block all comments you can't comment on their Facebook others want to engage their residents and have somebody who's monitoring that but you also have to know how you're going to deal with anything that's pornographic anything that's like really hates speech things like that so you need to think ahead about that and many many towns have social media policies that apply to the

employees who are doing the posting to provide you know basically to protect you as you're doing them so um so that's it on that and the next Slide the question yeah the social media policies are that for people when they're interacting on official Township or like they're person not personal I mean you really should try to avoid having any personal postings be about town business so I share Town business constantly like well like myself but also I'll go to town of Durham Facebook page and share that to the all things Durham which has like 4 000. so let me go to my next slide because that's about your individual communication okay okay and there's some guidance around that that you can adopt or not right and many towns don't try to put any policies in place that govern how you talk about town business individually when you're talking to Residents because we've got the First Amendment right all of you

have protected Free Speech as individuals that said social media can be great for getting out information it can also really create a toxic environment amongst your residents and also between you possibly um and so you want to approach it pretty carefully okay if you and this gets back to the spirit of cooperation you're all here to serve the residents you all have to get along and you are leaders that are going to be setting the tone of discourse in your town so you want it to be respectful so the first thing is to lead by example and you know as you are communicating with constituents make sure you want to see it right on the front page you know make sure that you are not insulting people or insinuating insults

right again we have way too much of that in our country and to the extent that all of our boards in our region can do a better job we're just going to be able to govern better and do better for our residents the second thing is to make sure that you're sharing accurate and factual information a really good way to do that is to link back to the talent website site right you're not making it up you're not interpreting stuff you're not throwing stuff out there that's opinion that's not factually based again we have way too much misinformation out there so whatever you can do to keep it to the facts better these are some of my personal opinions here just watching what's going on region you if you're free to disregard them because you have your first amendment rights but this is what I'm thinking about for the good you're always always going to want to distinguish whether the communication is a personal communication or one from the

town so you if you say um can I pick on you yeah of course absolutely uh Roy um says that uh you know it's you post on your Facebook that it's great to vote it's June 13th get out and vote you want to make sure that you're saying this as Heather not representing the board of selectment not representing the town so you're going to want to make sure you distinguish this is my personal Facebook page or this is my this is my celeb board page it's personal it's not affiliated with official Town Communications so you want to make sure you make that distinction and then you also if you're out there on social media you could get really negative comments you could get an harassment unfortunately a lot of women I'm talking to you again a lot of women get a lot of harassment in this region um if you're a person of color you tend to give more harassment there are people that I have talked to that are racial or

an elected office who said I can't take it anymore I'm not going to ride again um I did want to share with you um a quick note that we saw from the town manager of Naples he just resigned and the select board chairs said it was like one of the best town managers around and this is what he wrote in his resignation letter said the criticisms from those in the public and hidden behind social media keyboards and don't take the time to understand what local government is doing is destructive to this community perceptions without facts are dividing Maples it is taken a negative toll on my on me health-wise and I've decided it's best to shift back to a less public piece of position so this is real right like Naples lost a really good town manager because of what was happening in the public of course on social media so um for you all again to lead it's a

way to protect staff it's also a way to protect yourself but you are going to get nasty stuff so you need to think about how you're going to respond to it are you going to be nasty back or are you going to block are you going to try to give a good professional response are you going to let it lie you're one you'll want to think that through probably many of you are already active on social media and it's not there and then the last thing I've suggested here is you could have a code of conduct or a quoted ethics that you agree to as a board of Select man and you hold each other too um it's not going to be legal necessarily right because again you've got first amendment but you could do that if you wanted to have some expectations of one another about how you are individually communicating particularly do you know of Select boards in the region that have code of conducts like that that could share it's what

something like that might look like I looked for some today I did a very quick search I didn't find much I found quite a bit of social media policies that are adopted by the town that helped the protect the employees and guide the employees but not very much that's out there for yourself I don't really use Facebook so I don't I never looked to see if you have I don't find a post but yes I don't know it's it's I think it's mostly regarding the importance it's not a Content necessarily but I thought there was something when I started last year yeah well I think we again this goes back to like what people would say or um as far as you know what the understanding is whether it's in writing or not like it's it's always it's you're free to have like Heather's Heather's a big social media person I personally am not I don't you know potential on you you don't I love your kids but as far as like it's okay to have an opinion as

long as my opinion but once you get to the board you have to make sure that you're not coming off as hey this is the opinion of the board correct so I was actually really care so someone had said what was the robocall about and I said the school um or asking people to get out to vote for the school budget and I immediately edited my comment and said vote on the

school budget yeah because right and I was like yes way to catch that before anybody even had a chance to read it yeah and so then today like we do the news blast and it's kind of like little graphics with like where the polling place is or we need a board member for the historic commission or whatever and so I'll just share those right from the town page no commentary no nothing just so that it gets over in that all things are on page because so many more people see it there yeah that's great right you're just you're disseminating information it's official information that's yeah and you know again you could say vote for the budget and then you could say vote for the budget and just say this is my opinion yeah you know I serve on a select board and I'm representing myself yeah I I urge you to vote for the budget okay right you know but but all of you need to it's good for you guys to have an

understanding that it's fine and it's good if you decide that you don't think that that's appropriate that you decide that together so my question is like because we're not like just cogs in a wheel moving things along we are you know representatives and we do have our own personal opinion and we bring that to the board I don't post to social could somebody post to that's on the slope board supposed to like the All Things Different Page and saying this is a big thing that's going to be voted on in town I ran that I was going to be against this I'm going to continue to be against this please make sure your voice is heard absolutely because I think I just like I don't want us to model ourselves of what they do in Washington because it's not very nice but I know that like you do see representatives and even in Augusta they say here's what I think and we know that they're not talking about the entire board

but we know that they're talking about their opinion um so I just want to make sure you say that right you want to be clear that you're speaking for yourself and you're not representing the official position of the town or the board that that's the point the sharing the accurate the factual information even if it's if you're well even if it's a hot topic on social media I just just so whatever that I come from a world of security clearances and and and contracts that I'm not allowed to talk about any of this stuff my my view of all of the things we do on

the board I treat it somewhat the same way I'm not going to go out there and necessarily share that I don't necessarily allow myself to do that in any situation that I'm in from a business perspective I get it that it's all public knowledge but it's all public knowledge under controlled aspect of being released it's not just really necessarily just wide open I get the First Amendment right so if you have an opinion great but my recommendation is usually hold back from that that extra opinion of whether you whether you know the answer or not you can help somebody by linking them to the site but link them to say the ordinance and the ordinance as your answer don't give them your actual interpretation of the ordinance yeah I did that with the track somebody asked about trash questions

yourself back from from actually putting yourself in I'll say somewhat Jeopardy from your position here on the board holding back is sometimes better you know leaving it overnight even is better and then come back and say do I really need to answer this or is this just something I say hey you know what you should contact the town hall about that right that's kind of the the the Viewpoint I take on it must I try not to

other than like somebody putting flowers out or having eggs or whatever yeah the benign stuff everybody's going to choose how to handle it if you're like the someone's flowers They're not like a mine flowers I was just gonna I just want to clarify because I do care about your opinion I really do it does it it does it bother you if I share information like I did about where someone had asked a question about where to vote and so I just shared the town Post in there that's that's yeah I'm sorry that that's fine I I have no problem with that stuff the sharing of information again back to the active information don't have any problem but but

you know that that that over the over the Internet is a problem I think and that's that's where I I usually have a problem yeah I haven't seen that happen have you seen that happen so let me let me ask you can I can I interrupt you just in the interest of time is this um how how the town externally communicates are how you externally communicate is that something you want more discussion on I mean I think it could could be helpful I personally it's not an issue I worry about because I don't know but I do understand that people can people could say I should be able to share my opinion as a board member saying this is the facts but there is a judgment on whether we should inflict resource protection I never approaches a single thing and it's like this is the facts of the implication and here's how I feel about it and like I feel like a board member should be able to publicly share whether they are personally for or again so

people know where the board members stay I thought I think if you're saying and this is going to do this which is absolutely not right correct that's where you run into itself it's not something I'm personally going to engage with but I couldn't see how there could be a benefit to discussing so if they are very active social media people in the future it's just a really good thing to do to

try to say refrain yourself from being out there in that capacity and again back to first amendment I don't have any problem with that you know sharing the opinion and stuff but again making sure it's more of a protection yeah instead of the board Integrity

saying so so you guys are not all in Harmony on this issue so I am in it like I'm hearing that you actually have quite different opinions on this so I am going to put up here maybe a little bit of work on that I'm going to wrap because it's really linear but I'm going to just quickly review the next kind of the issues that are left to resolve for you yeah and we'll put this in a tight enough of a memo so really quickly um figuring out how how much work can be done and what work is going to be done within your existing resources coming up with some policies around how board members get and share information with staff and how to handle your email correspondence and what's in the packets that's published in the packets um developing a policy a process for setting kind of your annual priorities this is outside the capital investment plan uh exploring how you can update ordinances based on fresh data it may

mean that you also updated the complex and it could be that you need to just pay special attention to facts um how and is it appropriate for the board of Select and give some direction to other boards specifically about the planning board uh putting together a Jerry and George facilitated Workshop between the planning board and the board of selection figuring out how the agenda gets set and how to deal with time sensitive new items within that framework and so there's some rules around that figuring out exactly what Authority what expectations you have of the chair uh we talked about the agenda packet exploring any changes that you might make to how you gather public comment and public in your public meetings and defining how the process of discussing that item happens when you insert public comment if what's the expectation what are the rules that you're using is it Robert's Rules or something else and

maybe some guidance around social media or at least a statement around it so I've seen I think after the big things rules or procedures somewhere if you can't find them yeah you adopt them right and that becomes the rule did you get what you wanted obviously I know we didn't do all of the things on here I think that was under the impressive it's gonna be a little bit of different Workshop but I feel like this was still very valid I agree so I feel like I get more than I expected which is that is if you are going to I would love to see

what other towns boards that you feel are comparable like you know member of account wise if that's something that we can see this is where I would be asking the chief for something and then look at Jerry because I think I made a mistake

that outlines this with a little bit more detail in the context and we'll talk with Mary about what the appropriate next steps are what you become can