liberty and justice for all he would like to welcome you to tonight's joint select board interest bill is trustee meeting and as i mentioned before if you could please be sure to sign in so that we have that for the minutes that would be  we'll skip number three since there's nothing to improve on any agenda changes and we're going to number four which is public to be heard that's a time for the public to speak to the select board and village trustees on items that are not on tonight's agenda you're not wishing to speak during public to be heard all very difficult to do to get out of jackson heights and to that street because of the traffic coming over the top of the hill there's a lot of trees on looking up from those there's a lot of trees on the left hand side and so cars coming over the hill have a hard time seeing traffic line in the morning and around school time in the afternoon and i thought perhaps that if jackson heights was made possibly one way  that we would we would eliminate any possibility or three reduce the possibility of a collision at the corner of jack jackson heights and  pine crest drug i understand that there is money in place for the sidewalk on jackson heights to complete that i spoke about that  town meetings many a long time ago and i understand that the money is available so we like we'd like to see some things happen to prevent accidents  speak during public to be heard ok thank you then we're going to go on to our business section of the meeting again the joint meeting with the village trustees and five a we are very excited to three there's a presentation of outstanding achievement in public works award for our very own dennis lots in that area you want to kick it off oh first i'd like to think you all for having us on the  use community he's been serving which already of his professional career would be the best place for it that is tonight's going to be presented with the outstanding achievement in public works award from new england may just give you a little background of what the new england chapter does our mission and purpose and forgive me for reading this but i don't have it memorized for the purposes of this chapter are to cause and share with our community the advancement of the theory and the practice of the design construction maintenance and ministration on the operations of public works facilities and services the dissemination of information and expertise the promotion of improved members that are on the board we sponsor numerous activities throughout the year we have a spring conference a summer conference for our conference a snowplow conference we also have mechanics workshops that we sponsor we sponsor the national public works week one chair which is along the same week national public suites which is the third week of may we have the administrative professional recognition day numerous national words over the years and we also many of the board members have introduced and have recently i had the to what firefighters in the police department we now have available to us and in the new england chapter the machine alone we have monthly board meetings in which we discuss public does and the reason we're here tonight we also not only do we rick posts receive awards nationally we also promote and give awards through new england and tonight we are here to present the outstanding years dennis has devoted his entire professional career to the service of others through public works to prove quality of life for all he's a supreme civil engineer and has a hand in everything insists that public works departments has a table at every town meeting people that i work with all the time  really going to retire but she had been along the road the whole way and i've been back me up on and it's always easy sometimes to go home after meetings and find a warm friend or friendly atmosphere that says that the boards there's been many many changes of board members but and the others changes in military but along the way everybody's best support we don't always agree but i don't expect that we always agree of things what i would expect good can't make people happy you can't make people happy i'm so good protests to be do the right thing use your education your training use your intellect to try to do the right thing and when you do that sometimes it comes out good sometimes you make it does but i've also take the approach of never looking backward there's always a tomorrow and i think that my view of that is just keep working towards it to morrow there's three people that i wish to be here tonight and i'm going to explain why the first two were my parents and they passed away four years ago  i was not exactly the perfect kid i had an older brother who was i suppose he would call the perfect kid because he said fit the mold of where my parents took things ought to go i was never that way my dad was a minister it was said i would find a way to go something or doing other things and never quite make it to church and there was times in my career when in college i meet the dean's list but it wasn't the one that they give awards for one on the other end you really want to be in england and my parents i think were patient through all this i wonder when they did pass away since but it's been a long time do they realize that i successful in anything but there's one thing you shouldn't go into it's anything involving in the military in a different role as opposed to college and then i look at this this is i don't look at this award as end of career war i think you think of this as the world cup you know i've completed a full game the score zero to zero but there's extra time so i look at it now i'm going into extra time and i've still got some goals i we love you don't ask thank you ok we're going to going to move on now to our next item which is approval of extension of memorandum of agreement for consolidation of public works and greg just so we took the on the board questions that you may know they got all the concerns that i have raised so yes ok then i would entertain a motion then do we need to approve it  and i move that the select board approved amendment number one to the memorandum of agreement between the town of essex and the village of essex junction regarding consolidation of public works services  explanation is that as part of the unified managers contract we have an agreement between the two boards that we would assign some additional goals besides regular  management goals in addition to his normal duties to be performed and we would evaluate him in there would be potentially be a compensation for that at the end of his first contract year and at that and so we were to right maybe if they wish but the other topic was previous to that the boards had adopted smart goals as the primary driver of that so they tried to put number something manageable and that by my count chargers opposed to do an evaluation on my anniversary which is at the end of february which probably means you're going to want to do this in january or try the beginning and the have it at the second meetings of jan feb just give you a timeline and then the committee talked about how to continue a timeline of doing this in a timely manner  it seems to be fighting and i think we had originally kicked around the idea of three or we had there was some suggestion of each board would select two and then would have one you'd be one specific goal but i i would just my own observation would be to try to narrow this list or i've also left open the floor to discussion about how we should proceed with this but i i would like to suggest that we might want to wrap this up tonight and have it continue if i could just make a suggestion there there are two on here that personally i think may get taken care of get away so six i believe were taken care of tonight so we could probably and so whether that's something that we can hold evan responsible for versus if it's a contract you know that's another one that could come off so then we could win this down from what was eight to now being six now agreed and i would add that in looking at this with the village has a bike walk committee and the one of the missions of the bike walk committee is to if you read goal number five it's pretty much what goal number five is and they do a good job and they are an ongoing committee they apply for grants they tell they tell the village public works and community development office where we might be needing signs and pedestrian crossings and and they apply for grants and they so i'm not really sure we need to duplicate effort in this direction go ahead it just i agree with george that this is very well addressed in the village so would it be difficult to extend the scope of the the bike walk in many we would have to add members from the town to me and that's been a process so perhaps keeping it on list for now with the future intention of giving that responsibility to an expanded bike walk maybe the future but i'm not sure that we're not in a position today or in the very near future to expand that scope of the village town of the village bike walk committee to include the town and include town members so that this work can be continued in the entirety of the town and then it wouldn't be on evan's responsibilities list maybe next year the depending on when we get around to that conversation should we desire to have it as a keeper list of things to do but don't make it one of the smart goals that need to be accomplished by january first is that what you're saying that would work for me to yeah yeah so it's still an important thing to do right yeah i think i also look at goal number eight a we're sort of doing this are that mean this is sort of in the overall work of what evan and greg are looking into right now i think the development review is a big project  but hiring budget of capital plans i don't know it seems evident do you think that you're sort of doing this what what number eight is talking about  is fine but i think what i i think what i've heard from the boards is you want me to continue that and i could certainly and i will and i have other roles and responsibilities but i would come back to you with our progress and it's really about the progress that's made in this and that it doesn't fall you know if you if if you don't stay at it in what we do every day in both organizations it becomes the third priority or the fifth or the sixth that i think you're going to want me to keep this higher in in that that list and keep me and the department has and the staff motivated to keep that ball rolling so i think it's something that is worthwhile to keep on not only my radar screen but your own perhaps it would be good to say in eleven flow that it's a work to streamline a lie maybe it would be work toward streamlining in the lining because we're not expecting to have this done or rewrite by january first of two thousand and nineteen but rather going but perhaps start with budget keep the others on the list with the idea that it will be an ongoing and perhaps a longer term i don't see how any human being is going to pull all of and have that reporting date january with the idea that the others are going to fall just an idea and and then i don't agree with livings but i do what is the second sense that the deliverable is updates it doesn't necessarily say that any of these have to be completed  by january first so i would rather rather not push scope away if it's you know if if there are pieces of it that can be done between now and the end of the year and i do in again they have the literal is an update it's not a completion so i'm i prefer to keep all of the scope of consideration or even you know i just wonder if you want to adjust our timeline at all because five months is not a lot of time and i don't know how you feel about having five months now to do these goals now that they've been formalized or should we make it an entire year or should we make it just more time than five months i just think that you you understand that the five months is the five months and for just about five months not exactly with clear goals but with direction given in many forms so i think some of these things we've already been working on it's a question of they've now been prioritized as goals and with some deliverables as you mentioned lauren is already starting that process but it's far from complete says she will tell you in about five or ten minutes how far from complete it really is it's really right now only the public works and highway departments but we're using them as a model  start with something it has a foundation and then you could start moving it out into departments and others and taking bites of that apple instead of trying to swallow it whole and so there's organizations and both of them are going through a lot of change will i'm confortable with this is long as the board is comfortable with understanding that a lot of this is work in progress that we'll continue year after year and some will and and some have to continue it's just not anything that can be done in twelve months or twenty four i think just to clarify appreciated indeed comment but just to make sure that i was clear i certainly had no intention of in them in aiding any of those for my suggestion was to work on one of them as a start given the short timeframe and whatever the opinion is around that i'll accept but i just want to make sure that that's clear ok i see where you want to prioritize the budgeting but keep the others i think because we're taking a stab at it now and lauren is going to be presenting it i just figured that that would be a good place to start you know just to be clear you know the village is working on its capital plan the town is always working on its capital one of these we're looking at is how to maybe co joined process and policy and lists of things in communicating of what's going on in this so there's a whole multitude of things and i'm happy to be working on that it's very important that individually into the town in the village we're talking amongst our departments is also important that the town in the village organizations are talking to each other as well in their planning in their budgeting in their hiring we're constantly talking about who we hire what we hire where we're going to recruit you know can we look at a position differently what do we need today and what do we look at in the future both together so it's it's  something that that goes on but it's not codified in any process yet you're saying that they're all sort of moving forward at the same time but they're not codified so we have to put them into policy and process to as we discuss it are standing of this is was a community was a community strategy done or not so the the thing the the measuring is that develop a community strategy with a goal of increasing residence  hearing or understanding of the message so how is it what is the strategy has that been developed and if it has it's happened and if it hasn't hasn't been met if i could expand on that she would develop measures based on how westford school district doesn't want to be friendly with us but if they may not necessarily have the time or the resources or the capacity so you're here you'd be asking evan to do something which not may not be within his power to do i'm a little surprised to see that there's a goal though i think it's important we do work with them affordable housing for example was a mess and before and probably the space study that's going to be kicked off might want  i'm not sure how or what the next steps are once we actually get to the evaluation process are we do we give a grade on a scale of one to five really so if for example in golf or if efforts aren't answered and nothing happens and i would say that's just a neutral thing that we don't grade because it happened we might just really given worry about that when we get there ok you may forever there if you don't want to and then they don't want to play which the chair the school board and he says well sure we could do that but why what's the answer to why i think it's it's i think we need to have more meat to it before we make it a critical goal for our limited resources progress report here being required and that's all that we're asking bevan for the school to be on this list and if he lists five phone calls he made or ten emails he sent two or three meetings he had to me that's progress and then we can always revisit this in just five months and decide if i want to continue to talk to the schools or try to talk to schools or maybe by then we have more items than just the ones you were going forward with to talk to them about and i think over time we'll see more reasons to talk to them rather than fewer but i see a progress report within the school so to me that's not definitive it just lets evan flex and say what he's done and what he has done and what he needs from us it's i i don't mean that we don't want to have a good relationship with them but what like for example what what happens when also max referred to i was in work with you do we really want them at the table for that we have a future we heard from representatives of the voting or school board members is it going to be changing next year and the year after so you know we want to make sure that we're all together and having a conversation about i think this would be a good way to establish formal relations now so that when we get to those conversations we're ready get other tangible one where educational drive was redesigned and my understanding is it was redesigned without any input from village stuff as a municipality who maintains paves plo those kinds of things it seems like that would be a great opportunity to revisit and have a relationship of if you want to redesign the road can you just talk to us about it to make sure that our plan will fit those kind of things and  you have to be too callous but their budget is seventy five billion dollars close of our all of our taxpayers money  i think we should be communicating together with what's going on i was just in a meeting today believe it or not we're having a lot of hard time filling public works jobs and other jobs in this area not just six but in other areas and you know not everybody goes to college not everyone goes to ivy league not everybody has and what are our schools both at high school level technical college and others providing skill sets for jobs that we need to fill in this area and one of them is public works police officers is another so i wouldn't mind a conversation with the schools as to how we can work together we have landed issues together we have traffic issues together they have a bussing plan that they keep saying that they are working on that is going to change the village more so than the town because the town already has a lot of bussing but they can't find bus drivers and i think that's good and we have and i don't for months you cannot go through this section of main street at seven thirty in the morning because of the traffic going to the high school and people start doing all kinds of interesting maneuvers only to find themselves block so i think if i get it it's not really put into a you know a really object obtainable goal but i think we have a lot of discussion topics and the better we start having that one on ones relationship with the executive director and others and getting to understand where they're going and what we need the  better mean it's like we're a number of years ago they're talking about building a relationship with the schools because of the drug issues there will be always is another one lasting you in the schools all day long so just the fact that one of our people is has  presence at that school and maybe other schools i don't see why we're not already much more connected so i think this is way overdue i'm not saying we shouldn't talk to the schools i'm just saying that if w beginning of this discussion we said we want to will this down to three to five and we're at six and so if i'm looking at things without a way for yes and in february you know where if we're going to keep number four on what other ones are we going to take off i guess you know that's where i think you know i'm trying to run as ranking in my own mind i thought that one would follow around a measurable thing i agree that it's a thoughts from the from my recollection of our committee's discussion i'm going to turn her over the point of three is that it's something we want to see continue to happen and in many ways is an expectation of evans job but it's something we want to ensure is continuing to happen and so it's a it's a goal that we want to make sure that this does not continue in the metrics for th so to my way of thinking that last sentence is really the crux of the whole thing the boards are ultimately responsible for discussing governance the goal of the manager is to facilitate the process and a needed resources it would seem to me that the people working on the governance are going to be in the best position to tell us whether that goal has been met we're not sure i mean there are they're on the front lines so whether it will be all of us but it will be the committee that's working on governance to my way of thinking that's about as measurable as you're going to get that one because of the fact that it's a little bit nebulous to begin with i think we're all in agreement it's part of his job description but i think the importance that we've attached to the govern issue makes it a reasonable goal  taking it off ok i don't know i i'm just a bystander i know i thought you know that you defended it very very eloquently but it's how i get you you almost persuaded me but i still think i'm going to it sounds that it's got a little bit too much of a flavor of what the manager should be doing anyway but i appreciate your words sure andrew i would like to keep it on but i'm happy to lose out on this ok i'm not happy to blog about right yeah that's better ok so where are we ok so it's board three is select board village board yeah yeah yeah and six is so so we could probably yeah so we need to have a motion from both forwards  any further discussion all in favor i called houses and it would be excused i have a lot of work number eight which is discussion of budget process in alignment taking a lot of pay so we're working on aligning our budgets and the first thing we are going to do same time and get that the line between the two between being the two entities so that's a first thing that we're doing and then we decided to we decided to start with public works because they're already being combined so dennis and i sat down and talked about the different the different line items and how what would be the best title what would be the best thing to put into that line item and during that discussion we we named some some line items and we aligned some items but we also came across the fact that in the village in the town we do things very differently whereas in the town a lot of the buildings are taken care of out of the buildings department where as in the village each department takes care of their own building so we thought that it would be a good idea too change the village so that we had a buildings department in the village that would take care of the buildings for the other departments so that was the first step is to get that stuff out of the other departments and also out of public works department put it into a buildings department so in the village we're going to turn we like to turn the lincoln hall budget into a buildings department  and buildings you mean like building permits or darken the struggle things like maintenance of buildings somebody to some taking care of buildings and it's really general fund those buildings that belong to the general fund where the waste water treatment facility would still take care of its pumps and things like that but buildings might be taken care of you know like it's an admin building that that sort of thing would come in under this buildings  that that's that's problematic because it's going to talk about so that was the the idea and then expand the buildings budget in the town to include maintenance of all town buildings so that we've got  kind of an equal thing on both sides and then hire a part time building superintendent to take care of the buildings so that we don't have librarians trying to fix sewer leaks  and just all kinds of crazy crazy people doing what their job is but you know what having to take care of the building so that that was a next piece of that and then in the town the finance department picks up all of the charges for property and liability insurance and worker's comp in the village that's all split out by department we're not sure the advantage of that spitting out if it's it but it's a lot of work it's a lot of work so if we could align that so that there is a finance department in the village as well as in the town that has the same items in it and we're getting more comparable and it would be easier to handle that way and then we would like to stream like a but budget process review process in both entities so we would like the boards to set their goals early on in the process so that we breeze at you with a budget that you will be able to accept we will we would like to tell you those things that we're going to change beef up ahead you know like if we need a police officer off we need a building supervisor or you know so that you have that coming in and know that those are the priorities for that year and whatever your priorities are  and shorten the budget process for the town the village does it all in one day and try to shorten it up a little bit in the in the in the town so that you're not meeting every week during january and so that goals were to have same item titles have the account numbers for each title the same have the same items in the same accounts and make everything  the officials so our goals with that be to be ready for fully twenty yes and so that's why we kind of limited it to public works i mean it's a lot it's a lot for you to absorb and handle my gave you a printout of the she of things that we've we're proposing to change and there's a lot so we're going to have a lie i'm set you know  public works and then the buildings kind of comes off of that and the finance more and the only thing this seems like it's got several different phases you're talking about the accounting and the line the line item titles doing that now and in preparation of the upcoming budget that's going to be we're going to be looking at in january or december but things like expanding the buildings budget  and creating a finance department there's not money in the budget this year to do that so those are things that you're going to you're going to recommend that we do in the upcoming budget no it's not really more money than it will be taking the and those costs out of the partment and putting them into a finance department so as for the budget as a whole and we won't be that much change to just the usual increases for the insurance says ok but you said you're going to the following year as one of the priorities of the staff saying we have seventeen we have over seven thousand structures currently we ask the assistant manager to take care of this building and or the id director was it yesterday you were up on the roof with the id director with the river with a can of gone with clock because we have a all of this not only so do we spend a lot of time of our department heads and this is the managers waiting around for contractors and trying to figure out why they're here you know what we need what we're doing as  we also want to have somebody who can centralize our contracts for seventeen buildings we have seventeen a g a c systems we have seventeen roofs we have seventy you know like i don't know how many electricians we use we use at least three different electricity in our different buildings we want to standardize our contracts know who we're dealing with get our warranties in line the roof is what i don't know if our work was under warranty because certain issues may have occurred and that violated the warranty like talking on the roof perhaps or like in removing snow that may or may have contributed to the leak which we don't agree to but that's what their claim is simply said we went up there i don't think so and we don't by the way we also don't want to boys up at our roofs and in certain people that don't have the expertise if the guy comes in and those a your furnace needs this you know two thousand dollars worth of stuff be ok do it well did you get a good price  really need it i don't know but the needy so at least were looking in the idea that someone we would bring in would have that responsibility but that's for the budget talks but that's the idea and then areas i can't tell you from the budget what we spend on our liability insurance because it's in seventeen different areas like that i can speak from a little bit of experience on this particular subject there's two things that subcontractors enjoy and will usually jump through a wall for you if you can practice that number one is a clear scope of work and the other is a prompt payment there is nobody that will ignore those two things so as we develop this go to list i would just suggest we keep those in mind but i also wouldn't short change how many electricians you have wore how many roofers you have because i'm pretty sure that in the middle of july you're not going to get a roofer who's going to drop what he's doing to come see you not just lincoln hall it's lincoln hall it's the library that's my energy and it will probably be park street school those are major renovation things or major problems that can't go into the budget that aren't normal maintenance right so that that's my question i had thought that that budget was for our historic buildings which we had three so we're converting that to a building's budget for you how many of that's not included that's  special fund that building's main interest is a special fund it's not part of the general fund of lincoln hall but it is part of the general fund and it pays for the heat and the electric and the normal maintenance cleaning that kind of thing we still have a separate fund for those three historic buildings ok there's the town have a similar budget for a line item for historic structures of any kind and they have some money in the maintenance part of it but not the capital part of the cap right now this is just the general fund maintenance pieces reflect if i can understand it correctly for example you're go here is how much the brownell library spent on maintenance this last year and we're going to take approximately that amount of money and move it into this new this new budget and my thought is to have a line item that says these maintenance and then have sub sub line items which we would all see but for the budget that we put in the paper or in the report it would be rolled into one but then we would have that information available so you're expanding one budget which always takes our breath away because we don't write we don't like to see things expand but yes we like them they always be shrinking but you're contracting other budgets  to oh yeah we can answer that question later yeah yeah my first inclination is to try to start it as part time to get into how much and see it and make sure that we have enough of our i would almost be convinced that ultimately it might be full time if it were both communities buildings but i like to start small being so you might see you know it started as or the idea of it starting as a part time position and maybe wouldn't be surprised that over time you might start seeing you know mission creep you know like as if we had someone just like this in my other job and he was great he did a bunch of things for us the library public works occasionally went over even to the fire district if they needed something and then he started plowing our lot he never plowed our lot before our police department was with us in a different side of the building and our public works in oh we got him a pickup truck put a plow on it and we stepped to bring a public works street plow to come in into our lives and it was inefficient and when we said hey if we give him up and he did ours the libraries lot the fire departments lot our transportation lot which was metra and public works got to deal with streets and that's what we did and everybody was happy by the way the library was a district the better part of a day we'll have department heads come in week day like it's a week day we'll take a day off of work we talk about the budget we can see the budget does presented to us from the department heads in advance we've given our goals what we'd like to see and then the results from staff work is presented and discussed it's also a general time we talk with department heads in general about how things are going so we could probably improve or streamline the process in a sense if we could cut those conversations out well personally i find that incredibly valuable  but it's a it seems like a very straightforward easy to manage day we start out with like an hour hour and a half with the manager and the room and then each department head comes in like half hour forty five minute increments and small increments of time but when you combine them together might not be much different to what you're doing i like the totality of speaking to each department head on the same day and because conversations with one department head might help us remember forget subsequent yeah we also we don't stand we don't go line by line we just talk about increases and decreases and go and troubleshooting when the when there's any talk about goals before hand right before that but we're making sure that each department the budget that we get as he did and to read it all and be ready for that one day is a major task and we were able to then sort of break it up into over over time and not have to read the whole thing at on actually probably do it even well before that when we set up the meeting agenda schedule for the whole year we could probably put that in there too very curious how the public would feel about us doing things on a weekday when many of them are working have commutes whereas i think our budget process in the evenings a little more conducive to people showing up and the concern about compressing the time we're spending on the budget is at the last look at your budget was around four million dollars for the village so correct well it's four million other religion then add it add in i don't know what's what our waste water but the water treatment plant budget is flooring typically yes like two million so it's like a five you know small like a six mil in the water budget is about i understand the public but this is not this we do this and then we have public hearings so you know this is this is us constructing the budget that we are going to put i mean it's not we're excluding the public from the process but this is a construct in the budget that we're going to then present as a draft to the public you know having and we've occasionally had members of the public come in but it's not it's sort of at a more raw stage that i generally feel the public isn't you know there's not a lot of input at that point it's more miss mostly like just like this question of why they're doing it but we we then take this budget and then we have several public hearings and we put the people is if you want something come to us during the budget season so if we're going to keep sending a message and we they have meetings on people can and i think that's you know and i'm also looking at if we're looking at things that  are on par if you've got a four million dollar operating budget for general fund things in the village and we've got a fourteen million dollars budget those numbers alone tell me as do the number of departments that each board is considering that the select words should be having multiple days of similar discussions which i think we do have multiple days of similar discussions i don't think our discussions are any different we're just spreading it out because we have so many more departments and so much more money to consider so  i don't think that saying because the villages in one day this like were could do it in two i have a huge problem with that i would rather spread it out and make sure that our conversations are thoughtful because we're dealing with so much money and so many people and just you know for more and stake in the finance in the stuff when we're every day somebody asked almost every day question oh ok where does this go how much money do i have for this and it'll be it's going to be a lot of work i'm irish sure president i don't think the department heads are going to like it they're going to do it because it needs to get done and we need to get but when it gets done and it's done right and don well it becomes easier and easier to be able to find things and with that finding you're like we spend what we know we spent and then you can once  have i have currently eighteen people that report to me eighteen department heads of varying people libraries and alignment time and i'd like to give them five minutes if it were only five minutes most of my staff could laugh because when i ask them for five minutes they know it's not five minutes you know and so i was looking at ways to be able to give the departments their due and be able to keep myself sane and be able to get the goals and make sure that we're all rowing learn things that occurs like we found out when you try to do meetings with four people try to get four people scheduled and sometimes your turn to get a message out and that message can try to get out to eight hundred people and it's very unwieldy and so we're talking about span of control and set down with greg and lauren of what departments make sense to go under  through an assistant manager we can keep an eye on the priorities by splitting up the work but the three of us and others coming back together on a weekly buy you know every two weeks gone ok what's going on in departments what's the message how we do in how you do and you have any issues and then ultimately as it happens almost inevitably something pops up that comes right up to me because it's like oh by the way i spoke to greg we have the herb lauren and we have this issue and it's a policy decision and it's going to have ramifications what do you think evan and then we figure out a policy a plan and come to our elected boards usually because some like that it's going to be some we're going to have to let you all know and you make a decision too but first we have to figure it out and then get to you so that's kind of the planet you see before you i wanted you to see it i wanted some comments on it in the borders of opinion yeah its purpose the ball under the germ of the tongue charter is relatively go you have the authority to organize your staff as you see fit discussion because ultimately if we are going to continue alignment as it sounds like we are in we're going to continue to try to do governance and merger these are things that are going to help and lauren is also here and greg here they were in the meetings you i think it's going to help our work flow control an issue in one recreation department is not going to be unique i don't think and therefore if you're going to change policy in one you might as well look at the polls in both and it's easier when you have that working relationship and a schedule from which to deal with than trying to keep finding people or talking about  that's i well i mean i personally i think we need to be supportive of you internally making the kind of changes and moving the kinds of peace moving things around that that work for you in order to to manage both  village charter when it outlines of villages the managers responsibilities says it my reading of it is that the the the manager can delegate his or her  y to manage supervise village staff to another village employee but not in so i read that is death might be a little problematic assigning someone who is not a village of ploy supervise village staff i wasn't sure if we're not talking about direct supervision of a certain village association so i didn't as i said i didn't think it would be that problematic but i thought it was something we need to consider because we don't want to organize yourself and then find out that you were doing something that that someone can object to the one question i have why you have i can see police fire fire human resources and the deputy town manager interesting so when we were doing this we were trying to equalize what it was a lot of public safety stuff is confidential and really just stays you know as i've told you before sometimes i just get a call and say like that i don't get addresses but things are that are we have this thing going on so i get that public safety stays with me y e t so we sat down with a bunch of things and we wanted six we started doing some conversations about the ones that are aligning the ones that are yet to be aligned in the ones that are aligned and we both all want to know and have a lot of i work has decisions that have a lot of work flow in it not just something you stick with the one person so i'll give you versus we have tons of different softwares everybody wants a newer version of their software everybody and sometimes the software crosses departments and if you change one you have to change the other and somebody has to play referee and a lot of it's expensive need and they work to h r but a lot of the policies the employee manuals that union contracts all that flows through h r flows through finance flows through the  right and yeah it's and it's it's daunting i really would love to get out to the libraries i'd love to get out i still well but i just you know it's just it's very hard give you an opportunity to do that but i have him here evan have you i know that and went in organizations when management is considering reorganization that the chain of command you don't actually ask you don't necessarily need to go out and ask but would it be helpful if you ask feedback from department heads and said here's what we're thinking what do you think of this or do you not want to know that you not want to do that i'm i'm sorry to put you on this i already did you did have one of them this long before i showed it to anybody ok said this is what i'm thinking what do you have any government stuff and that's it got changed a bit we've made the wastewater treatment plant its own entity under this plan but they understood what we're trying to do they all still would love that five minutes with me and i'd love to give them the five minutes but i'll be working on my goals i'm working on meeting with the school district but  said it was it director of ministry of services and we had a bunch departments under him under dog and then that left and became really fly again and so really makes sense to be able to break it up this way and it's great opportunity for crank i will give you one thing that also is not reflected in here so there's a team department heads there's nine of you that i am responsible to sometimes there might be ten different people that i'm responsible for that sometimes all you guys want is five minutes and so that pulls me away too so i am here for you and i'm here for the communities and so being able to disperse some of the day to day answers and questions and i don't want to be the  don't want issues waiting for me to get to my emails or that five minutes or of return a phone call it could be days two days you know these guys a day i hate being a day and a half b on my emails but today i was in the i was in meetings all day i had a couple of evaluations i met with the chair and the village president i went to an association back  department's last two quick things and when i think george is what you were kind of getting towards with the with the village department being super with those apartments being under one union or  to manage to someone else but that someone else has to be a village employee and so and so i'm a little it's a it it's a little concerning to say the manager can delegate manager if if if if if evan was appointing a town person to directly supervise someone who is in the village association but village association staff are still going to review reporting to their traditional department head  this is really department and this is it this is an organization of department has it's not really an organization of general staff i got so i think we're kind of maybe a comfortable step we know but nevertheless i did want to raise the issue because it was something i that popped out at me looking at the village chart and i wasn't even looking for i was looking for something else i said well wait a second thank you for the reminder that this is only department had this is not right not anymore it's not and you know you've said it about a dozen times  sorry about losing that my only other thing is when i see other communities doing this is only feedback please i don't think i've seen some communities do is have those departments that are more community oriented so things like libraries parks and rec community long time but i have also seen where when someone leaves you tailor who reports to whom based upon their skill sets one of the things we were talking about as we did this is you know the development of this conduct in here and you know putting public works underneath i can tell you from firsthand experience when i've gone for job interviews one of the first questions they ask you is what ple of swaps so that people get that experience and other experience so because our job is we want we love them to stay forever but we have succession planning we have career planning we have  we just posted that this week and we are looking to started mid september her mid to late september pay benoit's retirement is mid to late october so we're looking to get a month overlap there also just the same thing we are looking to it went when we know of people leaving we tried you do you want i do you what what are you going to do with this is this just for us to chew on for a little while and then you're going to that the reason i'm asking if you don't mind i'm at to ask the indulgence  both or it's but i would kind of like to have allow i would normally do this usually if you don't show up then you know it's not your problem it's not our problem but for laurie and dan i'd like to see if they might have just have a couple of questions if that would is yeah i'll try to alert them to it and let them know if they find it quite and then we have to communicate back to both boards what any of those concerns are well only if it results in you having to change who i mean i don't think that i don't think it i mean my just tory i think it's very wise to come back to the board with that but i don't have any problem with whom giving them a week to with their feedback and or anybody give yourselves a chance to come up with anything but i would really like to do this so that i put the pieces in place before the budget i don't want to do it before they have a chance to weigh in the right yes i mean i would just like to not present them with a fait accompli and sorry you're on if they go wait a second i was i didn't understand is doing similar definitions with the staff and i think would be nice if we cross pollinate our definitions that we got a chance to see what stuff finally agree on and maybe you could share with them what we have now that i have yours will cross do that and irene alain max and i as the governance subcommittee met and talked i was elected chair thank you very much most of them have associated legal technical legislative questions that we will need to have clarified and we came up with a list and then we came up with also with a list of some ideas of what we want to achieve through consolidation and then we also raised some questions about concerns that we have going for consolidation so i mean it's generally what happened and then  idea next step is to try to meet with the l c t and take advantage of their legal staff to run these questions by them and get their input and we're not exactly sure where that will lead us but that seems like to be the best next step and we're hoping to do that in august and elaine was going to try to set up that meeting the idea would be generally that for our meeting in october we would have a quite a quite a good granular focus on a lot of this stuff to be able to present to the general to the joint boards on possible different governance scenarios we're not making any decisions but we're trying to just sort of eliminate the very obvious things and and find out the important legal questions that i think we all would want to know about self i'll turn it over to elaine you can do you want to read the scenario yes please and i would only add two things one is committee members submitted questions that they wanted to answer prior to our meeting to travis and then we consolidated them and i redistributed them amongst the different scenarios that all read out for us to continue thinking and to add to if any board members have additional questions please forward them to travis and he'll get them to us as the meeting materials and we'll continue to work on it and then i have an appointment on friday afternoon to chat with the freedman who is the legal person at the l c t to ask her to come talk to us so hopefully i'll have some dates on friday afternoon i can share so we came up with eight scenarios in the course of the meeting by literally just brainstorming and putting them up on a white board so we may have missed some we may have beaten some dead horses so we're just going to go through and which ones we come up with our first scenario is retain the village board of trustees as long as there are village specific needs to create an equivalent town outside the village and see for town outside the village specific needs also maintain and expand existing town select board to include the membership of both of the above boards so that the select board has ten members and this model would entail three separate charters one for each board so as the first scenario and we did not to be extensively any of these this is just what we came up with the next scenario is dissolve both the village and town charters and write a new single charter for one community form a new board of five to seven members all elected at large and create a rural essex advisory board and a village advisory board the members of which would be appointed by the elected board the third scenario is create a single consolidated board but maintain two charters the charter would adopt the same amendment to allow this to happen the fourth scenario consider overlay districts and whether they apply outside the realm of planning this scenario create a single board of seventy nine members create two voting districts village and town outside the village elect three members from the village three from the town outside the village and three at large or whatever combination to meet the number of board members the six scenario to dissolve the village charter keep the town charter and adjust the town select board membership based on geography the seven scenario dissolve the village charter keep the town charter maintain a five member at large select board and the eighth scenario form a city with a mayor and city council and after the fact after we had the meeting it occurred to me that we did not include as a scenario the current status quo which is to maintain two charters for the village the village trustees and the town select board and then complete current consolidation efforts but do not consolidate any further so those are the nine scenarios that we are now working with and again if any board members have suggestions for others or questions about those scenarios please send them to travis and that's what we worked on we had a very productive conversation and i think we just we left it so that we were not we wanted everyone to just put their ideas out there and not and not internally get into a debate about it was up up to the four of us to decide well we like this one the other than that we wanted all the ideas to be checked out particularly at the formative stage because i'm guessing that probably legal counsel will eliminate some of these the other idea is that if the next step would be once we get it down looking at it irene correct me if i'm wrong once we get the list down to which ones are feasible acceptable possible then we begin to start looking at generally what are advantages and disadvantages and we kind of looked into a little bit of that but that would be also a bigger bore discussion as well and if any additional thoughts on that charters over the weekend there's thirteen of them that have provisions with regard to merging with former villages within their their boundaries so there's a there's a bunch of scenarios of what a way this is and one of the one of the situations that i was still stands out to in my view is hartford vermont which has five villages four libraries five cemeteries two water districts two sewer districts seven historic districts and three overlay districts and one at large select board that's the central authority was there as is the recess so they so they these hard for west hartford in a town called wilder it is but is that is the central piece a village or a town so there's five villages in seven historic districts so yeah it's like a galaxy that says it's interesting because you know queechy is not anywhere near white river junction you look on the maps but they're in two different villages in the same town that you said they said this is seven member select or four of which have three member three year terms and the other three have two  town charters which included provisions associated with merging on none of them had regional representation there were a couple of cases where they had the trustees stay in place for a limited amount of time and it was very short it was typically until the next town meeting that they would have both both legislative boards and in place and then the trustees would cease to exist and everybody would be it would be  ward at large only representation there are there are also provisions where former villages can can be the recipients of specific services that they were accustomed to that they pay for that they have their own voting rights on so there could there's a potential for in town meeting having to segregate where people live to allow them to vote on their portion of a budget versus another so they're there are those things that i think might be going on i think that's my interpretation of how i'm reading it but there's there's only one tongue me one so i poured for those for those towns where they have other districts where it was special service in the white river junction hartford situation you've got to select ford that's elected at large and then you've got all these villages heart it's hartford itself a village so so they're they're uncorroborated to ask that because i have the question of can you can you be a governing board over a community in which you do not live you know if you and that was relevant to us right can can there be a unified board but there are two charters and can someone who doesn't live in the village beyond be on the governing board that you know spend money to spend villages money but i don't think that's still going incorporated delish but they're still identified as a town in the town itself doesn't have a charter or eat document if it doesn't is there anything that's not it's there's there's a default there's a there's a state default this is you've got to have three select board members and so so which which can happen regardless i mean even after we've merged somebody could decide if you get a group of thirty houses that want to be a village they can petition it's like order to become a village you can't we can't sleep i can't stop them so if there are folks that are pining for additional representation they can certainly get thirty of their neighbors together and today petition to become a village and become incorporated village electoral trustees instead  budget it's absolutely a viable thing for people to do so that option and a which is establishing a is is just that wishing other village but they would not in terms of if if someone were to do that just hype that they would not have any assets other than what they were able to purchase for themselves that they would have to if they wanted something they have to buy yeah  despite all those other other entities and there's also a second village in rocking him sections river sections full something or oth also in rockingham right here so i think that that that's where we are and we'll just let you know and we're the four of us are going to continue to you know  tablets they're on your tablets to revisit we also need to see what are authorities going to come back we're going to have that discussion yes it does need to come back i don't know if it has to come back immediately but we do we have to they were approved subject to state action and whatnot and so then you do take you know if you decide that the state action was appropriate and nothing further you close it and you move on  figure out what he's available for but we should close it out  the other thing is the item d is this special meeting agenda each nine ten act one sixty six updated the definition of  meetings relative to open meeting on this is the open meeting law adds another definition of what does not constitute a meeting a meeting shall not mean a gathering of a quorum of a public body of a duly warned meeting of another of and other public body as long as the attending public body does not take action on its business say so so but i guess it's not clear to me that the form of all firearms is  you know and i know we've been we've been in this area area other side of car you know what i think there's some clarity here that i think we can stop doing on i'd like to hope you do then yeah exactly hopeful that this clarifies if you're going somewhere that is not on your business agenda you don't have to warn you guys show up at the same backyard barbecue don't go oh no no no don't talk to me you're allowed to go to a backyard barbecue you're allowed to show up at hanafor there's been plenty of that region feedback i've jennifer is going to have a report ready for your view on august sixth and of summarizing the lot of us for feedback and results that have come through we tell people that you are there select forty so people have been informed that right now please speak as the primary primary resource but there are other opportunities where you will win the war in the meetings and eventually there will be a public hearing if for thirty ordinance changes so people will either have other ways to weigh and that's that's basically been the explanation of the response