at six fifty five tom in just going to present and we're going to discuss the time manager's fiscal year twelve color contract amendment eight o'clock we're going to be discussing these long term sewer term and then we go into executive session to discuss the health insurance initiative in nonunion negotiations and we have a bunch of action items as well so lorraine you want to lead us in the these not feeling so well so they graciously stepped in to take the notes so having it after six forty five anyone from citizens input going once really great pole i think sharon ended up joining us and norwood and might have been one of them as well and the gist of his conversations was to explore the possibility to set up communities and it was a very productive discussion i think the strength of the interest was walpole and foxboro with potential participation from the others based on the  at that the chief wrote a grant to the the nine one one program believe it or not a little piece of every cell phone call made in the state goes into that fund amend it's used to pay for regional and regional dispatch initiatives and we actually get some training money and whatnot out of i'm very happy to announce to the public and to the board congratulations to the chief we've got a one hundred thousand dollar grant this is about as major league agreement to as you can get it was based on the strength of the initiative in the chiefs outstanding work putting the grant application together and we'll be moving forward in the near future to hire a consultant and begin the feasibility study process and hopefully in the not distant future i think about three days to put the application together so if you can imagine putting together an application for one hundred thousand dollars in about three days you can imagine amount of work he did to get this pulled together and we scored that my file we've also got the names of the companies that are good at this and the chief got a couple more so we're hoping by the end of the somebody get a consultant select and get the feasibility study underway get it done over the course of the next nine months and then put in an application for a fourteen or fifteen so intellectually you along pretty quickly and that's the way these folks like these things that go so excellent right on time at six fifty five we have half our interview started and at that time we went on when done to two of the top firms and we evaluated based on half an hour interview that first interview it was pretty regimented we all asked questions we listened the responses  was no interaction no question and answer after that i think what we wanted to do for this half hour now that you've applied you've gotten whatever information from the first meeting you've done your research how this more of a roundtable discussion for how far we don't have prepared questions but it's going to send an email up to the board that said if you have questions ask and don't feel obligated you can ask two questions you can ask no questions but it's your opportunity to engage us for half an hour and probably what i'm going to ask is if you can kind of give us a statement to open up of why your friend would be the best for foxborough in a gauge us and we can go from town council and talk about the process and not backing off firm but how he would interact with the board and with your department heads all decisions we'll work as we go along with whoever the time designates and maybe kevin maybe we and you may be a member of the board so that we're in lockstep together you know what we're doing we understand  what the board's desires are what your interests so that when we come to the end of an agreement by that we ready to execute it the board know those and has known all along what that involves not just legally the what it involves financially to employ that i don't and i've never seen the town council position as a policy position it isn't policy is made by you board it was always a member of the board who was participating with me discussing with me where we were going a lot of times actually participating in the negotiations so there ought not to be any concern to get ahead of you in terms foxboro one thing else i wanted to say is that you know you're looking for a contract with a firm and that's fine we're happy to execute a contract that is stand for the r f p that be three years but i want the board to know my outlook on that we have to do a contract i'm sure selector we can work it out our representation of you one of the relies on your faith and judgment on us and if you no longer trust us i have faith in us we will not hold anybody to a contract that's not the nature of the client attorney relationship you just have to have  faith and confidence of it that goes away for any reason whether you're right here were wrong is longer it's not a bad reason than they were fine we just thought so it doesn't really matter whether it's a one year appointment or three or appointment acted i mean i know i know there's a lot of support here and i greatly appreciate it i know that it's not unanimous and i appreciate that too and i want everybody on the board to know that it matters not to me in terms of how we would represent know we have a client attorney relationship but if we are appointed with each of you and everyone gets the same respect honesty and trustworthiness from us if we're select we're not so small that we can't be responsible we've done this kind of work for decades and we think successfully and i think the fact that we've been reappointed so many times in the communities we represent is is proof of that  so given everything that you observed about fox power in our recent and not to recent history what areas would you focus in on first get it it isn't i don't see the position that way for frankly it it's a it's a job to respond to your policies it's it's not up to town council to suggest policy changes or direction it it's it's more pedantic than that i don't mean to say that when you give us issues we won't provide council because we will but it isn't a policy driven position you know it's obvious that you've gone through some difficult times i was saddened to see the difficulties that you had it strikes me frankly that you are in a  were several months ago it's good to see that can tell you the direction they want to go and it's a split board to say how would you try and reunite the boys get them together without making the situation more divisive w kind how would you handle a situation like that you know in what happens obviously what i would do is is quietly behind the scenes try to understand and learn where each of the size is coming from try to work with both sides to make them understand one another's issues if any issue is resolvable by some straight law try to find and actually i think i'm really good at that and in mediating bringing people together i would honestly think that's one of my students over the years and trying to find common ground and solutions to problems that turn the heat up to any intelligence up so you were up with people like you and you try to make them understand one another if you have a policy of this board you denied it and you thought it was important answer the question how would you handle that situation you know because i would again well know because we all know we know that he denied our request and we'd probably sell k will we really want to answer this question how would you like it help you mark actually what your policy says that if a member of the board has a request for town council that comes here to the board it doesn't go from a board member direct to council live that the concern being budgetary control if the board votes or consensus that it wants an opinion that that overrides any authority i have obviously and so that question would go either from direct from jim or for me to town council the requests from the departments come to the town manager and those get approved or disapproved but those are from trying to get in the fall would be the reason we drop to death so that people don't ask the same repetitive questions not knowing that other board members already asked the question so like bye bye bye would you respond to just that one board member the whole entire to get approval for the use of my time but that's a very simple thing i'll just say answer it but when one member of a board calls absolute authority of the board itself if that's what's happening i will tell that member you need to get if it's not your board and you need to get kevin's authority and you need to get your boards thirty to inquire and use the time so you've been paying attention i know you've been out of time for a bit but you've been paying attention to what's going on so and you probably know more history than anyone in the us from about about everything so as far as catching up you know to get caught up on what's going on in this town that wouldn't be an issue feel and i basically i mean when you i know that other forums that have probably done some some lock up about us and things like that they don't have the knowledge that you are to have so i don't know if that's what you call the catch up time i want to call it but that's not go we we we did a billboard work i'm familiar with the bank stadium place but i would meet on your dime with paul as we did before that hands you know go through with him anything that may be pending the transition last time was finite is he's a fine guy to be no reason why wouldn't it but our ramp up time would certainly be a lot shorter than anybody else's and take you also represent the ten sharon yes and if there's ever a conflict between our nation between determine facts from the ten and sharon would you approach that the same way you would approach the if there's a conflict between a committee something they tried to work with both do you separate it i would try to work a possible but but that's a really slippery slope for a lawyer for the most part if there's a conflict between the two computers i would not exists it just even internally if a good heaven forbid this happens because i really dislike it but if there were a conflict between two boards in town it's just best not very positive and if it was a negative that i could pull out of a it was you were somewhat passive in the go with the asians and some people thought you could have been more forceful but i think that's the only thing that stuck out at me at the time but th report it was dick element to kill him and to kellerman and now we've got mike sitting here and it's a few years later what if dick element is not here at a meeting maybe mike can spend a few minutes you names on the background as well if dick is unable to be at a meeting one of us i'll be at a meeting or one of our associates will be at a meeting if dick is unable to be there for some reason i'm more than happy to be there again all of us that are versed in municipal law been municipalities or been involved in municipal law for quite some time the the the term i keep hearing for years is we're small town with big city issues you know when you bring the craft organization in the patriots and locally you know most of the time pretty run of the mill from in this simple stuff but when issues come up or opportunities we have to work with the big organization on a quick timeline do you have the support do you have the support to push things through and address it i mean i actually have more support than i've ever had it if a particular night comes up that i'm busier with something else on the way we work so we say a major issue came up we got in the stadium because we're not generally tend not to work on myself will be another whenever you're working on those you never working against one lawyer that i was as a team and so we generally work on those matters at least in tandem sometimes even more than that they don't tell us we get other people to pay for  she always reports and they always know what's going on we always consult she tells me the issues we discuss she gets the benefit of what i think we do the work it's so it is t just me although the historic basis is maybe there was something also with others and if i could just i think it's important to note as well that as a firm we meet we keep in touch we know the issues going on within the town so that if tech is not there i am not there for both of us for some reason are not there everyone in our firm knows what's happening with our clients so we have checks in place to make sure that everyone knows the issues going on th year we all know all the players too and just vice of situation in town where it became that you had to separate friendship from  best for the talent fox role and is a difficult thing to do sometimes because you're on to the sides of an issue trying to keep it from being more emotional than anything and trying to be you know factual  findings and all so now you're going to be going possibly into the same situation where you know all the players and you're friendly with the players and away all we were before how hard is that is to separate yourself from being a representative of the town of washable as counsel and knowing the plane same well you know guys can we get along this time and kind of see it my way how do you do that how you see who is very difficult for me i'll say that to separate myself from being a board but it's interesting that lawyers so we can be the good friends but i know that he never stops representing his client he knows that i never do it meaning it and  we we just over the years you were in the ability to separate out you know our personal affection for who you're dealing with us from the interests of your client but i will say that the respect that i have for them and they have for me is to the times benefit it's never to the time start from and it makes it possible to resolve problems to to trust one another to work them out but it it if if there's a disagreement and you know there can be and has been is never a failure to support the client's interest and you do it i mean  toward the end we litigated against the stadium on behalf of the plumbing department everybody understood that's what you had to do so it's it it's hard for a layman and i mean to understand ok but but i think that's in the client's interest and you know if you can avoid litigating you should time consuming it's expensive it's unpredictable a don't know where it's going to come out if you can resolve a problem it should there are times when you simply can't you just can't and then and then you litigate and and we know we were in the few times that i have had to litigate we've had great success but you know everybody is for do you find that hard to mental that people do think that you would try to avoid litigation all the time and most times or day they feed on that from you leave you know that you see areas that you will and do you think if you were obviously will always use stadium as a example because it's the biggest entity in town if you were negotiating going to this game to negotiate or hear about something that they called you to the table say you know direct is what we want to talk about would you inform the want to slackman and invite of member to go with you possibly would you just go off on your own or yep so i would never go out on my own  absolutely not if you get communication from the statement i would come to me through counsel whatever they want to build another addition to the to the stadium yeah absolutely bring the board in immediately you know intelligence and experience and if you understand your position you can explain that you're dealing with somebody on the other side who's got some intelligence they'll see it but if you're not yeah  face of individuals that you know are you know just battering at you and battering at you have i witnessed it a couple times with this boy and passports and i was just amazed how you went through to come up with your fee proposal whether it's hourly or on things you know the discussion is between an hourly rate and a fixed rate and i know some people think th fixed rate is is but i don't think so i think an hourly rate is is that of the time you never know on a fixed basis what's going to happen the only rate is that i proposed as is pretty reasonable  you know i guess that the fear is what will we spend more hours on a matter than is necessary the simple answer to that is we can make more money doing i will the rates but everybody else we represent so disinclined to do that it's that it's also dishonest and yet sophisticated enough kevin to see it you pick it up in a heartbeat so we don't have to it's what i think i've always thought and i will the rate was fairer to everyone i mean i can be persuaded otherwise if that's really where you want to go we want to to try that and you even at an hourly rate the budget pretty much is always come in where you want to support it would the extraordinary things are litigation that you don't anticipate deal negotiation of major matters that you don't foresee but but for a litigation before you get into it you'll get it estimate of the heart of what we think is going to take to get you there you'll decide and project negotiation you'll get a we'll have a very good sense of how long that may take  a lot of time just to say and i don't know of what your experience has come about in development issues we've almost always been able to impose as a condition of a development agreement if you recall you were in here on june nineteenth for the initial interview and the six candidates six farms and we've brought that down to two so the second of the season and we allocated half an hour ok and the last interview is a little more scripted in structure than it's going to be tonight each board member asked a specific question and we just listened ok it was a lot of dialogue we decided this time was giving you the opportunity over the thirty minutes to run it the way that you would like to know when you've had an opportunity to probably find out a little bit about foxborough you learned a little bit from the first interview what i would suggest is if you could just got to give an opening of why you're from offices my mind happens to be in new report and my name is jay talum and i was here last time lisa's new this time my office is in nearby mila some a resident of norfolk and i've been with the firm since zero six about two years after was formed in earnest although our other partner who couldn't be here tonight mark has been doing land use law around the commonwealth for twenty thirty years at this point right now and he actually had in an office right right around the square many years ago you know so in terms of why we think we're good fit i'll just kind of summarize a little bit about what we do and how we do it that's a little bit different and then in a specifically a little bit  lisa's going to chime in as well as i mentioned last time we provide some unique financial methods of managing legal services that will ultimately result in this kind of team proactive approach where you have even though rich may be the designated primary contact with the kind of co primary with myself you have you can avail yourself of lisa and mark as well as needed because we're very partner centric not very associates centric and our flat fee arrangement should you choose to avail yourself of those allow kind of almost unlimited contact unlimited litigation office hours and all of those other things that we talked about at length last  in the some examples of how we work so today i had to we've talked about office hours a little bit today i had office hours in easton where were town council were on the primary contact person so i spent all morning there meeting with  w meeting with the planning director met a little bit with the town clerk and a treasure collector and of course the town administrator on the issues does your we we went through a bunch of stuff we got a lot accomplished right then and there there's a bunch of other things that are not particularly within my specialty but are in lisa's specialty a lot of contracting issues i take those in i can give them to lisa they communicate directly with lisa and it's that kind of approach that really makes us work well always from the partner level on down as to foxboro in particular a lot of towns we manage are very similar in size and shape to foxborough so we're used to the same general size kingston not altogether different bellingham east in even marblehead signal relatively similar with some differences in focus of the specific towns but in terms of handling a suburban town of your with your needs with your concerns with your potential growth issues we think we have a lot of experience in exactly that kind of field and additionally there's two other things i'd mention on that is that the first is that in terms of big project experience and i know you're constantly have an evolving relationship with with kraft and with patriots place and all of that mark has done a tremendous amount of work he's done development agreements in addition of the projects we mentioned last time lisa can speak to a couple of other projects that that he's worked on he's worked i think directly with the kraft family and he's also worked in nearby sharon on some important development agreements as well and second to that is i live in next in norfolk and i read about you guys i know about you guys my town has a lot of similar problems my daughter races against foxborough on the track team so we have a feel for what it's like to live in this area what the pressures are where the growth trends are what your planning board may be faced with what your conservation commission may be faced with what growth from the city on out in terms of transportation otherwise what you may be going through so we think that we can offer both a general feel for what your needs may be as well as some specific focus on exactly what you may be going through as the town continues to grow let me just add a little bit since i did have an opportunity to be here last time kind of where the genesis of the way we operate now firman offer services arises and that is when mark and i first got together before if you've read my resume before i started doing this i was actually  report and i found through working with my then city solicitor that if i had the opportunity to have somebody come into office hours and offer me essentially a flat fee in a month my department heads in particular and myself included more likely to be preventive and didn't hesitate to pick up the phone and call counsel prior to taking an action or making a decision and instead of worrying well if i call it's going to cost me more money instead of making the right decision moving down the road which may save me more money in the end it took away that inhibition and so when i got to go with mark we said well let's let's offer services to a community in a different way than everybody is used to giving legal services and so we came up with this when jay joined us we came up with this flat fee idea and i would venture to say that in all the communities that we represent litigation in particular has dropped dramatically that with mark style of working out development agreements rather than trying to litigate them he also in the near in the recent past was hired as special counsel in the town of sharon to do a major development agreement with the town of sharon underneath the current tongue council and so he certainly has a lot of experience working out development agreements jay has a lot of zoning experience i come from more the general municipal side of things and we like to say that we know what it's like to sit on your side of the table to understand the pressures that you're under to understand that there's a time to draw the line in the sand and you know make sure you advocate half of your community at other times make sure you make the right decision so you're not ending up advocating for the wrong reasons and so those are the kinds of services that are the you know the baseline of our firm and we like to make sure we bring those and deliver those to the communities that we that we serve and we think that that would be very beneficial to the town of foxborough thank you well said anyone from the board of questions that you as new counsel to the town would find potentially ones that you would work towards first and any general sense well with respect to in particular some of the issues with that have dominated the news cycle in involving potential casinos and further expansion of the whole patriot place area i think there's a lot of things it's been can as best i can tell from reading about the history and from just experiencing the history from nearby next door it appears that things have been somewhat linear nature growth over time on things and then there's big steps forward when they when he did patriots place was a massive addition to it i mean and several years down the road obviously from the new stadium but the new stadium was a big issue before that and then you get an issue like the casino dumped on your lap there's not much in the way of being proactive in terms of that can prepare yourself for something that is only going to happen three times in the commonwealth but there's a way of looking holistically and this is somewhat what mark does somewhat what i do but taking stock in what you have and trying to predict in the future the way you want to manage it and working closely with your planning staff and with your town manager and with you all and trying to find out what you want for and where we can design for great and and where we can develop other bylaws and of either general or zoning or whatever to help accommodate some of the potential growth san growth pains that you may have with that will work with you closely on that and we have a million models that's mark's expertise he's rezoned thirty forty fifty towns at least and then we want to be your partner in these things as things come up we want to be there at your flank and at the town managers flank as need be to help walk through these these things in a way that we can be proactive to it that being said we also want to work to ensure your principles and say where we think you can draw the line if you want to draw the line somewhere and do that in in a in a methodical way to help you and because as you know our our product our flat fee allows you to draw the line and hold true to your principles so those are the kinds of of approaches i would apply to  something like that we know it's incredibly difficult there's no perfect solutions to anything like that there's no one unified opinion that much is clear and divided the town fairly squarely and it was very controversial but we work with us as  our leads to try and get to wherever we have to be and if it comes to pass what we try and get the best agreement for what you can do i don't think there's anything more or less i can can add to it and that we will work to develop those things i think to james point about being able to be proactive and having experienced other communities and being able to turn on a dime for example given mark's experience in actually one of our soci it's adam costa with  chapter forty r which is a planning and development tool if you know that there's a in dartmouth before forty our was adopted there was a very large forty b project that was going on in dartmouth and the town didn't want it and really the developer could see that it was going to start to be problems for him as well and the towns that we you know we got to do something else and forty are came out and we were able to bring the developer in the town together and and switch that entire forty project over into a forty our project now then the economy fell out and it wasn't completed but the reality was everybody was happy with the forty our project nobody was happy with the forty b project and it was because of our experience in our ability to kind of forecast it was happening down the road to be able to change the process and i think that if you're in a room and you have somebody has that kind of expertise at their fingertips as our firm does it's more beneficial to you in your negotiating position to try to get something better in the end that would you know serve everybody you know the other element to that too is things don't always work out so well where you have two parties begin and end just on a rosy relationship that results in an agreement without anyone throwing haymakers or somehow getting into it and exercising their leverage to the extent that they have it whether or not it's a complicated but pro developer casino statute or whether it's forty b or some other tool we have been long believers although mark and i and lisa try and break bread as much as possible there are times when you can't and we are firm believers and i've always tried to exercise this is that where we have to exercise our leverage i firmly believe that municipalities have more leverage than i think that most council would think they do i think that even in forty b context which can be enormously difficult for towns and where we routinely have a poor record of success at certain levels of review we've managed to build fantastic settlements and fantastic agreements for development to take the projects that really don't smell very good coming in the door and maybe we never make them smell like a rose but we make them smell a lot less like a skunk or we serve notice that you're going to have to work really hard to get our approval here and again that's part of what we see as towns having to do sometimes that led us to this method whereby we can law you to stand on your principle and do what you feel you have to at a certain time and we've been pretty successful exercising municipal leverage in th you in your first interview and in tonight's interview you stressed your flat fee extensively reading back in the proposals you had two types of you had two flat fees proposals and then you  fifty and in all three of them there was a paragraph that said however anything dealing with the kraft organization in the properties in that area would be a separate contract that does that says it doesn't fall under the under the flat fee and when you consider that but we've just been through and what we will be going through we're going to be dealing with the craft organization for the rest well for the rest of our lives and why would that be a separate contract them up with a separate contract well i think there's a couple things there are a i think we're willing to be flexible when that proposal came in which was the first go around with the interviews we were already speaking to the town about potential special council services to provide to the town so when we sent back to proposal the second time we sent back the original proposal i'm more than happy given the fact that things were at that point what the issue was was casino no casino how are we going to how is a town going to work with that we saw the amount of hours potentially that were teed up at that point i'm more than happy to consider and to fold in things involving patriots place and negotiations with them including potential future casino things at this point because we don't have the we don't have that whole curve that whole learning curve i think it's a great point that you raise so in terms of dealing with patriots place in general and growth over there where we're more than happy to to fold that and at that time we were still looking at us potentially a separate contract with the town because we were already speaking with your with your staff potentially about providing services never got to that but because rich bowen already does bestial council work for the town we had had some preliminary discussions but so that for for for raising that i think that's a terrific point that more than happy to adjust a proposal or come up with hybrids or the proposal as you see fit i'm not forget the ones that i'm just about how much time do you think it would take you to get up to speed on current issues that facing us that  working on now and things like that like sure you're your typical turnover i mean we it depends on what you charge or we wouldn't come up to speed generally to receive the files to understand what was hot that would be included in your flat fee if you chose the hourly fee that would be discounted like you would any other transition in for legal services so i don't you know i don't see it as a as a major issue and certainly wouldn't be a costly issue to the going to have that with if any new counsel to come up to speed so i don't think and i'm not concerned about the fees i think that would you know wash out somehow but just time generally yeah i don't you know jason she's going to be more active would have to answer but i don't i mean that there's nothing out of the ordinary that's happening to my knowledge so i don't think that it would be you know other than you know meetings meeting with the department heads to understand meeting with you to understand what your priorities are meeting with kevin to understand where the hot items are you know looking at whatever litigation you have to understand where you are you know i don't i don't see anybody losing any time on that either time or money i mean since since we are first town as town council where we've done twelve towns in terms of transition from other council and and other council any other council has has been through that it's a relatively small fraternity as you know among lawyers two town council services we've transitioned twelve towns to our firm and there are you know varying shapes and sizes of of the disputes that land use cases whatever you have on the land use docket because all of us have litigated essentially every single kind of land use issue known to man those that transition goes incredibly smoothly we work with counsel to transition that we can get up to speed very quickly we know most opposing counsel i'm not exactly sure what the entire docket is but i have a general feel i don't think that would be long at all some of the general stuff very simple would take some meeting you probably have a few meetings in town hall to to work through some of those issues in terms of probably the big set of boxes involving patriots place and craft probably take a little bit more time to get through understandably but given where things are and where there's been a little bit of break in the action although i'm sure the action is always ongoing i think that we could probably get up to speed pretty quickly that would be the tallest order no doubt i'm sure it's the biggest set of boxes that you have out there and the rest of the stuff we've done before i'm not diminishing any of the uniqueness of it but i'm i guess is within a couple of weeks we could have a good feel on all your litigation have all of our appearance schedule start scheduling meetings with any of the boards executive sessions as well as as you guys may see fit to go through options if we see a different path forward perhaps but it would go pretty quick and we were obviously would work pretty closely with kevin as well as your board to transition any of the general manner one of the things that we like to do in the firm also is we can we kind of have a set have a set of contracts that are our contracts that we like to have the communities use and there and the reason is th s one i've developed him over a number of years that we think protect the community better than most the contracts you see on the street and to if you go out for an r f p you attach your contract and when you have a response or you have an offer in from an engineer whoever you are negotiating your contract or saying this is the deal because it was part of the r f p as opposed to having to review a new every engineers contract that comes in every every  can you know every other contractor this providing services in town negotiating a different contract you know that you always get protected and we know what those terms are so we would work to transition into as contracts come up obviously you're not going replace the ones or existence but  contracts come up in our piece come up transition into those contracts that are unique to this town and that make sure they cover you as opposed to having to renegotiate every single time a contract that comes in from somebody else that quite frankly is protecting them and not protecting the town actually the mark and myself and actually mark's wife betty ann blackman who's also an attorney we started the firm first and then in two years jay joined us so that's kind of the evolution and i guess it probably wouldn't surprise you that i've had that question book before and i think it's a good question because while i have a lot of good friends at the firm still and while i think that there are some excellent excellent attorneys there there were two principle reasons why why i left the first was i had no life you when you spread yourself out over one hundred something towns and i became that the firm's manager of all affordable housing projects so all forty b s which gets pretty busy as well as one of the top people on zoning as well as well as the number two person on wetlands and and i was also trying to manage four towns at a time i didn't have any time for myself at all and i have two kids two teenagers so that was part of it there but the side part of that is i didn't have any time for the clients either i thought was no way i could give the the tension to the clients that i wanted to and that and wanted me to as well but when you're in that kind of demand it becomes virtually impossible to do that when you're spread so far one of the things that we try and do is keep our client list in reasonable check so that we have built in time  the flat fee is part of that but when we when we feel ourselves getting stretched we'll add personnel so we added rich bowen a couple of years ago not because we didn't couldn't handle what we had in front of us but we couldn't handle it and be as proactive as we wanted to so i was doing i felt my client's a disservice because i had four nights a week fifty sixty cases juggling at a time and it gets very difficult for the partners there and then pressing the work down to the associates becomes even more difficult because a the town is dealing with someone less experienced and b i'm trying to manage that as well it became very impossible the second thing that i wanted to do and that i was working with  a firm that size to its credit cannot deal with it with their overhead they can offer the proactive approach that we offer i like to get involved and help you with policy decisions i'm not the kind of lawyer lisa's not the kind of lawyer marks not the kind of lawyer rich and betty and are not the kind of lawyers that want to just be the lawyer and say just ask me the legal question i'll give you the legal answer were the kinds that want to help you achieve your goals couldn't do that there were managing so many things and couldn't do it with that financial structure because the amount of hours i would have billed would have put you over budget by august just doesn't work at long explored the notion of kind of flat fees or set fees or fees by job or type of project it just doesn't doesn't work at a firm that has a large boston address a ton of staff and all those associate mouths to feed so when lisa and i really started brainstorming on this with mark we said there's got there's passion that it meant a lot to you know it did and i don't mean this i don't miss my daughter's track meet i don't miss my other daughter's soccer games i walk the dog every morning a plane occasional round of golf and i still get my well maybe a little more than occasional but i still get my work done i still do my office hours i fully serve my clients and were able offer this whole new approach that's a little bit different and again i'm not taking anything away from a very good law firm for the right kind of town that wants great lawyers in a reactive format they're awesome they do a great job and they have some attorneys who i feel very comfortable with do great work but they're just different than us and it says a lot about you and i probably about three minutes left and says a lot about yourself and your character by making that stated what it is now and they're good people and i can understand that it's a very difficult position to be in when you know stress they've got is not healthy either you know wasn't trying this it was scary i mean for all of us we were all throwing together cobbling together bits and pieces of work to stay in the municipal field we had a few private clients here and there too but we we put a lot of ourselves out there to do what essentially has been really five or six short years a pretty successful model that is really pushed us along i think we may be number two now in terms of total towns we don't want to get much higher than where we certainly don't want to hundred twenty towns but we're really pleased that the product is taken  as town council and probably another thirty forty fifty a special council on specific projects here and there are one offs mostly mark mark or you know we were hired recently mbox firm for example to represent only the zoning board and historic commission for just very finite matters market does a lot of zoning rewrites in communities across the commonwealth he's done probably more than half the zoning in the commonwealth and probably at any given time twenty to thirty towns so we'll get finite we recently were hired in cohasset through j to represent the water commission for a very finite specific reason so will be higher special council but our general council you highlight them a lot in the proposal and you been talking about him a lot in your presentation but in come to the last interview and he didn't come to this one and i'm looking at what's here your secondary secondary contact to richard bowen if there's a opportunity or an issue in who's going to be the context person in who's going to be the face of your firm when we have to call because i'm a little confused with with all the attorneys and all the different ways it's slightly different we do set it up on the traditional kind of primary contact person thing because rich had a had a preexisting relationship doing some work with the town we felt it was good to have some continuity there we kind of set it up as a one a and one b more convenient for you guys or for the planning board or for certainly for kevin to pick up and home home i bought over here so i see myself as kind of being a co with rich rich is very good generalist he doesn't do  he could his town meeting expertise is second to none so on those types of things i expect he would he would carry a heavy your i think for most everything else into specially the land use i'd be the first want to go to for a lot of contract stuff i think lisa would would be available to you whenever wherever and for major projects in my own using mark would carry the the heavier or although i would i would certainly be involved in act as a liaison he actually wanted to be here tonight as well we three of the four of the attorneys are there ok thank you but just to be clear about so is seamless for you your contact is going to be rich and then you know if you say well you know you can a first somebody specifically but then ritual say hey you know here this is you know this is a can you go to the zoning board hearing tonight or whatever so the card everything would be out here contact would be rich and then you don't have to worry about where it goes but you  flows really nicely because jay gave the example in easton i do all the contract work in the east and so now david just picks up the phone and calls me and how many clients or how many contacts contracts with towns of which is where ham that's it takes a fair amount of his time it's a bigger community going through a difficult transition actually and douglas and so this would be his third right so it's manageable we try and manage it so that people are always available and we always we run a very strong second contact as as we've been and is in most of our proposals because we have i found and i know a lot of the other firms work on a primary contact too it can be frustrating not to be able to get your primary contact he could be in court you know we have somewhat of a full agenda but where this is been going on this is the second round of interviews we want to entertain a motion to invite one of these firms back to go into session  with members of the school committee so maybe we do it after executive session i preferred to be for if we could i just don't want to have the school committee the sit for a lot of people can't it's kind of a lot of information for me especially to digest right now i thought was a good process good interviews and good questions and it's a tough decision so i would almost be compelled to let us all think about it and come back the next can think about this some more but then maybe the next meeting if we just voted on who it is and i would suggest that if we agree and if kevin thinks what's the best approach in terms of a fee structure that whoever we would do the next meeting we still make the break on august one ok if you do this meeting we probably still make the break on august one i don't know you know i mean either way i mean you don't want to be changing buildings in the middle a month that's going to be awkward also not if we voted today we're not voting for the contract w voting to go into negotiations with rights for the president i've read and we read these books for months now and the last interview we had was completely that it out there or we had time to digest it for this one client too very impressed and and somebody has finished second and you know maybe it doesn't work out with dick and i go she asians and we have a second party to go to i mean and see how it all but i i feel contract and i was an awfully good idea the problem is i don't know what it is you've got in mind because and i guess what i'm suggesting to you is it before you bring the people in with whom you're going to contract you need to have your own discussion without that person sitting in front of you about what is it what you have why anything because you can you know i don't know i don't know you can unfortunately come out when we do this why don't we set up a meeting on the agenda under executive session for us to look at that and then that's what we contribute critique in that way we've got ninety percent of it in front of the board and i knew it wouldn't go back and i don't think you'd be able to do that in executive session jim let me give the do an open open  if that approach is amenable to the board what i would suggest is that the board members reach out to jim moran i between now and let's say over the next week or so and if you have any thoughts about ways you wan things you want to see expressed in that contract let us know that when we get something drive that that's maybe eighty and ninety percent what you want so it is minimizes the amount of time you need it you will get that on the agenda for the july twenty four next were but ten minutes later i put this on the on the agenda the town manager fiscal year twelve caller a little bit of background to that if you recall we went into executive session the last board to address concerns that we had that were brought to our attention by a town council on kevin's contract and it was it was based on the prior review and salary adjustment in this case salary not adjustment we went into executive session because we were told that there was a pending litigation on that issue we went through several executive session meetings where we met with town council labor council labor council met with kevin going back and forth through some emails exchanged and at the end of that exercise still under executive session at the end of that exercise there was an amendment to kevin's contract and basically in and jenny this is more for you because you weren't in that those sessions there was a dispute on the contract when we were negotiating kevin's contract we took the steps of having it towards a merit increase rather than a step increase which traditionally was done when we reviewed him we base it on a merit in it i think not going back into all the reviews from last year because some good some bad was in the middle and we said well zero three that's what everyone's getting it's average what we're giving average in town is a zero three so we started off with a zero then come to find out kevin had interpreted the contract that said even though the color wasn't in there it wasn't in the his predecessor's either and he got it into the point where actually automatically went into kevin's paycheck so and that all came to light kevin i think you paid the town back and i think everyone is a little red faced how the how did this happen but we find out it was an automatic thing from years and years and years ago even though it wasn't in his present in the galas contract so it went back and forth with counsel and to come to an amicable agreement avoid a lawsuit we decided to amend his contract that says here is three percent it's not a cost of living it's not a raise it's a three percent that nobody is happy nobody sad it avoids ongoing litigation and at that point through leo and through the chairman it was worked out that it was signed and then it went to kevin's desk and the copies were distributed prior to the election on may seventh that friday before the election kevin signed it larry signed it and it was distributed when we were doing kevin's yearly review this time i went to look for the meeting minutes to give to janie there was no meeting minutes we had released them so in order to do kevin's review i put it on the agenda to read to review the executive session minutes into release them at six forty five so we had that information that was all done that i reached out to leo  labor council and i said did we do everything the way it was supposed to be done he said yes you went in for because the litigation you did everything however the mass open meeting law says now that it's released you have to vote on it in open session so you can look at it this is you know the horse is out of the barn why sign something when you already did but that's what i'm being told the open meeting law requires so i sent you were all in email explaining that in order to ratify kevin's contract amendment in open session i need a motion count labor council gave to us that explains it so we can do an open session so imo that the board come from the executive session vote of the prior board to resolve the dispute over time and  be determined and to provide the town manager with a three percent increase effective july first two thousand and eleven all as reflected in the document titled settlement agreement done and then  minutes or on water and sewer this is a topic i put on here i think is probably one of the most important topics that we're going to be addressing this year hopefully this year maybe going into next  year in a good ten minutes i think what happened when the salute when the school committee moved to the end of the agenda it got reversed but there's more than ten minutes of discussion in this less than twenty minutes on the chairman's updates i'm going to get a little little more time on the sewer issue  have so the reason i asked water and sewer to come here tonight following the last meeting that we had with the kraft organization they came to the table and they said they want to work  league towards addressing the sewer issue of the suits who are opportunities that the town have as i don't want to go back to far but just to kind of put it in perspective years ago fox for had an opportunity to be a partner in a tri town sewer district program with mansfield and norton at that time foxboro opted out so we're customers right now and so any time you flush the toilet and as a pipe that goes by and it goes to mansfield it gets treated and we get charged and we're not sitting at the table as partners we're a customer over the last several years j barrows has worked with the water and sewer department and the other towns in mansfield and they use words like into basin transfer waivers and working together and regional approach and they've got the state the d e p t to say we can expand this group can expand that treatment facility in kind of think outside of the box long story short of kind of on the shoulders of the water and sewer and went to town meeting and it got defeated and you know i was on the other side of  that i didn't agree with it and for its kind of simple reasons that it was kind of a program that forced people to tie into it and it wasn't quite all there on the numbers so it did get defeated but a lot of things have changed in the last year or so the man the planning board has worked very hard with a massive planning consultant and some of the guys who are at those meetings and we're finding out very strongly that sewer is an integral part of foxborough in order to even keep status quo what to do any type of future expansion what's coming down the pike soon is mansfield and norton a both going to town meetings in the fall or more going in that direction to get into this program with or without us if we participate there's an opportunity to get a thirty year bond at zero percent for seven a half million to do this which is foreign in between these years to do it so if we don't jump on it we're going to be customers again and what's happening now you've got pent up businesses that can't come into town because there's no sewer you've got businesses that are here and they can expand because knows there's  a moratorium and you've got residents kind of somewhere in the middle you've got businesses that have extra capacity but they can't sell it because of the restrictions on being a customer rather than a client so i'm kind of painting this picture because there's a lot involved in a kind of that that decision point now last week the last meeting when the kraft organization came in they wanted to work with us they obviously would like some concessions because they need to i think for them to six of us to do well they need to expand and they need some things that are outside of the box in there willing to work with us on working out the sewer and it says it could be as simple as paying money to the try town and we work back and forth so i said at that meeting i was going to we're reach out to the chairman of the water and sewer and a chairman of the plain board so i met with kevin and bill and kevin jumped in and out of the meeting and i think where we're going with this is kind of a town approach rather than a water and sewer approach that if we can get consensus with the planning board the water and sewer and the selectmen to say this is what the town needs i think it has a lot more potential to get solved and it has to get solved quickly i see it as two kind of parallel pass it's going to diverge around fault on meeting if we can get the town meeting to buy into a program that says here's a sewer expansion here's how it's going to be funded it's not going to be forced on anybody it's going to be a voluntary buy in and there's a matrix of who can sell and who can buy all contingent on that try party agreement going through that's a home run and i think that's the direction that we're going to go and at the same time we're going to put an effort to working with the patriots organization the craft organization and seeing how it works out with them on if we can come up to an agreement now we've done this before it blew up with the billboards in the past ten million dollars that was supposed to be done on the treatment plan that was never done because of time voted down so it's a little bit of a mess to put all our eggs in that basket and get to the fall and have a fall apart i think it puts the town in a dire situation that we've done it again and manziel goes in north and goes in we're sitting kind of in the dark again so two things bill you going to go back to your board and talk to it kevin one feels going to go back to his board and i put it on this agenda so we can talk about of the see if we get a least initial buy in to go in that direction we talked about putting a committee together bill said either if it's not yourself someone from the super committee water and sewer kevin committed to either himself or someone from the planning board i think we should have somebody on the selectmen perhaps somebody that's not an elected official or resident i know dave brown had approached me earlier he's got a lot of experience with the zoning board with the liquor license because that's what's on the table on the other side on that list that's been kicking around in the newspaper that got released from executive session so if there's a committee and i did reach out to larry thomas from the ad com because i very much want them to participate however being on the ad you cannot place of faith in as you know from the last exercise i mean yes but he thinks it's it's a good idea and will come to all the meetings as an observer and then bring that information back to the ad copy so i think we've got the start of something good if we can all the patriots the many issues that are available on the one path forward path and we're all looking for woodwinds there but recognizing that we've been down that path before and recognizing that there are some complex issues there that may not be resolved in time for us to really go ahead and we we have been proposing that we instead of doing a better man approach and expanding the so will by by sticking laterals out into the president's residence here is that we all sit and realize that the master plan is saying we need storage in town we've got to have more capacity than we have today couple that with the fact that means field is getting ready to go ahead we really believe that we've said this many times ma i've done their master plan that they're getting serious and frustrated because we and norton have not come up with money which saying we can buy into that explained expansion at this point in time get about two hundred fifty thousand gallons per day of additional flow seven and a half million dollars week we on water and sewer cannot in good conscience say that the current sewer rate payers should pay that because the current sewer rate payers don't need that expansion it's to pound that means that expansion and we'll need to sell off that and that capacity when we got it to people who need it you know for me for the development center of town and so forth so that the tough problem is that we're going to we we believe we need to ask the town for something in the order of seven and a half million dollars at a fall town meeting which would if it passes will give us the ability to go ahead get into that agreement with mansfield and north and increase our capacity some years three years down the road so when the plant is built expanded and have the ability then at least to have know i'd like a program the brits have been with but i think this might be one ok the only things that are the same but what we're talking about now and beef and before the word sure and the fact the bill is still here i mean everything else is different and that's probably what we're talking about here is not expanding out into neighborhoods betterments the people in all that we're talking about buying capacity so that we can work the things we need to do here in town  scenario that says the board of selectmen and the planning board i'm in favor of this we are working as a town to try to do this none of us know what town meeting will do in the fall but we presume that it will pass we treat it like it's going to pass and we'll put so i don't think we need a formal vote at this but is this something that you guys want to move towards and if so is there somebody on the board that would like to be that committee member in just a few things about the committee i think there is a way with the open meeting a lot of have it not open to the public but i think having gone down that road before and even if there's an ability to have it as a nonpublic and then report back i think of the selectmen are involved in and i said this is somebody else recently these meetings are going to be public that i can be televised because fox or cable access t v may not want to do that but they'll be advertised and people welcome to participate in it and i  think that's going to be advantageous when we get to the eleventh hour and everyone's got the same information i think that's what i th has proposed it anyway and i think we discussed that last night i think that the raw certain things that  said you know why not wait until you've got something before you start worrying about what you may not have to decide for two months or three months ago i was at the consensus that when it goes with the committee the committee is formed and you'll come back and let   i know when we were talking about last time there was talk about having council president for these meetings and then i just want to throw out there having finance there where you're negotiating where you'll be discussing things that will impact the town financially water and sewer financially i just thought that that might make sense to have the financial person present i'm sure wants to go into that pottery and he would want to be part of it and when the part involved until there's something that's very that's worth looking at and then we would be involved in the capacity of advising you know the committee what we what we say but i think it's very important at this point that this committee have the freedom to operate and have a discussion and see where it takes you i agree no counsel present i think it's time i think it's a good it's not a good idea to have how do i say this politely without offending my lawyer friends things get complicated when lawyers are in the world and i think what you really need at this point is a non lawyer non legal conversation between town officials and our biggest business partner have a nice amicable discussion about where can we take this relationship and i you have incredible confidence in bill and the other participants that have been mentioned it they'll be able to generally generally accepted the idea of going to town meeting with a warrant article for seven and a half million bucks hot or cold on the road on the concept you like and i think that's what you know i think we're looking for his used at least to know that you're not dead against it as a board as you did against it as a board then we've got to do something different we do not want any more debt it approaches well there's other objects that are chasing right now so it will chase other things we will work on ok and if you're looking for a form look at that eight thirty one one play for the school committee i'm going to leave off my chairman's update good probably going to bore you with that stuff anyway so other than you had one topic you wanted next meeting when trying to get the open meeting law remote participation back on ginny's been working with all the different apartments you got to have you're going to have a write up of what they what the consensus is from the boards and then we're going to make a decision you know we want to do it or not but if we do make that decision everyone can do it they don't did a terrific job getting the q and a put together i apologize board we really should have thought of that i should have thought of that but in the busy schedule we didn't but it was a great idea that i put together i think it has of a lot of tonight doing your doing the office hours and down gave them out all right so i think we're getting word out there and i would encourage a board if you get other questions that you think are common let us know we can do some more additions the company itself is going to be getting a letter wrote in the next couple days to all the current enrollees in the program which is about eighty percent of the time on explaining to them you know the new procedures if you want to sign up you know here's what you do that we think it's going to be pretty seamless so i don't think they'll be in a big problem i thought and at this point we're very happy to say we have the school committee wondering right here if you want to come up to the table thank you or first i want to say thank you for coming and i know a couple of you guys have moved your vacations around to get everybody here in the middle of your life difficult so full full boards i preach it the reason that we here is because one of the school committee members has resigned in by statute we have to have a joint meeting between the selectmen from the school committee a lot of people saying what is a selectman have to get involved i said that to bev why do we have to get involved because because it's written so all i wanted to say was i thank you guys for coming i'm going to turn it over to you you have to open up the meeting yes and then i think at the end of this five applicants you're you worked out whatever questions after the appointment is made we will adjourn into executive session for the discussion health insurance discussion group for the purpose of the employee health insurance initiative non union negotiation the school committee will not return to open session after that ok first of all i would like to have everyone know that we were very pleased to have five applicants step forward to offer to help serve on the school committee for this interim period and particular thanks to everybody on your board secretaries on my board who have changed their vacation plans to be here tonight to make this move help move forward i want everyone to know we have checked through with our executive director plank koocher this interview process does not have to be in public it could have been done by a smaller committee kept it on the school committee a recommendation made to the school committee in full and from forward to you but because of the interest it is being conducted in public all of the applicants are welcome to stay in the room it is an open process it is these are open meetings and of course if they were asked to leave they all they do is turn on their cell phones and watch anyway the and the thing that attracted me to it is it it's been something that i've thought about for some time and now that i'm retired and have accomplished some of the goals that i initially set up for those retirement years it seemed like a great opportunity to bring some of my skills forward to help during an interim period and i think from the point of view of what i can bring i am a retired teacher but we have that skill that the thing that i can i can do it is by augmenting their i've had the opportunity when i worked it  brian college to support faculty to help them achieve their goals while i was at the company i had the opportunity to train people to manage a department to help educators formulate goals and objectives at both age and v and bryant college the goal process the budget process that had to link with the goal process the evaluation of whether you know goals have been met all of their was incorporated so i think from my perspective i can bring different aspects of the educational process supporting educators leading educators evaluating educators all of those types of things is what i have in my background and that's kind of why i said now would be a great opportunity to to offer those skills to the school  is there another question somebody would like t through the school system seen an incredible number of changes over the years except perhaps for a red dress that's the only thing maybe the state can't stan everything that the school system offered has been incredible difficult times from time to time where phone calls have to be made and i've got to say any time i called anybody at the schools they were right there what could they do how could they help and always you know made any changes that were necessary to accommodate any of those personal needs fantastic absolutely and given where the town is right now and the evaluation process for the teachers i think that's the thing that kind of scares me the most  process can tend to be very threatening as to how you approach an educator and say this is what we're going to do relative to your pro formant and how your view you know in the school system so i think that's going to be a major issue you know that the school committee i know you're you're looking at it and i'm going to have to address  t and that's something that having been in the classroom and confronted with some of those and also having had the management experience that i can hopefully you know w and the deal weekend you know put some great goals and objectives out there but when it comes to from the special ed kids to the highly accelerated kids  obviously it seems to me that the direction of the school committee has kind of split into two different directions you're going to be possibly cast into the flipping situation i do have the capability to build a handle that separating personalities from you know friendships if decisions are good becomes controversial and you get a lot of flak or ever saw you a relationship sometimes you lose friends sometimes i think i can handle that i've had experience with them at my years at bryant college i supported faculty the egos of faculty the things are done and what you may do for one course is a slowdown for something that you were going to do for someone else so you get to learn how to juggle but more importantly i think the thing is you learn how to really communicate with people and to sit down and in to explain why you're doing things  and i think if people understand there you've made a decision for these concrete reasons it goes a long way and that goes back to how you say things to have facts listen that that's absolutely critical to if you've got people that want to go into directions you really have to listen very hard to munich a back that you've understood what's going on in that othe rwise you just have mass chaos and as i say i think my experience at bryant and dealing with faculty helped me in that  years in january we have two sons in the fox for public schools my older son will be in seventh grade and my younger son starts at the herne in fifth grade in the fall i've participated in i'm interested in being on the school committee because i've participated at the p t o level on school council i was on the advisory committee for the last three years and just finished my term in june and was liaison to the school department so i'm familiar with our budget and the process and the issues that are pending before the school department right now so yeah i am willing to work i am encouraged and and completely in sync with mrs finale's and statement last august that the school department needs to go from great to greater and i'd like to be part of that minus and paul jackson and before i am bill you know the business administrator on the school budget so i'm very familiar with the budgets and the ins and outs i've been through the entire body binder and i know the challenges that the school department faces and also how on the when you're on the advisory committee you see the balance that's needed between the municipal side of our our town government and our school side and how valuable both sides are to our community and the need to work together for the best interests of everybody in this town both our students in our senior population and everybody else so i think and also you know on the advisory committee you you work collaborative you have to respect everybody's point of view you get very diverse points of view and you get a lot of experience listening and weighing very conflicting points of view and coming to your own reasoned decision based on the facts before you so i think i could bring that to the table at the school committee level you have a legal background as well yes i attended and graduated from george mason university school of law in one thousand nine hundred four and before my son was born i practiced government contracts law and construction litigation  for a law firm outside washington d c for a number of years and i enjoyed it very much and then when jack was born i decided to stay home with him and focus on raising my my family and also have the opportunity to volunteer and serve in my community so very fortunate to be able to do that particular experience with open meeting law you know i mean are you prepared for that well i mean i think you have to be able to respect one another's opinions but stick with the courage of your convictions and at the end of the day we all have the best interests of our our town at heart and i may come at a different point of view than bruce but i respect his opinion i would hope he would respect mine and that we could work out some sort of solution i mean you've got to get to a compromise to move forward with your plans mean i would consider it but i don't think i'd make any promises tonight you know what those will be the appointments for the year i would certainly want to see how it goes but i wouldn't rule it out that's for sure mike my kids still have a long time in the end you know we love this town i want my kids to come back and raise their kids here so you know the more we can do to make the town a better place and our schools are a huge part of that the better i think with respect to conflict we served together and so you know on the advisory committee and then when i moved to selectmen it was a couple issues that we disagreed on and it was it was a good process it was professional one of them might have been the right but i was pretty passionate about it and i think you're passionate about it but it was always professional and you had the back and forth and you're right the advisory committee there's a lot of disagreements with the people think in the doing the best thing for the town that very well i enjoyed my term on the advisory committee tremendously you know all three chair people brian walton was chair you were chair and john gray they had very different styles and i learned so much i would recommend participating in the invite your committee to anybody who is interested in learning you know the ins and outs of the town and the town budget and i learned more about how this town functions then there's so much more to learn i mean  reduces well i think if you look at the results of the the the climate and culture survey i think some of the negatives in the climate and culture survey are the biggest challenges facing the school committee i think particularly addressing the issues disheartening i can't remember the exact numbers but i remember that being one of the biggest concerns when we discussed it i've been attending these mrs spinelli and dr marcus before her has this parent leaders advisory council meetings once a month  for members of the school council people who serve on p t o boards really any parent who's interested in attending i've been going to those gosh five years five six years back when bruce and i were in the school council together and i think that was one of the things that came up and i do see that as being a big challenge facing the school committee this year and you get involved and p t a and pac and you know making up the school and look at the high school and all that kind of thing but yet you make these friends like bev is bill's mom and that's diane's mom i mean you make these lifelong friends when you're involved in school and i think you have to take that with you if you volunteer for another position so i think i'm coming from that position i have the time i actually have subbed in foxborough and i recently saw some science lessons they were talking about viscosity in the second grade with paint  well and then they were doing the simple machines at the barrel school one thing i could've done that and you know college but if you go back and you realize she these are great things going on in school and the spanish program i think is remarkable that that still all the way through that you know kids in the secondary can can go and it's so good morning to a spanish i look foolish because i only know like three swedish words but i i find all those things interesting i just said that well i do have the time i still work in education and winter i work for my testing company called west and they do the new testing and i'm one of their people that goes in and tests and i've been in at least fifty different schools in the last three years and you do me this is definitely a climate in a school that you can pick up on especially if you're a teacher within twenty minutes it might be legitimate or it might be a little skewed but the money does make a difference as far as i'm concerned if you go to charleston middle school when you go to westwood there's a big difference on what you did scuse me dealing with but i think a smart child or an advanced ai will do well i mean why would you have to worry about the ones who aren't in that ballpark and i think having had a reading background in a classroom teachers background i recognize that as mother was saying that is an expertise you kind of carry around with you because it drives m e crazy says i'm not a fourth grader because that's his back but he does volunteer work for the town too and i think he gets a lot out of it and i think at this point in my life i you know i could really do that what do you what you see as a challenge for the school committee right now and how would you like well i did look there are challenges there every day challenges obviously i'm getting kids on the bus is one thing but i think it's always going to be financial process for the new teachers is going to be quite a lot to handle to get it obviously they don't want seniority but i think financial is always going to be the biggest things teachers and it's going to be salaries and how much you can spend on books i mean going on many selection committee or whatever but it's always comes down to the bottom line of money and the technology program definitely you know there's a lot of money invested in the argument when our kids were in school that was a big thing about whether you're right apple or whatever computer i mean that advanced in technology i think is probably a time lag about what the kids actually in schools what they have at home so i think technology and salaries and textbooks you know just the latest in the best because that's what you see in some of the best schools kind of things we always said well someone has to stand up and say i don't like what you're doing that was kind of the way we're going or i think i don't think that works i mean the one ten year old that actually said that i don't like the way you're treating my friend and that's i think that's kind of come full circle too because it does exist to most as a teacher most of it never happened in front of you you know you didn't really see it it was always done behind your back and i think you just have to recognize that things like that happen but i think having a new superintendent and the money and i don't think this is away with the with different situations well i think the school department is pretty thorough going to their budgets and i think the split right now is probably legitimate and you know most of the salary takes up a lot of the budget i think it's about eighty percent so it's salaries and to get good administrators and keep good teachers you have to you know have a decent salary i think that's legit i mean the other side no because i only had one child that went to the system and we did move to fox all because of the schools but part of me says well it's always going to be the best i think superintendent going from great to great every step way saying something like you can't do it on a shoestring and like i said having visited fifty schools over you know three years it's like or twenty how do you feel about what i think parents having gone that route you get very possessive in defense of your child in that classroom and as much as you might want to say to peter your interest in the other twenty two you really only interesting you know is usually i think there is a big difference between i mean i timed brocton one year and i have thirty six kids in a reading group there's no way you can spend five seconds with everybody so you know and teachers are taught to group and set up you know learning stations and all that kind of thing but it does come one on one time i mean you want to talk to your kids every day you know so it has to be a small class and then there's a lot going on too and some of it's very self directed in a classroom with some of you need the teacher to present the lesson and not every i mean that the other great if it's a top math group and the income come from now you've lost millions of dollars in revenue do you cut fifty sixty teachers or do you increase size of capacity of children per room i mean it's it's something that is very possible that could happen we can we can interview each of you a minimum twenty minutes or half an hour michael davis and  everything else i mean they're retired air force officer or a flight test engineer and i actually do both i test airplanes for a test airplanes or write a credit for a living a lot on a bit much of the road craft part because there's my period the tool double and you're probably wondering during the qualified applicants who came before me what i'm doing on the board that's a good question what i bring to the table or a handful of things in my profession in order to survive the twenty years test line you need to be very analytical you need to have the ability to separate emotion in what you feel from the facts and deal with the facts and i'll be honest with you ladies and gentlemen those who don't do not survive i have one of the few professions probably in town that actually has a fatality rate so i do bring to the table and the reason i volunteered for this job was that i felt that my analytical abilities ability to separate emotion from and look at the facts objective leigh and the ability to look at both sides of an issue was very important and i also you know since i was in the military have a great deal of management experience and also brought a lot of stability to our various teams that are of of lead and i thought that would be important to the town i'll be up front that if i do get this post i will not run in may ok what i want to do is provide stability to the stool school committee if i'm selected and learn what the people who i who are more qualified and certainly want the job would say mcauliffe i would certainly want a job for longer periods than i do it's my goal to serve the town and to do what's best for the town not from a not for my own personal negotiated with the soviets there is nothing quite like it in the world because first of all the screaming you secondly they threaten you with guns which is always entertaining so i'm really used to dealing with with conflict it was a high high pressure situation and delicate negotiations and i'm used to be alone so i feel that i have the despite the fact i do not have some of the other members experience in local politics i do have some experience in sort of international politics and i think i could bring that successfully to the school committee i don't know i mean i like i said i think i wanted to provide stability to the school committee i wanted to make sure that i know the town of foxworth has an excellent educational program which my son will go into another year when he turns five and i wanted to make sure we continue we kept it on track so things that help me in this world tell me the rankers in this world when i was overseas because i was far from home and i did not know if i was coming back and it one of them was the fact that i had a house in foxboro it was it's really this town is really important you apply because you know this is sometimes we have no up consider all we get one for any position in town is tell me if i was very unheard of that we get five on any position would you look towards helping another way  i knew you'd react to that you know that's that's that's the sarcasm that's that's that's quite a right about now certainly you know if there's another if there's another role i could fill in this town i'd be more than happy to fill it and i don't care what their role was so what happens within the town and what we can do to effect change here i'm also a consumer of the educational product that is produced here i have four children who have come up through the schools three of which are still actively in the public schools here  some of things i would like to affect change with very realise we went through an accreditation process this past year i would assume we have some recommendations from then the ask group there are some things that we could work on certainly to improve the school systems those facilities for maintenance that we have to take care of within the schools my background is higher education i've worked at brown university now for five years my role there is to work with students to achieve successful outcomes at the graduate level i've worked in higher education on the undergraduate side of at brandeis university as well for a number of years i've ordered college and universities as well so it's really familiar with higher education and certainly from my perspective there's a number of matrix that we could metrics that we could look at within the schools and evaluating the success of our educational product and being in higher education one of those certainly is assess for outcomes of our high school graduates and what they do next in their  historically has probably averaged around seventy thirty for the past twenty five thirty years is that the right mix for the town itself we struggle with the infrastructure that we need to build on the we've got teacher salaries on the education side are we at the right blend of spending for bowl and i would probably argue as would any other parent in the room not of the for schools certainly at the same time i've chaired at con for a year and year plus and know what we're bleeding on that side as well so the struggle we have is generating revenue that we can utilize to turn around and create new programs and really do something about the infrastructure not only of the school buildings that we've wonderful project going out the high school the earned renovation occurred when i had children in the school system here and we've got issues that we have to address on the down side as well how we get the colleagues of mine on that comment suggested a sixty five thirty five split what is the right mix it seems historically we've done pretty well with the seventy thirty average and i would certainly endorse continu them to be able using free cash and we've served on the c f p committee i realize that what is requested and what is actually approved the approval is a fraction of what might be needed in any particular area schools included the replacement of renewal that has to happen every two or three years on computers alone printers and copiers within the system and the relationship that has grown between them in a simple in the school side in that there is more of a sharing of equipment when there there is a need and i know that was started under paul jackson when he was here as a business manager it's a great process to have that collaboration among the two really the two governing boards of towns finances bri curious with all your experience in different parts of local government why are you the right next thing or the future interest is for because jay barrows isn't ready to step down yet i'm not qualified to be president of brown we have a new president there as well and i live here you know this is one of those things where you know i live in a town for one thousand years four kids have gone through you know in some capacity in the system  one who's going to be a senior next year in high school and working in higher education i understand how important it is that he's out there and beating the bushes doing well and s a t s translate pushing him in those g p a and taking the a p courses that he needs to really accelerate his transcript to look more attractive for colleges universities for me to look at you know a listing of the recent graduates and where where they're going to school you know two kids going off to northwestern this year which is a top five school in the country these things are something we should be celebrating and be streamlined proud of and that to me is fundamental you know and passes great in a value weighting the success of student learning and how effective we are doing that but it's only one measurement of success and we need to realize that coming from higher education to me what is more a true indicative factor is where students are heading next to brian we spend so much time educating the kids on curriculum with you know higher standards of science language testing how do you feel about economics w comes down to i guess i had kids working for me that came out of different schools don't even know how to balance a checkbook we went to school we had home economics we had simple things that got kids through you know basic but our high school had no clue do you think we need to go back more to basics a little bit yes and no one i don't think the common sense can be taught in the schools and i really do think that's a function of parents  so i'm chuckling when you set out but i'm also dealing with graduate students coming from fifty three different fifty four different countries coming to brown who don't know how to bounce a checkbook either so do i think that there are tremendous and c and run circles around me in math and science and i'm a finance person so certainly as there are too much focus the focus on sciences and not enough on other basic concepts i don't think that there is do i think that there's a place for me to be in an accountant myself and that area is more social sciences than it is physical or life sciences that you might be referring to it's to me the basic fundamental courses that we could offer you know an accounting course could count as a math course along the way and there's that to six courses that there are being offered for students now it's you know a p calculus a great course for those who are looking to major in math and going on going forward but there are more life skills that could be taught in a classroom i'm not sure about home ak i didn't necessarily take home ec in my high school i grew up in connecticut what's considered more recipes and baking and i took an accounting course in high school and that's what pete my interest going into college it was probably more of a basic monetary management yes learning how to balance a checkbook but i will tell you it's not a flaw of our school system that students don't know how to do that coming out i think it's a basic principle that parents need to instill in their children you know aid and appreciation foreigners back for money and how to manage money  well we certainly have from qualified applican have any views we're going to consider i guess what i would offer bev as i'm so so so impressed by all five individuals you know this is not an easy appointment process i don't think for all of us at this table  so i guess i would publicly want to say to all five that you know first of all in the light of that came forward as mark said so often there are additional people to run for positions and then along that point i hope they'll all run for the longer term you know susan in term shorter timeframe for the person that we decide is you know the best fit for the in term period doesn't mean that that's not the right person or is the right person once the town election happened so i guess i would just encourage all five of them to step forward again i players also happening in the town side they're all qualified and certainly would bring different perspectives each in their own different gift to them one particular person being brought forward and then other people not perhaps receiving support from other people and i think that given the number of people that are standing and taking the time i think the only fair for them if that's the majority but that's what i'm promoting you know f and i just ask yes i'm coming in here i was thinking you know where certainly the school committee recognizes fully what your needs are i would ask ok i was impressed with all five candidates i think they any one of them would serve well as i tried to think through how to determine down from the five i think two of them have immediate relevant experience that could have immediate short term impact based on their very recent activity with the schools so to me that gives them a little advantage in terms of being able to bring immediate credibility and then between those two  one of them has tremendous public support that i've seen and knowing that we represent the public that what that's what in part cast the deciding vote for me so i would recommend tina  the school system so i really want to thank all of you who all have very unique and qualities that i think would be strengths to the to the committee in different ways having served on the ag i think that i also would like to thank five qualified by candidates to who stepped forward and i want to remind them that within another ten months there will be two positions open on the school committee running t positions open on the selectmen running and there will be openings and advisory committee so if you would like to serve in the town it is very possible for you to step forward too and you certainly have the credentials to do so my reading on this is i would like to see somebody step in to this interim position who is fully aware of what the needs are  of the school system where students are having to go i think in this particular situation in which two people at advantage because they have served on the advisory committee because brian walton has already stepped forward before to run for school committee and he is head to longer experience on the and fire street committee and because he also is aware of where we are prepping our young people to go that i would support brian the unanimous vote or at this point i would make a i would be willing to make a recommendation based on the majority of the school committee having two people pick tina make a recommendation to nominate tina  to move forward as an opposition throw that out there that's what i know i don't want to step on it is not a motion that i want to jump in it's a recommendation are doing it but what i'm saying is they came up to people the majority came up against for tina one person pick somebody else one person pick somebody else we've got nine people left to vote on this you know to stand that but i also walked into this meeting having talked about saying each person is going to get one vote because that's what's different about this in not the planning board and not any other because the statute on this is a little them all the come back in may i don't mean to downplay it because it's an important decision but it's nine or ten months this isn't and so we get to write but we also can't do wrong they're all no question  thank you welcome back from a brief we just have a little quiet so we can start up again before the break we're talking about going into executive session i'm going to ask if it's all right with the school committee just to take a backseat from it we've got one gentleman here the s beginning yeah so if you could just sit and we're going to do one item under action items germans been here since the beginning and then when we finish that will hold off the other action items and do  executive session so action item number two is a request for a temporary permission to allow restaurant customers to bring their own alcohol beverages commonly known as b y o b into asian ginger to drink with their meals  rk i just met you do you want to come up to the table it yeah there is there's a letter talking about the state laws and their interpretation of it thanks you where i had i had worked with chief o'leary on the liquor license regulations and we don't have any policies related to bring the y o b for restaurants chief o'leary volunteered to talk to the chief of police in mansfield where they do have some restaurants with b b permitted and he was going to find out what types of policies they have because since we don't have any experience with this around this type of situation we thought it would make sense to try and take a look at how other towns manage it and then see if it's something that we could consider discussing we could discuss with the board and see if the board would like to do that based on the types of policies so chief o'leary said that he would get that information to us so that we can have it for our next meaning moreover towns can't you cannot give approval because you can't prove something is not a lot of statute in addition we have a license available and so to not require it to be paid for and to be cognizant of the fact that liquor is on the premises of a license that you issue in this case the convict license you are accepting liability which is extremely ill advised because if there is an issue on those premises  liquor we are most assuredly going to be brought into the loop litigation because of the board's reaction to either give approval or to countenance the fact you are now knowledgeable of the fact that this is taking place and lose advice basically is you must tell the gentleman it is forbidden he cannot do it otherwise you accept liability so i think much mark i think what you're hearing is that jenny indicated there is one liquor license that's available if you see and if you can work towards that that's that's an option to bring your own was not a dry time and we have liquor licenses that are active it doesn't look like it's going to happen even for the next meeting for discussion jimmy for clarification the reason why you do not apply for the beer wine license that's existing in the town right now for two hundred fifty dollar is that you don't have your citizenship is that what i heard from you yes so you're here operating on a green card yes ok now kevin is it possible that the entity can hire somebody you know whenever we go into an executive session i have to have a motion and a second and then we take it by roll call vote ok and that's how we get out of executive session without i need and i need a motion to go into would say take the night off after that it just so the people at home know what the action items are there's some donations that we're going to accept as an appointment of paul do miss marie crimmins and jennifer s to different boards and is an invitation for the selectmen to attend river community church organization so that's what we're going to talk about so i don't think you have to come back with a cable afterwards thank you