everybody we have one main issue tonight at the meeting which is the public interviews of our two general manager candidates for the life department and as one to note a few program magic changes due to the league of women voters night on april twenty third which would be the regular white board and board of selectmen meeting that meeting has been moved up to april twelfth which is thursday this week at six pm for the light board and seven pm for the board of selectmen we couldn't move it up because of patriots day we couldn't move it off committee and roger coleman the vice chair and have them explain the process of how we got to this point to give everyone some context and background and then we can start with the interviews first would be craig's banally second will be christopher roy will then discuss the candidates and then we will see whether we would be willing to vote on the general manager choice tonight or we do have the option of putting it off till thursday because we're meeting able to thank you adam first i'd like to call  chair of the general manager like belmont lake general manager search committee and like to call to order a meeting of that committee we do have a quorum of members here so like to do that in terms of the process we've used following the expiration of the former general managers contract the light board set in motion a process for the search process to find a successor elected grow wh consulting of lexington represented by richard white as a search and sultan mr white today very diligent outreach and publish city effort including the distribution of printed material in order to solicit interest from the first meeting of the screening committee was february twenty eighth two thousand and eighteen that time would chair was elected myself and a vice chair was elected and that was roger at that meeting the screening committee examined the applicants the gro weight had come forward and decided to interview five of those candidates the interviews took place on march twenty fourth two thousand and thirteen in this room each interview lasted approximately fifteen minutes after those interviews the screening committee determined to forward the names of several of the applicants to as finalists to light the word it was not the screenings committee's role to make any recommendation as it as to a specific specific candidate northwood did we do so that in essence was the process that the screening committee took and sent over to the plate board roger do you have any comments to add to that not other than the people we sent to the community was an important thing and barking on an effort to make to comply with the clean action plan in the in the in the the town clerk clearly also you've got to run the operation of the like department which is very important keeping the polls up or lights on is an important element of it and dealing with there are other elements to the rate we have rate rates that we want to keep to a so that we ended up with the two very qualified candidates in our opinion that you'll see today steve said that with the screening committee forwarded with three qualified candidates to the light board one of whom is since dropped out so flee on saturday as well we had good conversation so thank you for your time this saturday and of course you know this board precedes your role as an acting general manager in the sum of the work you've done so far today so the first question is can you please provide us with a brief synopsis of your professional career accomplishments and challenges in your own words what do you feel it takes to be a good general manager in belmont and please share with us your accomplishments that would convince us that you would be to and being off a profit it's very important that we provide for them a level of service that that they expect as our owners so being collaborative working with the general public through the boards and through the advisory boards to get a sense of what they're looking for from their like to pop and it's really important i think that's probably one of the most important aspects when even you know finally and we talk about your accomplishments and you have a lot of you know pretty very early on through the starting at national grid with working with the team of engineers what teamwork was what collaboration is and i think that that's one of my strong points to carry that fo departments very very hard at repairing that repairing those relationships with all of our employees all the different departments as well as the public and listening to our public through our customer renewable energy credits that we have on our portfolio starting in two thousand and seventeen and as well as that i've been working with our union and thursday night actually will be in front of the board for approval or  vote for approval but we can work with the union and go shooting a new labor contract with our i b e w and so i think you'll you'll see on thursday night that it's it's you know it keeps question number two how you grown as a manager what are your top two strengths what are your top two weaknesses and this part in the question this isn't for me please refrain from telling us that you're too nice of a person or that you spent too much time working in the office  are you trying to improve on your weaknesses and are you having success please describe or show however grown as a manager i think that throughout my career i've been able to observe other managers in front of me whether my direct supervisor others and especially the last five years it's all about what i think i was able to really take the best of what those people did before me and also took note of what didn't work so well have been able to really hone that for me to work for me i like to think that not a boss that i'm of i'd like to be a leader and that's what i strive to do every day so my strengths kind of touch moment to ready i'm very collaborative worker and you'll find that i'm a very loyal worker as my resume shows i don't have a lot of different companies on my resume and i spent fifteen years at national grid it's pushing six years here at belmont light so i'm not the type of guy that just comes and jumps around looking for the next paycheck you find companies that like to work for for many reasons and get involved in the work and i try to do the best i can for them some of my weaknesses maybe you'll find it's a night but i tend to talk a lot and sometimes that  comes off as a rambling a bit so i apologize if if i do that this evening other another weaknesses as an engineer background i tend to analyze a lot of my training has been to analyze and really look at both sides of the equation and try to come up with the right decisions so sometimes i may hold in allies and that can slow things down a little bit and how i've been working on those i guess is from the talking standpoint i just try to it's they are self aware of what i'm saying and how i'm saying it and try to correct it if i find myself going off course if you will from an over in a license the point i've learned to trust my employees the products of our products that they create so instead of before where i may almost duplicate their work as a truck i've learned to pull back and let them succeed or fail committee interview you were asked to make a seven minute presentation regarding belmont's electric rates it's an exercise designed to help us understand how you approach a problem solving and soft problems we thought we would ask you to get in a public session as you may be aware but here's the question as you may be aware but let me just like dep electric rates are higher than most of the regions regions municipal utilities where in the top quarter based upon recent surveys it is also well known that the community is highly engaged in energy efficiency greenhouse gas reductions and in town solar generation given that d m l d strives to maintain competitive rates please be prepared to outl approach and how to maintain or lower rates while continuing to increase energy efficiency programs and reducing greenhouse gas within the community please detail how you will work with the b m l p staff and other ten departments study we expect the first draft of that to be received this month by the end of this month actually and i think that that's the first step and the discussion on rates or where we can save or spend more money  so that's that's the very first step we need to make sure that we're collecting or covering our cost and then we can really look at the cost of electricity from that point for the next level but i would say we need to look at i policy that was put together after several meetings with some of our committees our visor board as well as the energy committee energy in a joint session and with the help of the white board we came up with a policy that i think we can all be pretty gases and lastly on the technology side technology today is giving us a lot of opportunities to to achieve that as well and i'll go into these a little more detail here throughout the present opportunity to really look at our rates and design rigs that are appropriate for belmont like i listed here just several types of raids time of use rates is the first one i have listed here and what that does is allows us to possibly shift load through customer habits of when they turn on their power or charge their equipment or off peak times and that will certainly shift some of our cost and again distribution something that we do with collaborative work the board the advisory board the energy committee and the general public at large will probably have meetings on that to really get everyone's feedback on what they're looking for figure out where we want to go with rate design is based on usage meaning by residential commercial or within the residential as well tiers of rates is that this all means there's many ways of doing the up but yes the time we use rate typically is a block rate and so  we can define typically what's done is you define your your you peak time peak energy usage and those are usually the daytime hours up through about seven pm or so and you would have your rates a little bit higher that was  to change customer habits so that they're using more only do it by customer we can do by rate classes we can do about us within the re class as many many ways of study that up one of the real challenges that the utility industry is facing right now is even in a class such as a residential re class it's no longer what it once was it used to be that every customer got up in the morning their power lights came on you saw that they went to work there was no use during the day they can with dinner turn on their conditioning their lights at spike back up today within the residential community it's all totally different this customers that are working night shifts day shifts what they have for equipment in their homes is  long term policy life or power opportunities so what we've done as i mentioned earlier with our power supply we've sort of retiring arguable energy credits and it made sense in the short term right now because those cheap we're being told through the vendors and looking out in the industry here those are going to start to climb possibly over the next coming years so this is one way that we can reduce our greenhouse gases by buying more renewable energy credits but it's really a short term thought process going forward a lot over there are class two rocks that are fairly inexpensive that we can probably get more with  i believe the best way to approach this is on page five here is on the long term it's really just seek out additional renewable power contracts and we do that actively every day so we actually have one right now that will be discussing with the advisory committee on i next meeting seems to be a good opportunity although it's a small amount of power but it's something certainly that's worth looking into we need to investigate until the skill solar and of the storage opportunities and specifically the reason why we want to do that is we want to lower our capacity cost so if the time of belmont uses fifty megawatts at its peak and we happen to peak at the same time that the i does that's they take a snapshot of that in time and that's how we or they determine our capacity so if we can lower our capacity in the peak passy that we're able to leverage that and it cost us less than that to purchase the power that we have to purchase in keeping in film wants needs of our clean action plan we believe going to solar in the battery opportunity here better opportunity than going with a fossil fuel type generator whether it's a diesel or even a gas genera demand side manager men as i mentioned is another opportunity another way of bringing down our power cost and there are several ways several types of them inside so this page here i'm showing the traditional energy efficiency programs that people come to expect from the utility really the thing to know about the esas you're affecting a individual customer so from a greenhouse gas reductions standpoint it's a very small number and it's significant cost to have these programs as well however they're expected that utilities are doing this so again listen and with our customers some of these we're always going to do what we we want to look at really the biggest bang for our buck so really what we're trying to show here is a program such as the electric vehicle program that we currently have and utility scale solar heat pumps things that age are those have a really good return on investment for the like  t but as well as the town and the customer so we are not only are we getting our money's worth every dollar we put into it we're we're getting that return but the same time of the climate  do more d s m were we just really here's what we're currently doing or want to do anything we are going to enhance what we're currently doing will always be doing some good but these programs here are the ones that we believe to be the best programs out there today and so we're looking to really target these programs more so than some of those traditional programs with with our dollars whether it's on the marketing side just to get the information out there or to truly invest in some of these things because  purchased about a year ago we're starting to implement that that's does a lot of things for us one at the project level anyways specifically it lets assume our ties all of our work which is provide more streamlined scheduling process for us make sure that we we're losing or not wasting a lot of time during the day trying to figure out with us on our man gives us an inventory control aspect so we know what we have on what we need to purchase have it in a timely matter and it provides a level of accounting and budgeting for us at the project all of them number two here oma o m s stands for outage management system and m d m stands for meter data management system others mentioned system is extremely important to you till the we're actually implementing this as we speak but this does it as customers calling with no power calls it really gives us  to what's going on out in the street so up until recently if a customer called with no power we had to actually physically drive out there and investigate what's going on want to own that system does it'll give us some intelligence to what might be going  based off the design of our system it'll it'll give us an indication if it's a higher level problem or a lower level problem with an individual customer or say a transformer level or a fuse level and it gives us a point to drive out to to look in general we have a an older group there's not a lot of young kids coming into the guillotine world and so we have people that have been with us for twenty plus years they know every poll in this town a way to work and as they purchase power that our consumers are asking us to purchase we'll continue to create modify our d s m programs in conjunction with the customers in conjunction with the belmont climate action plan and will see sure i mean short term and long term so the industry is changing very fast and so the short term the the way light plants across the board up and that the way they've been structured today made not fit the utility of the future and so the part you know that's again that role the general manager is to go as the day to day overseer operations is to go in make sure the utility is growing with the industry and and so in the short in the long term is that applies to belmont you know certainly having not worked here and so some assumptions are in there i mean short term is personnel and the way the way it operates i mean you know i feel general manager and how does that flow down to other folks that might be in acting roles and so i think you know there's a there's a transition plan in there that that is important to establish you know we have plan and and it is just some of the you know quick example we had a civil engineer we do a lot of underground conversion work but the difference is a lot of these progressive initiatives don't replace the poles and wires so we're still doing system upgrades are still doing designs but now we also have to do solar energy next and battery in an integration so one opportunity had was we're now adjusting the civil engineer position to a w position and so we're bringing in a little bit of the expertise we need on the technical wind and i would imagine the same type of adjustments would be needed in belmont and in the long term long term as then continuing that momentum forward i mean these really just means implementing these programs i mean with the greenhouse gas reductions extended twenty fifty and beyond and so you know but what we do today impacts what happens tomorrow because if we don't establish the baseline today you bill you put in an oil furnace today you're not going to get eighty percent reductions from that furnace by twenty fifty it is what it is and so we need to make sure the incentives and the foundation is in place today so we meet our goal of twenty fifty one t succession planning is an important leadership function for any c e o turnover rates in retirement offer our organizational leaders opportunities to respond to an ever changing work environment we've been told the municipality municipal utilities will experience dramatic change in the short medium and long term how do you see belmont light changing in the next five to ten years share with us what the belmont lite organization will look like during that time and how you will prepare the staff in the community to accept these changes sure ok so building a little bit on a succession plan i think that would be important starting point is to identify what areas need adjustment in the technical expertise  brought in perhaps to make sure we have the capability to implement these technologies there's certainly i know in concord we're actually probably on the tail end of an aging workforce transition we brought in a number of new employees and so i'm not quite sure where belmont stands on that but the key component there is now recruiting is more frequent than ever and so that puts more pressure on having one up to date job descriptions that reflect the duties that are going to be done in a modern era or two and having a competitive compensation benefit plan to act as a traction  to bring folks to one utility as opposed to another you know then that way there's competing interests between between light plants friendly of course but also those policies impact bring in the next generation so first you have to know who do you need then you need to be able to bring in what you need or who you need to do it and so i imagine a lot of those exist a couple of things i'm really excited about and i hope this isn't jumping on some of the other questions but adding to this mix belmont already has conquered to biggest initiatives that we're facing today and that's a new enterprise system so we're looking to do the honor and i see enterprise system which you guys already have we're also looking at upgrading our smart reading system you guys have honeywell which is on my short list of great systems already there so coupled with the previous question you asked rates are already poised to provide revenue for progressive initiatives you have a very progressive enterprise system and you have a progressive metering system everything is there the potentials there just has to be unlocked and then there's the human component to that which is the succession changes there's a lot of folks that have experience with how things used to be done so we need adaptability and so the things i look for i mean coach ability attitude you know discipline respect those are all really the elements that i personally look for recruiting that you know i'd much rather have someone that you can develop into the into the person that you need to contribute rather than have someone that you know might be a problem but have some subset of technical expertise and and so personally i mean some of that hopefully my background speaks for itself i mean of what i've not on the resume i want to coach ability awards i think i have a great attitude  so you know i think a lot of background and my search i'm a big proponent of folks with the military background you know those are the types of things that could indicate that those other traits are or are in thank you welcome back to the april ninth belmont municipal light board meeting i want to just state one state that at the beginning and i should have that the reason we had a late start was due to technical difficulties with the live broadcast we were actually all here on time so i didn't get blamed for christopher roy i would i guess i'm really interested to cure tom's point if you want to because i never got another good mark and i've been working in particular with craig for nine months now when you have it's who you have more of an outsider viewpoint but  you know what you think yeah it's crazy but it's worth just noting and i know they're not here in the room but i do want to thank them both for going through the process really think it's it is not easy to put yourself out that publicly in a job interview setting and their willingness to do that i think is admirable so very much very much appreciated i think we got two strong candidates and it's very very tricky in my mind to kind of lean aggressively one way or another we've had the luxury as you both know of not only hearing now their sort of public interviews but we each got to meet with them one on one over the weekend which was very informative and i think useful to meet with them in more of an informal setting and then thank you also to our executive search firm and rick who did a pretty extensive set of background reference checks which i also found very informative in the process i guess with candidates that have sort of strengths that they have it's really comes down to a sense of what do you value as the critical components and is one of this job and is one candidate sort of excel maybe a little bit over the other i mean for me i guess it comes down to a couple things in any sort of chief administrative officer i found that if they've got a strong and a little foundation i think that's critical i really appreciate seeing someone who's got a clear vision and a path for how they can achieve that vision and can can articulate what's important and and then knows how to get it and with a keen idea towards what makes that team effective and succession planning and with those those in mind you know i think that that chris demonstrated on those dimensions a little bit more  strength perhaps than crags so again i have a it's a very tough it's a very close call but with those in mind i think i lean in that direction but both but both of you have got equally valid opinions and i would actually love to hear it and have a discussion  yeah yeah sure thank you thank you chair i actually agree with time you know it's been a close call for me in that we're both of them in the commute tonight thinking that this can be tough choice for us i think it is a tough choice but is in depth in a local analysis of the rate is something that i've always thought that we need to do and sit in see there's a c p a i really don't understand all the technical aspects like some of our you know advisory committee members too so i was fascinated by that i think it's very important i also like his question on the answer to succession planning the need to really look at you know top to bottom you know you know current staffing model of how we move forward as it as a as the partner and i can't help but was i was amazed that we got is ten resumes and it was very tough to whittle it down to the initial numbered interview and then tough to whittle that down to the three that were put forward and then we lost one we ended up with two it was a really really tough process so i mean obviously i think either one that we hired would be would be great obviously it's tough i've been working as the chair of the light boards and september with with craig very closely he took this over he didn't have to we asked him to take over  acting general manager during a very difficult to mulch it was time that a great attorney and anyone really stepped up and did basically as well as anyone could do and did every single thing we asked of them we got a purchased power policy for the first  time at least in ten years maybe even longer you know he's really been collaborative it's been like a breath of fresh air over at belmont light i did like chris is analysis i have to say it's not his fault i mean i think the publicly available numbers there's always been some question as to whether the prior filings by belmont light had bundled some stuff together and concrete didn't so i don't not sure it's a complete apples to apples between the dollars in the sense but the point is is twofold one chris solved the issue they called it out which i think whether it's right or wrong he saw it and it shows some level of sophistication and b he then took the numbers then ran with it it was really an exercise whether it's true or not it's almost irrelevant it's the fact he saw it and then he ran with it and came up with concrete ideas as a problem solving say it was necessary to you know that's kind of a top level but he did say was that's a very important to do it more in depth analysis right and like i said i my i don't recall exactly the details i do know this kind of thing came up but one of the prior meetings with oil back or something and we and i'm not sure we actually i don't remember the answer to it but i do remember there was that we did notice that and there was some answer to it but the point being that chris did use the publicly available information he did find it he analyzed it he broke it apart and again it was really just an intellectual exercise whether the numbers are exactly to the center not it's not really all that important for today's purposes to me it's a tough one i mean it really is i mean i really you know i feel bad as i like cra lot and i think he's done i don't know there's anything more he could possibly have done than what he's done and he's done a really really great job he's been the operations manager before that in doing the substation work he's been doing the and you always have to you know i think chris has that experience but you know the other thing is he's serving as an acting you know as the assistant director of concord for close to five years i think that's kind of experience and it's important to belmont as we move forward you know to the next i think yeah i think his point about the two of them being similar i thought was actually very very important to take into account i think both of them seem like people who would be collaborative and that's agree obviously been one of what one of my  big points moving forward that light is a department of the town and needs to interact with everybody as such for efficiencies we can't afford to have five tims in town we need to have everybody work together agree and pull in the same direction and i think either one of them with jenny craig has been doing it and i think in concord it sounds like chris has been doing it so it's kind of the familiar when sixty four they said yeah he said he never read it i'm sure he's from what it was but nevertheless  i think they're both genuine good upstanding honest people of integrity i think they would both do a fantastic job and it's it's i came in here unable to make a decision and i've heard them both now for a second time as i heard them during the screening committee and they're both still really really good it's a tough one it really is a tough call but obviously if i know the two of you are are strongly for chris and i really really like chris a lot and i think what's best for the town is what's best for the town and whether i feel bad about it or not is irrelevant what i would say what's best for the community i think what's best for the community i think would be i think chris is a rising star in the field yes i think he's got a vision and i think he's got a drive i bad about it but you know there's only one job and there's two people and only one can have it so i think for the best of the community the best of the people i would have to agree with you to so we did this when we appointed patrice that there were some  centrally identify chris as your preferred candidate with your your intent to appoint him permanently to the job subject to a successful negotiation of an employment contract where there are background checks that had to be done as well never done a general manager search before for you've done a lot to me miss bill searches and i actually did the search that brought in our wonderful town administrator but which is why we came back to you because we were so happy with you in the first place but to do this this is a very technical difficult field to the pool to draw from as you heard from the two candidates the pool to draw from is small and competitive and i think you really knocked it out of the park by giving us ten really good resumes to start with and  that note that i also really appreciated the reference to background checks that you guys did i thought that added a lot of color i think you spoke to a number of people both colleagues community members in all cases and it really helped at least for me to paint a did before right yes you helped us with the run a minister yeah so i will work through the chair to get some guidelines and terms and through human resources through human resources right