the following podcast is produced or sponsored by a community member the content views and opinions expressed are those of the participants and do not reflect those of v m c or the town about much b m c welcomes your comments call us as six one belmont has a new town administrator patrice garvan she's been with us since early in the year today we've got patrice with us we're going to talk with her about both her job and herself welcome thanks for coming over   an operating override for the town and at that time the plan was to put certain money aside to stretch it out as long as you possibly can and due to that decision the increases that we're seeing due to the upcoming fiscal he is budget we were able to take a little bit of that to fund some of the school increases and then again looking even more forward to twenty we wanted to make sure that f y twenty was also stable and it was using that override money fifteen in the override money it's actually lasted longer then people initially expected that's my understanding i think the original plan was to have it last until eighteen and we've been able to there are people like me who when when we think over right coming up in two years think that rather than putting off discussions about public discussions about our financial situation and we should there are certain certain discussions we should be starting to have now are there are there things that you think people should be talking about in public beef outside the context of an override vote sure i mean i think it's where i find my best stuff is interacting and talking to people any time i have a conversation i walk away with another idea i've already started a list of things that i think we could work on within the next year year and a half two years to maybe help offset some of the override that we're predicting currently so it's really just continuous work conversations with people there are people in this town that extremely knowledgeable have a great history i have been finding myself going to them on multiple occasions because they they know the history of the town they know how the town works and it's just really with those two things combined it really helps in planning for the override potential right twenty twenty one and over ride or let's not even use the word in people and there are folks who will say rather than raising taxes we should just cut the fat out of municipal government what do you say to folks like that you know running a town as i've done for a while now it can be a very expensive venture you're providing a service to the residents of the community that's ultimately what we do it's as basic as that and when you run into tough times and you're not able to provide a level service to to the residents then you have to look at ok what services need to be looked at and you know i would say my goal is to provide the best service to the residents of the community you know i don't particularly enjoy offering level service i think residents deserve more than a level of service but they deserve you know everything that we could possibly give them so i would say that fat in the budget it's really not there in terms of you want the best people working for you you want you the best resources that the town can provide it's one of those types of things for me sure  before we leave the budget i'm always curious your the town administrator in belmont it seems like we have this split we have the town side of the budget we have the school side of the budget but there are some folks in the town administration who are co equals or certainly toward the top of the list we have you is the town administrator we have the school superintendent we have the general manager of the light department we have the warrant committee for town meeting how do you get all those folks working together melding together so there's not a a grinding of gears simply because of the multiplicity of people involved well i can tell you i've been in towns that have that mentality which is the town separateness and that never really gets anywhere i always come at it from a place of collaboration you have to collaborate with all of those entities because we are one time it's one town of belmont i have always taken the approach of consensus building you have to really make an effort to get people in the room to get people talking communicating and trying to figure out ways to make things better that's how i approach it and i'm i have always been that way i think it goes to my i'm one of nine children you know you know my you had to learn to get along to get a life yes well and it just kind of has that has been really who i have been throughout my life is trying to work with all different types of people and you you meet regularly nowadays something that really didn't used to occur but the disco committee of the board it's like i'm in the work committee and i'm constantly beating out to the school superintendent the belmont the late manager i will be continuing that with the new manager that they just hired so it's really a collaboration and i think that when you start to see that school first town mentality kind of seeping into the community it's because the people at the top aren't talking to each other and and that's that's when you know something's up something's not right just one thing i'd like to do today is to let people get sort of a peek inside your job that the job of being can administrator ok and one thing i think people ask about is what's the relationship between not the personal relationship but the the relationship between the board of selectmen and you as the town administrator how much i take that very seriously so selectman sometimes do ask me requests that i follow up on something and do something and then there's other times where i'm bringing something to the board saying hey we need to look at this you know are you opposed to me checking this out so it's a it's a two way communication you have to have that communication between the board members one of the things i said when i was hired was it wasn't going to be one thing once like you and the other two did and i feel that does the bo disservice and it does me a disservice we all have to be on the same page so we can then take whatever we're working on and move it forward that's pretty much my philosophy and going the other way if you will to town department and town department heads or are they do they report to you if i even using the right language so i may fall out of my management there are certain positions like the police chief as long as i'm in the loop like the ones in the same loop and all talking communicating there's it's going to work it's just what what is it we're trying to do what's the goal and how can anyone work together towards that goal well it reminds me one yeah that seems to be a good way to pursue thing yes well and then you have the staff i'm trying to create this picture of how my government operates so we have you in the top with the staff if you will we have the department heads but then belmont seems to have this plethora of town committee we have sixty or sixty five i heard a number  other day sixty six sixty secs i've been to i think almost sixty so really i'm getting close to being you know meeting with all the individual committees and boards and what you're your relationship with your committee site is they report to you know i see my role and this is what i when i visited the committees one of the reasons i did that was obviously want to introduce myself the second thing i told them is i didn't want to meet them during some type of crisis that's not the best time to meet somebody and the third thing is that i'm there as a resource to them my door is open they can call me any time if they were struggling with something you know how can i help you if i have an idea for particular community i all the the things that need to be worked out prior to going before the board so when they when the issues in front of the board the board has as much knowledge of it as i do so what i one thing i hear in there is one of your responsibilities is simply to know at least the chairs as a committee because you want to have that relationship with the committee and and have them know that they can call you and you'll know who they are right and then if they have or need something i can direct them to the department that can best help and how does a town like which is and we're really a pretty small town but how  like keep sixty six committees from devolving into chaos that just from the sheer number of people involved there's statutory committees obviously like  would but then you have the committees that are created by usually point by the boys like men and slotman create a charge for them the chargers really has the purpose the number of committee members that should be on it goals and objectives things like that extend the conversation that that we've been having to to a more personal note one of the things that i was struck by the other night i was at the white board meeting where a new general manager was hired for about and one of the comments he made was that he sees so many cool things to do when that was his turn term that sometimes he finds it difficult to rein him self it you know do you do you find that oh yeah i find i totally understand that you know you could be sitting at a committee meeting and you can see that they're struggling with something and it's really hard for me not to say well i'll do that i'll help you do that because i my second thought is ok when you find time to do that so you want to help and sometimes you take on way too much and then it just becomes overwhelming and you or personal your is are there any institutional structure there's an internal need for me to always want to help somebody when they're struggling with something i want to reach out and see if i can offer any and all of the sudden you're overextended and  belmont i don't want to put people in their graves but it seems as though we have any number of folks who are moving toward retirement chief mclaughlin who is a good friend of our about doing well those are two separate questions here you know role you know going back to the belmont manager light department i believe that was one of the questions to the managers there is succession planning needs because you have some employees ready and to retire i think that you know when you get wind of somebody looking to retire you start to have those conversations with the department head you know time frame what they're thinking and then immediately my my mind goes to ok what's the next step i think when anyone leaves any position in town the tire department should be looked at is there efficiencies that can be made as a restructure and need to have and does the job description need to be looked at i always find those opportunities to really take time to look at the department to see how to improve it and it would seem that technology has something to do with that to that as we move more and more into a technological age that that there would be a definition not only of the person you want but you have to think about how if at all you're going to redefine the position is that that that and you know if the person has been in the position for a long time you know has the town changed a lot has has the industry changed you have to look at all those things department has there been or is there is there going to be a conversation about what what the fire department should look like in the twenty first century and whether that's different course we're well into the twenty first century now but and whether that's different from yeah and i hear those discussions a lot already happening you know you mentioned the chief there's a poster in the police chief's office and it shows the policeman i think from the revolutionary times all the way up to now and you can to see the progression and the difference just my that picture you can see the differences in the job and over a period of time so yeah things are constantly evolving and changing and it's the town's responsibility yeah so i mean for years you had to all stream you had barrels that people went out and by individual you had recycling bins and now that has just completely changed you're going to have a barrel for your trash barrel for your recycling it's all automated so that is a difference to the service that people have to adjust to so i was thinking that there are only so many ways that when you can pave the streets or drive a police car but  train even that's changing i mean look at the complete streets initiative but the state the initiative behind complete streets is not just to pave the road but consider the fidesz tree and the bike or on the road so that changes the design so everything every facet changes for the town and what is the complete streets initiative so the incomplete states initiative is a grant program to the state and what the town has done is we recently just  policy for complete streets and it's to when you're looking at designing a street you're considering everybody that's on the road the car the bike or the walker so you design and pave and stright based on that so what we would like to do is from the policy we're going to develop a part prioritization plan submitted to the state and then once that gets approval that allows the town to then go and access funds to do those projects so you're looking at it from recently became a member of so we're trying to see that committee get more women into the field and then obviously into town straighter positions we have a fairly good obviously the town clerk in l a and then we have a female town accountant but the department heads are primarily male right um i think it's a good mix i can tell you in a lot of other towns it's usually positions generally i remember the thought behind the thought here is i had a conversation with peter cast you know what's who is the former director of department of public works  and we were talking about how there just aren't the same number of people who are aspiring to be heads of municipal department of public works  is is that true is that true generally in this interview with other departments i would say that you know most of the high school there is i have a high school or they're not you know saying i want to be a town treasurer and i grow up you know it's  what do we do about that is that a weak question there is so i you know about this conversation with college center you macel about trying to initiate some type of apprentice like program to generate  some people to train them how to do these jobs because the other problem that the state is experiencing is a lot of the people are starting to retire in these positions so you have a very small pool of applicants that you can go to for treasurer a municipal treasurer i mean this bill accountant i mean this bill collector i mean you're grabbing people from the private sector and has anyone tell you miscible sector is vastly different from the private sector so there is you know there's some concern that the pool of applicants is not a strong because there's a lot of retirement going on right now if you look across the state there are massive amounts of even in my position time ministers managers retiring serving for thirty plus years so there needs to be some more formal instruction on minas of yeah and whether that happens at the college level i know soffit does and program it's a quick almost i think it's a year program that they take applicants and they have people from my industry come in and teach them about municipal government so there are things like that out there it just needs to be more so we're we're running short on time here but i have one last question for you and the the question of all questions how do you do what you do how do you keep all the balls up in the air yeah i'm there's an assumption there that that's a struggle but you know i talk with you and occasion and it seems like there are people coming in their phone calls coming in a yeah i've had conversations i think it was with you and i was having a subsequent conversation with someone else you know it's funny going i'm going to bring this right back to growing up in a big family and we still do it you'll be sitting around the table is three different conversations going on and i and my sisters and brothers will tell you the same thing we jump from conversation to conversation and it's become just something that i do so i can juggle you know multiple topics at the same time and they stay up and i do and i lied when i said i only had one last question but we know where we're coming up to town meeting so is it fair to assume that now is a particularly busy time for you it is getting the warrant  printed in ready and sent to the reps now that that is done there seems to be a little bit of weight lifting but then then there's town meeting and considering this is my first time meaning i've been to obviously multiple town meetings representative open  it's just because belmont is you know every town is different belmont does a different way you have to go through your first one and understand it so is there a certain level of stress involved or is it more excitement i would say it's more excitement you know it was like my first selectman meeting i wasn't nervous because i had been doing it that's what i've done every monday night for the past you know zillions hours years yes so there was no nerves because it's just doing the same thing you're just doing it with is newtown administrator and i appreciate you taking time out of a very busy schedule to come over to the studios today you've been listening to community conversations i would like to thank you the listeners for tuning in you can stream community conversations online at the b m c pod cast network media dot org and you can also find community conversations on i tunes by searching for the b m c podcast network again i would like to thank you the listeners for tuning in i'm your community conversations host roger colton i will talk to you again next week