firms that provided us with proposals through the r p process we're in the seat of your scope of services and we have a series of general questions just for and then and then we have some specific for the record my name is richard kobayashi i'm senior associate at the college center for public management at u mass boston the center was established by the legislature in two thousand and eight for the purpose of giving the university essential to a public consulting with its principal objective being to provide technical assistance and support to municipalities but also to state agencies so  we've been at this for almost nine years now and i've completed over three hundred consulting projects fifty of those projects probably a little bit more than fifty of those projects ha recruitments for town managers town administrators and other kinds of municipal executive i believe that practice a little bit about myself i have lived in belmon for over forty years i raised my family here i have two sons that i graduates of but i'm on high school i was a town meeting member for twenty one years and i served on numerous committees and once upon a time i was elected as a water commissioner i served for twelve years and so at the end of that working with some other people in this building was instrumental in formulating  consulting folk who do municipal recruitment it's a small group we all know each other we all know our each other's working biles and i simply want to address and i want to get too far ahead here what makes the college center different first we've done fifty searchers in massachusetts of those searches are only three or four of the people who have been hired through the hour searchers are not in their current jobs one of those people was in a situation where the board that appointed him turned over one hundred percent carroll so so the proof is in the putting and we have a distinctive methodology which i'll address in in in the q and i but i think i think we bring a superior track record and one of the reasons we have high confidence in our process is that it is tied very closely to the perceived needs and dynamics of the appointing authority in belmont it's this board or it's this board of selectmen and at the front end at the front end we spend considerable time meeting with each of you individually meeting with the stakeholders that you direct us to members of key committees finance committee other committees stakeholders the town and we try to identify what the key issues that the town will face over the next three to five years will be and what kind of a person this board needs in the town administrator see in order to meet those challenges we document that we write it up you've seen samples of a profile where functioning here is your professional writer and when we finish our first draft we review that with the board and sometimes we need to go through a few drafts but we ask you to vote on the language of that document and once that is complete then we use it as a marketing tool for the town and for the job it's just like people in the real estate on the street you know what the house really look like  but these folks really look and look like and that that that gives us a vehicle to sell this opportunity to people who have choices about where they  apply that's a key element of our strategy and we think that makes it that makes a world of difference every board of selectmen in the massachusetts contacts going to a process that uses a screening committee simply because of the open meeting on you cannot consider for a women or a applicant in confidence and if we can't provide confidence the p radically shrinks people don't want to people don't want to take the risk but the profile that you have of turns out to be a guidance document for the screening committee that you might use when appoint them you say finds out bring us forth people who meet these parameters that you have established and then they do their work with a three member board you can have one of your you know your own on the committee process i kin to the one that this town is going through and the colony center submitted a scope of services on a parallel track just as we have done in belmont in the other half of of the last town simply contracted it with us directly without an r f p process so the process we're engaged in as a town and you know us as a consultant has become relatively standard practice across the commonwealth nothing unusual about it and i want to stop right there ok thank you that was a nice well informed introduction for us mark of course was on the board when david was recruited in were you the senior staff people that i work with in this practice ok well that's helpful adam was a luck to do this year in april and i've been on the board for two years so i remember the ballot would you say you two thousand and eight and fifty of them have been town administrator and town manager those kinds of news yes what else you do there's a there's a practice area in the municipal board or a mayor and analyze the operations of a fire department or police department was some sub element of those of those operations and make substantive recommendations based based on their terms of staffing gemzar qualls for entry firefighters in terms of equipment and it's sort of edom and i went to the retirement ceremony today at the headquarters and we had seven firemen retire well that's a high in a fire and yeah seriously injured his back which was a tragic thing i mean he's he's ok but you know but he can't work any way that was in a ceremony today what else do you or do you have the government analytics municipal personnel you have the town in the searches we have a small practice that deals with public libraries both on the policy level and operational level and i just did a study on for wellesley on the relative merits of having an automatic materials handling machine for it for incoming books  you know it was a capital investment should we shouldn't wait what's the payoff for our kind of thanks of you know the methodology you can use on anything but we have got we have a retired life senior library and it works where the sun and i was going on on those kinds of things do you have a practice that addresses strategy strategic direction or would you say that overlays everything you do with with the extremis not when they're when things are going well and in the early days we did some of that kind of work for over for the city of lawrence was it which is you know an acute financial crisis and had quasar state receiver and that that was you know what to do and i know every serious thing and we supported the we saw we supported the receiver operation in adopted over the previous thirty years the operation was balkanized and not really very well aligned with what the direction they want to want to go and which town was that what you're saying that was last fall oh well we're certainly not in extremis but we have a lot of things going on you don't want to be there and we're not there we're not and we're not but you know we are looking at a number of different projects that we need our attention so i think you've answered question to in your comments approximately how many talented men the straight or manager searches have you conducted your general approach to town have done much town and ministration recruitment process which i think you also described in your opening comment and the final general question and then open it up for mark  and adam we usually start without him first how you engage department heads and other staff in this process so i think the first part of that answer is you're going to start with us and then you're and then you're going to move on to department that that we ask you to see is that the idea i think that was what your comment i mean it's very important that we understand the perspectives of each member of the board so typically back we spend and in the situation it would be me sixty to ninety minutes with on a one on one conversation and trying to understand how the town's future looks and present looks from the perspective  each member of this board and we try to tease out what kind of leap is an administrative job mostly is it a leadership job mostly is it fifty fifty what kind of in this building in this context in this town what kind of personality management style will be effective and the board members may be pretty much on the same page and they might be on three different pages if that's the case if that's the case we've got some work to deal with figure out what's what really the key things are at the beginning of the process because if you don't you'll wind up doing it after the person tire sami mark and i worked for two years together and i think sometimes in in prior administrations it was important to have consensus you know three reading one vote but we've kind of opened it up and not every one of our boats goes you know three to one in so i think you know we're and we're comfortable working with adam and and you know the votes aren't always consensus ok so what about the department had just answer yeah i want to get i wanted to get to that in most communities i would say virtually all communities the appointing authority wants us to meet with the parliament heads to gather their views usually in a knowing when town the department heads either live in the town or used to live in a town or have a close family associated to do it and when we meet with them we say knowledge and they they know pretty much what that with what the administrative bureaucratic issues are too and that that that's very helpful because on the other hand when we get highly qualified candidates  phones going to ring and one of the questions that i'm going to be asked by a good candidate is what are the department heads like what are their concerns and my coming into a place that's broken what and i can answer those questions and my colleagues can answer those questions much better if we've had face to face relationships charged with those places so why do we think it's that we think that's an the profile it's it's atypical to have a department head or heads on a screening committee but it does occur in some in some communities is and this is in our experience is almost worked out well sometimes the board says to the department head contrary you've got to see it on the screening committee you figure out who should represent you and then it's then a somebody selected by a class of peers sometimes the board selects a person it is entirely to do with the dynamics and organizational culture of a beach town   what kind of candor do you think would be best for belmont attribute as far as the attributes for where we are right now where you know the answer is you know honestly i do not know because i haven't had those conversations with you it can't be a candidate that sees the tunnel town expectations for service hard on i think you need a seasoned professional person one of the things to consider is how much of the role of the human vision is it ministre to and mostly carried out inside this building and how much of the role needs to be carried out outside this building and in the public sphere listen to some people are very good at one aspect of that and not that not that attractive at the other one so that that's not right person wrong person but it's the town out of trouble but typically in the members of the board of the finance committee or the permanent builder committee etc play for the significant outside world in other communities it would be a horrible thing if the town administrator were not in the memorial day parade because that's the custom and culture of the community i thought that i don't think that's the expectation here based on the hundred memorial day parades  think so it affects the pool in terms of the high polity of people who will be drawn here but it won't necessarily affect the pool in terms of of qualified applicants one of the really you know since everything that we do in the board does occurs in the public realm people in the profession have a pretty good idea of what the be fairly clear about about that we're working in a time of mansfield now at the border selectman there unanimously when i talk to them all said the next person's got to spend forty five percent of their time outside this building not inside there are very strong expressed desire for what they perceive as a change from the radius person but that's know we write you know we write it down and they voted the they voted the document it's not our prescription but i think i think there are significant changes there was a special act the few years ago thing such thing as a local search anymore months it's up on the web anybody in the world can see it and people do scan for these things that's the sort of standard advertising model because we have a wide knowledge of people all over the state from our work as consultants and in in recruitment and because people call us up and say you know i'm ready for a move you know if you see opportunity to people who have expressed an interest or who we know and frankly we find people who are referral sources you know right now look what they want to search for belmont in your network  know anybody who is at the right stage in their career either step up and be the captain of the ship or needs to move for professional or personal reasons so we reach out when we are not resume collectors what do you think about the role of diversity in the hiring of the position the demographics of the if you want a traditional candidate there are there are several significant number of women in the pool you know because o the last twenty years the profession has opened up to women given the demographics of of map of the profession in massachusetts and new england more generally it's quite difficult to find five people of color but that's that's a mirror of that's a mirror of all the demographics and demographics of the profession in new england if you were to make a decision that new england town meeting experience and familiarity with with the customs and traditions of local government in this part of the world were not important to selection then the pool would be larger interest you could reach into the south and the upper midwest  independent financial entity within the u mass system all the people who would work on this project or any of our projects are a fully trained professional  consultants with with good educations and significant number of years of experience we are all by the way just to clarify we are all w two employees of the university we're not our or town where we need to look at nontraditional candidates and how that all would work and i think before if i recall we did have to carry over all the needs we did have some women hamiltons and we also had some nontraditional candidates outside of the profession which your thoughts about that i think that we might want to think about and perhaps of if you read to work with you probably hear from me that i think we need someone who is more strategic in their thinking it's great to to to be able to ensure that the trains are running here running on time clearly within our town where we had a point where we need to start thinking about strategically where we go from here as a community we think about that from a have you seen that to other towns of the towns hired nontraditional candidates and what are the concerns we have about the examples let's be practical here the examples where we have seen a nontraditional candidate work is where it's someone who's come from a corporate or nonprofit sector but it's part of their civic life have served on a finance committee or school board or something else and and you come from a culture which is very hierarchical very hierarchical and it's you know it's a command kind of structure it's very hard to figure out how to function in there's another person who had several retail enterprises i was his that was the that was the family business and he closed them up and he became a town administrator out and out  out in northfield and they had a very high concern small town with complex three thousand people they had a very bad reputation for customer service and this those situations have worked out quite well and you know if you hire us and we chat about the profile we need to be able to find a way to say that you know way that draws in people that got that some of that you know so but time one of the things that occurred in belmont is the town hall staffing has significant more significantly more depth than it did twenty how does the council interface or work with the search committee you know from my point of view i think they need to be actively involved oh are there way this is the way this is structured and it's  very good question at the beginning we work very closely with the members of this board until we get the profile and mail that's important then we go out and we do our work and we actively recruit that goes to the screening committee members but we also send them a comprehensive table which lists every single applicant so they get to see the whole pool but not be burdened with a lot of paper that's not relevant and when we meet with the screening committee we always tell them look if there's somebody on the list who's not in the book and you want to see their application it's right here and you know the black hole in the black police here it is you take it out that's around people say oh i want to talk to this person even or or they say oh yeah i can see why you didn't include but we operate in a very transparent way with the screening committee and we work with them in a facilitative way so that they determine who they invite for preliminary interview we don't make recommendations ok so so in terms of their profile or something it's a search committee was actively involved in this review i mean yes we we haven't yet decided whether we'd want to have some input on that you know when if you if you make at the situation that you want the screening committee members to provide input to the draft profile you can do that just tell us ok you know and then and when we circulate the draft a comment we'll send it to those people individually committee last time i think we had at least one resident on the street you may recall we have got to do every call it was one you know one resident this time we decide well we just have seven members of but these are all residents of course but they're active in town and it's a very activist community as you know jennifer in the package i said well she's an assistant to mayor bloomberg in manhattan they have eight million people we have seven thousand people i thought it was a bridge i thought it was a bridge too far they said didn't you know the we want to see her you know i said ok she's the town manager so so so there is you know sometimes people months maybe committees see things that we don't pick up so it so i think we're and and south hampton in the west one final final question in so that mean i don't remember how many applicants we have before which your expectation here track of community one of applications what interest know i would expect somewhere between twenty and thirty the numbers the gross numbers are not as important as the quality early you know most of our screening committees interviews somewhere between six and ten people and kind of work from there ok thank you dick it was a page summary yes i had a couple of questions what is your opinion of assessments essays and i think there were a waste of time best indicator of how a person will do in a job like this is how they've done in the last job like this the actual tangible experience just have you read the book references because i think there's eight here but the searches were from two thousand and twelve two thousand and thirteen two thousand and fourteen can you tell us why you picked these particular because i know you've done searches that you've done basement tower that i think the latest one is well i just lost it on my screen but i think it's the latest one was two thousand and fourteen but one of the thoughts it's a good question one of the thoughts is we think people would like to know how well what the value with the process was over a relatively long procession and the duration of the go we did a search in chatham you know in two thousand and eleven you know after a long term manager was not renewed and the town and the board's very very happy with that result and that woman is still very well regarded there that you know this this a meter on the bars now but the problem that happens is that sometimes the people forget the details of the search after five or six years sure but i can provide a couple more about what our process was going to be for references and was told that you know obviously we need to go through it and so have you been able to check the also told that another consideration would be an off the list reference check have you have have we you have you seen that before in your experience meaning where you speak with people that are formally listed as yes not necessarily with this process but in other aspects you know employee i would you do that which could but you know particularly at least with employment matters everybody knows everybody in the business so usually if somebody is working for a community there's a good chance i know somebody that's in a community there that i can get that type of that major sometimes when you speak with a reference they mention a name or a place and somebody else who knows the person and it goes from there so it's usually you know it was let's talk about if if if you go out and do columns and then you can send the reports to us individually or do we have to wait until the seventeenth two to see the reports how does that work you could review them you just obviously but  which was i think mark's question before we started what about this idea of who said what is it necessary to disclose which you know who the source of the comment was i mean i personally would prefer not to they give us the official ones individually the chairman i don't think we need to discuss it publicly but it just informs me i want to go through the holes one more time and you know to schedule a meeting as soon as we can to make a decision well that's kind of right you're going you're know i mean i do remember phyllis's reading off the agenda last time i don't think a lot i don't know i was he to i don't know whether we're going to be aligned i don't think this is the liberation will take more than thirty minutes we review the references we have to review we have three understand i mean if all three of these firms are they say it's a small world i think it probably a lot of them would pull up the same candidates for the job they all seem to work for all the towns around us and i like them all it's kind of hard to go wrong at certain some levels kind of a fit with us and a fit with to be like the chair and offices and again the only other thing i want to mention is they are does state that we're told award the contract with and thirty days of the proposal reviewed by the r p evaluation committee so waiting until the seventeenth is after the thirty day window and something above but from scratch that doesn't apply that far but we say how about we say that and that we will meet well if you call if you ask them both and they both agree to extend then we'll do the seventeenth if not the market up for the fifth and would just have to be but how do we how i mean i don't know i think this is a friendly business but to some extent stressful in that if we get this wednesday done sooner i mean maybe maybe instead of waiting two weeks but of course it depends on if we other towns that work with since them yeah i think it makes sense to get all seven know whatever you think others are a minute maybe you could ask for a couple of more current because i understand the idea of giving the town to where