it's well he's going i feel free to help with all of that thank you go and i stand here tonight as a strong strong proponent of solving the town hall issue we need to do it and we need to do it right but also as a five year member past member of the advisory committee one of which was as chairman i strongly advocate that you do your homework provide them with that sound plan give them the time that's necessary to faggot so when you get to a town meeting we can get a positive vote we cannot afford to spend five hundred thousand dollars go to town meeting and load what we need we need a town hall i'm not advocating for a no one or a revised i'm stand out of that i don't want to see it downtown i think just as a great site as long as what we design is compatible with the neighborhood but if the advisory committee at that time they need to properly vet the project so we get a positive solution  you can take it from here thanks mike dick do you want to join us at the table well i'd like to introduce to kobayashi he's with the edward j collins jr center for public management and we all have our name tags here if can we get a card for center was established by the state legislature in two thousand and eight to provide consulting and policy support services for eunice apologies and state agencies it was named after ed collins who was the first deputy commissioner for local government services in the parliament of revenue who serve the state able the floor quite a few years ah so that's a little bit about who we are and who i am and the origin of the institution we are a part of the commonwealth all don't operate on a commercial basis  procurements because all of our work is done on the basis of an intergovernmental agreement so let me just that's who we are and how we work let me give a couple cards thank you and you the but the lamma any board of selectmen faces in choosing a new leader for the organization is the following or the biggest risk faces not just this board but any board is really the risk of facing the possibility of choosing the best candidate from a mediocre pool of candidate because in that context somebody who's ok tends to look better than they actually are so we view our job in a nutshell  making sure that at the end of the process this order has three to five example re candidates for the position of town manager in foxborough sitting with you here one after another all and doing our best to put you in a situation we have just a range of terrific choices and the decision starts to come down to chemistry with the board and your judgments about whether this person's got the right leadership style to lead the community and lead the organization  of this two parts to our op we have to get to know our clients and our client organizations and we have to understand what the key challenges  foxborough will face over the next three to five years and we gain an understanding of that by talking to each one of you for significant lengths of time  we typically talk to the partment heads we asked the border so i went guidance about who else in town we should talk to usually people say  us on that stuff when we're when we're through with those conversations we write a first draft of what we call a profile for the job these are not identical they the personal and professional characteristics that would make a new manager successful in the job now when you write something like that you never get it right one hundred percent first time so we usually sit with the poet and go through that as many times as we need to and in the preparation of the document we deal with issues like quote not years a qualification to griese does the person have to come out of the city management profession or can you do you feel comfortable reaching beyond beyond salary we provide information about your preferred time schedule etc so once we have this document finished to your satisfaction we are asked the board to vote on it because it's really important that the words in the document represent the boards  know our view and once we have that then we have something to market we can market the town we can market the job we can explain clearly  our client is looking for the document really speaks we don't advertise we place all the advertisement but we don't advertise on top of this document is finished because you never get a second we put these documents up on our website we write short ads for for the m m a and the international city management association usually that pretty much covers the waterfront and what the ad says is go to the coll web site find the profile for the foxboro town manager job most of your questions will be answered answered there so but the first thing a candidate or potential candidate will see about foxborough will be this document so and you never have a second chance to make a first impression so we want to get this document just right  and then it becomes a marketing and recruiting tool for us have you thought about having a screening committee we have actually is that is that the that that that's the general preference  come up with a screening committee that you would then bring those five or six excellent candidates to who could then bring forward the best to us for the final interviews is that what everybody else had  g this board can't hold preliminary interviews with candidates in executive session and if you don't have a mechanism to provide confidentiality to applicants when they having a preliminary interview the pool the applicant pool shrinks trace right down because people don't want to take that risk on a one on one in ten or one in twenty or one thirty one and thirty back so the confidential we in in an inexact in executive session the way we have found things work best is that we will probably get approximately twenty five applicants for a job of this caliber all we will probably present maybe twelve or thirteen applications to the screening committee on ranked are we will know all the people we will have to talk to them we will know why they want to leave their present job and why they have in the past what lay eyes on on on this person on paper in addition we have found that it's best to provide the screening committee with a table that lists all of the applicants but the ones we gave them recommended to them and the ones we didn't recommend we followed people kind of like to see what the range of the whole pool is and every now and then  that we missed we went through a process just like that in great barrington there was a woman that we did not recommend to be considered for an interview she was a staffer at a significant level and mayor bloomberg saw office in new york city i didn't think that she could likely make the transfer from that environment to a town of seven thousand in the berkshires and i was wrong and sometimes people see things that that that we all see doesn't take a lot of time but it's the way we work typically a screening committee will interview somewhere between seven eight then we check references and we do the criminal history check and the verification of educational credentials and a credit check because it's not a good idea for screening committee to report you know it's five top ghana leads to this board and there's a lot of public interest only for that to be followed by in paris meant downstream when it but a couple weeks time you can kind of kind of clear up most of that stuff so we do that and once the screen community hands off the its recommendations to you our work is about ninety five percent complete and will provide guidance to the board in setting up an interview process and make some suggestions about questions or community process but it's pretty much a clean handoff from the screening committee to this board and then at that point i work is pretty much done we try every now and then we do want to request but we don't get involved in contract negotiations with the finalists those kinds of things are and there's a reason for it and then he is selling on the contract with your preferred finalist is the first important joint decision this board and the new person either going to make to get it it's really important that you be able to work that out together whether you know if you need or you need a mediator in the first exchange not not not not always a good sign and you get to know each other while you're doing it now meanwhile we're on standby in case there are difficulties but but but there really are if it's been a good process let me just stop right there and ask if there are any questions become a questions you're looking through the information  the rain thank you for putting some stuff together for us there was the profile they put together for framingham and this this is all public information and so sure i think it's proprietary but i did go further than i looked at the scope of services that you did that you put having gone through that process and looking at the proposal in the scope that you put together for framingham i was quite impressed with the and similar to what you had just described on the screen committees now framingham is a population of sixty eight thousand it's got a lot of town but it's got stretch that it could be a city has not a city characteristics and they've got headquarters a corporate headquarters there in different sectors you've got the  corridor you've got the other areas and you've got a lot of open space to having gone through that process and looking at their scope of service what little of that you know of foxborough would you approach it the same way  i prepared pretty much a mirror image of that proposal and and had had said that the lorraine so somewhere in i can just give you that it's pretty it's pretty much the same proposal same tasks and we use this you know we use the same methodology in in great barrington which is seven thousand as we did for the chief administrative officer for springfield which is whatever it is one hundred one hundred fifty thousand you have to know the client you have to document what the needs are you have to be able to sell but you have to be able to sell the job because you want people who are not looking for jobs to consider applying not everybody who's actually right for the framingham job is looking through the help  so whether it's a modest sized place a simple place or a very complex place at fox is in the arch as framingham is but it's complex because of all the fifty if you didn't have you didn't have all the activity on route one and getting the football stuff and everything that goes with it this would be you know a modest size the wouldn't suburb and town but it is annoying when suburban town with big with with big players and you think you have to do have to get the trash picked up like everybody else and people like it when you dial nine one one police car comes and you know all those things that exist population people that are currently working in time enjoy their sins and sort of look into the private sector for possible candidates can you give us an example of how you've done that and if you've placed anyone that has come from the private sector bob help in the current manager of framingham massachusetts was a chamber of commerce executive beef beef before he came to that position before that he was he the number one or number two person in america back on valley the economic development real estate development consortium here not your earlier his career he had been a town manager he had not planned to react to the profession but we pitched him on framing him to get that request a lot of you get that thought a lot when you meet a town i'm sorry that the thought to go beyond the population a visit of his existing town managers yeah i mean i'm sort of like outside the traditional yeah and i know to me the question comes up a lot here is the how you know you have to help yourselves and you have to help us specify what the criteria are when when when we do the documents and he is where people with who come right out of the private sector all have difficulty not all of them  it and there are there are many one to four managers and skilled people in all elements of the private and the nonprofit sector the one thing if they have had the it's in that world that is tends to be difficult is they have not much experience working in an environment where all the sessions are made in a public forum and everybody is equal decisions are made usually in some kind of hierarchical form and then made in a conference room there's no media there it's a for it it's a fundamental cultural difference some people can cross cross over that bridge some find find it very sector world who have half a dozen years as a selectman or advisory committee me chair or something where that with have done that and also have been embedded at the citizen level in a community kind of have the management skills and they understand that they're going to be in a different culture right away and what the rules of the cultur we're dedicated helping municipalities secure better governance that's what we're about that's what our core mission is we don't have to upstream any part of our fee  you know to the mothership so it can be reported on a profit and loss statement so we're not under when i die the economic pressure applied by by a corporate oh and we can put in as much time as it takes we have a very good track record we've done about thirty of these since we started in two thousand and eight every one of the people that we have participated that's not within the parameters then you don't have democratic local governments or risk of the trade so we think we're pretty good at this we're committed i think  favorites we'll never go to one meeting with the screening committee or this board and say boy if you don't hire mr jones you're writing a mind we don't play favorites we don't sponsor candidates we people like the you to run the town this is a very important decision the manager here wields a great deal of form and informal power  come talk to a tech having done this a lot over the last five years we count it at least within the state in new england with the kind of developed a pulse here it's something interesting comes up i just want to let you know i'm ready for a move they can call us and we maintain confidentiality ah we call up people and say gee i don't know if you have if you've seen the advertisement but given where you want to win your career and previous conversations you might want to take a hard look at foxborough but that you know that's a call to a personal number or an email to a work very hard with a with the screening committees so the screening committees understand the executive session rules and that we're dealing with people's lives and careers  something so reputation plays a role but a lot of it is we have a database we do direct outrage not everybody is reading the help wanted in and the m m x this is an interesting enough place and of interesting enough job so there would be i expect considerable interest from with outside the comic book i asked  but it's just a lot of customers a lot of tradition here but if you get somebody with the right into personal and leadership skills and once ones have university of massachusetts boston i would be the lead consultant i am the person that you would see i would be assisted by mary i carty  who's got twenty five years of municipal age our experience and we always put two experienced people on a project that enables us to always meet the town schedule we never in a position we have to say golly we're under statutory climate's to hire a town manager strong town manager within a certain period we're going to in term or an acting just can't go on indefinitely i look at some of the work they have done and some of the times it's you say between ninety and hundred twenty days some have gone a little bit further because there are multiple positions some a little quicker but what would you feel is an ideal if everything goes well with our board and setting up the initial meetings and subcommittee meetings feel you to do your work ideally with what duration he looking at i think what's important is that a screening committee that this certainty that a screening committee can make a recommendation that this board in the interval between thanksgiving and christmas to get to that position the screening community doesn't have any work to do until until the deadline is closed would look at the resumes and we make a package for them and then they need to work diligently  and some of that has to do with we spent time with you would happy to send it out and get individual comments from selectman and stuff but in the end you need to get a document that the board as a whole for it they act on you can vote on it or they can amend it all and some of that's has to do with the frequency of the selectmen speeding but we try to coordinate that schedule ourselves so it could be done as quickly as possible just john john just just another part of that as soon as the board approves the text we post t version of the document on our website black and white p d f then we send it to the printer to get get the call so we don't we're we don't waste time with a you know a week with a printer put and thank you for coming in tonight i think you'll be definitely appetising in the commonwealth of massachusetts but did you say you'll be going beyond the boundaries of massachusetts like to new england and even beyond new england or is that well something that you don't do people anti you thanks to the world wide web a local search is a national search of people in this trade hall all the publication who are looking for does follow the publications of of the various states in a civil associations and so if we have something in there in the mass minutes about association job thing and we have something in the international city management job posting service between those two things we cover the north american universe for people who are in the trade for people who are in the right the public administration trade so that's that's that's pretty efficient and people all over the place where these things and also when will we be privy to the questions that you are asking the applicants so so we'll know what information  solicited from the applicants to get a better understanding of your recommendations or your recommendation that comes to the board is going to come from the screening committee  and once we are finished with the profile our principal interactions with the screen so the screening committee will get the screening community will get our cake on the applicants in terms of this is where the kobayashi in his career and this  prohibit follow up question right if you digressions which right but otherwise if you're if you can't you can't compare that but it would be nice for the screening to can communicate to know what questions are asked so they can get an idea of what the answers are fifteen questions that you might consider answering and either way you're free to come by and some of these or add some of your own or whatever but you know by that we have the first interview you need to know which questions are going to ask  we have we have we have a we have a draft charge out of that that we can provide to what we do recommend is that the screening committee recommend to the board three to five candidates on ranked give you the application materials and let you take it from from there and that leaves you free you know the winnowing is then filtering has been done you know that your committee is comfortable that any of these people can do a capable job and then you can sit down and and have a heart to heart with these people yourself and ask any questions you want to and we're happy to provide a guidance document on that but you know sometimes you know you know and all those people kind of give you feedback i have you know that this goes on i mean if there's a candidate here or anywhere you know there's a network that apartment heads here whatever department they're a and all that data because when the public forum all of data is available it will come trickling back  foxborough who know how to use google and you know folks folks in town who are interested in these matters will have google all of the all the finalists but that's ok we will have googled them first there they won't be any there will be any surprises and anybody in a job like this who's dealt with serious issues and made important decisions will have some new stories about them that are characterize around the bush there but but between us on the screen a committee you know you'll you'll get good candidates and b and because they're on a rank you can put your own eyes on them and make your own your own judgment oh and pretty much all of the factual data that the screening committee had or that we have had will be available to you because they'll be in the application or it'll show up in the questions you ask the question just as the process goes forward then if you know we take the next step and you begin meeting with all of us at what point do you start working to pull together the screening committee and could you would you be providing us with some examples or approaches to identify the members of that screening com look this all different models we just finished very successful work in drag massachusetts thirty thousand people in which the board decided that each member of the board of selectmen would appoint you know like like five individuals from the very beginning they functioned like a real working committee that needed to make a collective decide it worked out very well for all we have one client where they put an ad in the newspaper and on the internet and ask people who are interested to apply and thirteen people applied and they didn't know how to say no to anybody so they appointed everybody liked the idea and  have had up not too far away are in hanover a gentleman leaving after twenty five years ah that's like when put to them so to select one on it a former selectman a former selectman from another town who was resident and then resident in the town and one citizen these people this these people made a decision that this was important they wanted to hold it really close framingham said different place sixty eight thousand people the framingham tradition is to do things by twos every selectman appointed two people to the screening committee it made the process a very long even the one where they had thirteen it worked out ok in the old article seven is what bill's talking about so be three total kewl which is now six and seven which is now six and seven now he's looking for a different seven is the forfeited bonds so that was would come out not well because the numbers is to our numbers for public hearings i'm able to level one through seven soldiers the numbers don't match up which is why i picked a topic that two topics the two had is wh innovative that actual title itself was innovative residential development that is to sever categories that are very important to what we're currently doing with a couple of projects at the microbrewery ok so that's so that's my question so that one is not on here but the ones the two that are on here irregardless of the numbers is a grant application grant exceptions and then the m p l chapter forty one he won which was the forfeited bonds one of the two that w fifteen in the used table and then section eight point five in that the public hearing is scheduled thursday evening we will have a written report thorough written report the ad com by monday morning sour and we'll do our best to get them the information so that they can we're going to be a war we were still void a couple weeks so so so i should find somewhere in october i've been working with the library and i compiled a construct and pay for a light at central and commercial street which is one point seven miles from the fox field plaza and they were requiring that as a condition of the current cut permit to redevelop the fox field plaza site big why in december of two thousand and eleven when they cited the reasons that they decided not to proceed in foxboro specifically mentioned the cost of that light so we went to to see me pat only required that the big why design the light and pay five percent of the cost of the light which was their share of the traffic going through  it it was mass d o t that decided they should pay for the whole thing and we went to see me and tell them the project was killed because of the traffic light only require that the applicant design the light pay their share which both big y and the proposed new applicant were fine with and we were looking for some flexibility with them coming out of a bad recession and their comment was well fly for a mass works grant so i've been staying up very late applying for mass work grant one of the requirements is that you guys should the grant be funded you will accept the funds on behalf of the town of fox authorize the chairman to sign the mass works grant application brought to us once i spoke with frank about different possibilities for dates and you know we're talking about november twelfth and frank said that as town moderator he would prefer that we would have it on the fourth he prefers a monday and felt that we would have better attendance on a monday thought it might be  potentially missed by some people having it a tuesday after a holiday so his preference was for the fourth and i did have a discussion with paul de fazio he said you know i could mention we talked about this and  so i would suggest we look at that that gives an additional two weeks from the original suggested date of october twenty first to the advisory committee and the other thing that we talked about that i spoke to paul about was the idea of prioritizing the warrant so that the everybody on advisory committee could you know focus on potentially the top priorities and hopefully be able to have the time to fit in everything in that timeframe so that was that was basically my conversation with both frank and paul i i also talked to frank and i don't we i don't think we got the same story week before then actually it says in the by a why i don't like the baby but logistically or for the them to get it in and everything else we typically have to have it done two weeks at a time so you can get a week ahead of time well ok so all right so we subtract a week i mean it's it's just really tight as there's a lot on there you know i mean well all we can do is what we can do may not pass and you know i'd like the ad com to be able to present a well researched article bring it to town meeting have confidence in their position and be able to convince the town that this is the way to go this is an opportunity that if we if we miss we may not get back to this for some time so this is it's important i think i fully vet this and go to town meeting with it and actually gain meetings confidence that their position is right i think it will be important for us to attend meetings with that to make sure that any questions that do come up can be addressed quickly we can get the information back and turn it around as quickly as possible and have a distributed to them so that they  can you know keep moving in a forward direction right i think genea going tomorrow night you know and we'll try to be as many meetings as we can and if we have information with us so that you don't have to wait a week to get it we'll go get it for you and we can help out in that respect yeah i know one of the things last year that tripped us up was the funding plan and we haven't heard anything about that yet you know that how we're going to pay the debt on eight point five million dollars you know i don't that's what killed it last year  important question because the toral stated very well last week in the paper saying you spend five hundred fifty thousand dollars in the plans you're obviously going to go for the building so i think this is a very big step and that i think we're going to read to our rules before we can really conduct any business we need to figure out how we're going to conduct ourselves summer i think we're going to do the reserve fund transfers i think to something else after that right go over their legal rights ok yes so it's going to be a long night ok so we need to close the warrant and also vote on the date correct you vote on the so this is the only special time meeting well you know i don't know if we're working on some contract negotiations so if it looks like it means make some sense to you know have it another one now that you've got to have some resolve contracts maybe you do one in january or a there's another capital expense building that is so a service area i just don't want to put too much in and we're trying to cram at the last minute safe if only we had pushed a couple off that's not critical to this november most of my special meeting but i mean that was the question that was asked it was the these these absolutely have to be on the answers we're getting from water and sewer is yes planning yes you transfer as yes they have to be on in november a verse in january know there's no guarantee of another meeting so if there were no other meeting these meet these should be heard now so if this gets pushed off till so so we plan tentatively for january it never happens and it gets moved to may there's none of these  can wait till may not so here i hope they're ok what i what i fear is because none of them can wait there's going to be some unfinished business or a lot of anxiety and negative impact trying to put too much on i don't know how to get around it if they're all saying it's critical i think that's the downfall we have to be aware of that there's a lot of work with town hall well jim you know i mentioned before you know we could have stayed with that date in december and just have the whoever the organization is it's going to create the plan for a town hall somebody so why can't i add come work you know have more meetings or why can't they have one meetings you know someone has said that there's something magical about a six month window that they could they need exactly the time to create a quality product and i think i agree with that i'm not going to enter into i can't i'm i'm not going to say i know that process well maybe you can speak to that but the thing is it's this is in my mind so important that a be able to get this right and give town meeting the best advice they can and i think we're saying the same thing yeah i think we are right but i'm not sure anybody else is of the mind we had to move it to december and i don't know i don't know if that would jeopardize anything either moving the town hall warrant article to to descend will not give you enough time for the but for the design bidding process getting specs and drawings on a public environment public bidding environment for me so that's going to have to be pushed on one of the things you think we're in the position we're trying to please everybody and i'm just cautious that trying to please everybody is a detriment come may and follow it back to november you know i understand someone from water and sewer that says why can't that wait a new building for d p w and i am putting it on water and sewer but it's a d p w issue that is going to take some time to understand it why can't that wait a few months  three the d p w administration offices if they get pushed to made to the regular time meeting what's the detriment in that what what funding source are going to miss a what timeline we're going to miss i just don't know mask i'm not on  tile home i just get we have a dead building so much smaller as a prefab building bought if that was the way to probably the regular town meeting in may there will still be talent all that that  grow inside of so i think the beans and i'm pretty sure there's plenty of room for the existing ones who palmer stay here because it's built to what twenty thirty percent expansion over twenty five years a debt of if you if you haven't planned for them now and it will be no expansion weldon because you'll take up all that space doesn't it well not to mention vote sorry nine nobody's going to be here anyways you're going to be in another building you're going to be moving everybody out here if you get the funding in the plans together by may to build a building here if the plan to go to draw on may first one i would tell me may fourteenth i think it is now and you have it on a ballot and maybe it's a six hundred thousand dollars project the scope of that is so small as to prevent a building just can be put on a lot and that's it just like you do the temporary classrooms right down the street here when they expanded the school it's a very simple process it's just the funding and your funding is not and you get exclusion raining so why would that be an issue in the you know in may that should be pretty much a no brainer you know so but if jim's valid i mean i can think that as far as the waters commission goes we would really like to see this voted on this next season whether it's on this special town meeting or another one coming up so they don't wait till january that you could wait till january but i'm hearing this is no guarantee they'll be another child needing to know and you don't think you can wait till m no i don't i think his point is a good one if we don't have any answer from the down they've got to be plan for in the new town hall they're either in the plan or out of the put they're either in there or they're out of there so i think we need to know that before we design the step would be what's the need what's the function on the town office and then work towards a solution you've got a solution before you've identified what the issue is i don't see it that way at all you've got a solution for a separate building for water and sewer and a separate town hall and we're just asking if he can wait to have his so we give the outcome more time to that this but none the around circle conversation the kind of clash together that's right but i don't think that the program has changed town hall program as a change in the d p w program hasn't changed so if you look at the castle blues design drawings they did not include the staff for water and sewer because they're going down  planning boards elected board i think will do the best to ask them twice or three times but if they need to be on it will do the best maybe plan b is if the advisory committee can look at it in a certain order absolutely have the veteran people that have been on this before jump in the building as far as town all right so one two and three stay the same for would be article article five comes out of before anybody can jump in here and then i would say to they can't get all these out we'll have another meeting was january i mean january or february will happen and it's not that big a deal really isn't hopefully you can all make it right in the else