hell i'm a candidate for the three year term on richmond select board i've been a member of the richmond select board in the richmond water sewer commission for a handful of years now some of you know me watching as some of you don't know me i've been a resident of richmond for about twenty six years raised both my kids here i live with my wife until then i've talked briefly about the select board and the challenges both behind us and in front of  us i'll say my experience on the select board is maybe a mixture of successes and failures or not successes so i'll start with the latter we spent a fair amount of time looking at a water sewer extension west main street and that has kind of gone back on the shelf after spending a lot of time and effort that i spent some time trying to reopen solid waste district richmond drop off center and unfortunately i have to date been unsuccessful getting dropped off or the review is sown at the drop off center to reopen  then i apologize for some of those failures some of the ongoing challenges include our police quarters current police station quarters such as it is in the town center are inadequate many of you will remember lots of discussions over the last several years there's been some turnover in police officers we've had an interim police services administrator and are poised to hire a new police chief so that's sort of good news in a sense we've had some transition in staff in both the town manager's office from jeff urbana to josh transition and police chief or a police administrator and hopefully we'll announce a new police chief very shortly theme in that is i'm struck that when you know we say it takes a village to raise a child it also takes a village to raise a village i've been really struck by the number of staff volunteers paid staff just people who contribute to both town government and other things that make richmond a great place to live from the support you sports  to boy scouts to the senior center hale and hearty that there are a lot of organizations and groups in town that make this town a great place to be some of the challenges moving forward to keep this town a great place to be  include some issues with our town buildings you may know that we had a review of town buildings done by bread loaf so after town meeting march sixth that's got to be a priority how we deal with the town buildings especially the town center which has in the police space and also the supervisory union is going to be moving out in the relatively near future so we'll be starting some planning for that including a survey town meetings so if you have thoughts ideas on the town center in the future of the town center building really interested in hearing please respond to the survey that will be on site voting on town meeting day  you can also send suggestions to either the town manager or members of the select board a couple of other things we're working on is organizing all the town ordinances and policies and putting them on the county website that's kind of an oversight i don't blame anyone in the past but give credit to josh and staff now for pulling that together and really trying to be more transparent and accessible through the town website in a number of ways and i want to thank the various staff we've who've supported the transition including josh in pocket to get from where w were where we were before to where we are today and where we are going i'm struck as a member of the select board that it's part of a stream the people that came before me the people that i'm with now and the people that will succeed me that there's sort of a stream of local government that keeps the select board part of local government going so i want to also thank my predecessors my peers and my successors for their service  one of our goals that i think we've achieved in the current select board is to achieve a level of respect and accessibility to accept people for who they are accept ideas even if we may personally disagree with them i think the marketplace of ideas that's represented by public discourse in places like the select board is really powerful so i really appreciate the participatory government if you again if you have suggestions for the select board or the town manager whether it's complaints or kudo's i encourage you to give feedback to town government and the select board and i will also say i think the select board works best when it represents a diverse group of people i think small organizations work best when you have a combination of experience people new people different ages genders  if you have any interest in running for the select board i'd encourage you to consider it or some of our other boards and commissions will be talking about that after town meeting day but if you have any interest and i encourage you to consider getting directly involved in town government i will just observe personally it probably looks more difficult from the outside than from the inside it's more daunting before you started and that there is a lot of support from inside town government to hope people come and select board and succeed so in closing any questions comments please don't hesitate to get in touch there's lots of contact information on our town website and please come out and vote for the candidates of your choice town meeting thank you very much