do article twelve authorize the board of selectmen to petition the general court to enact legislation to expand the membership of the board of selectmen from three to five substantially has fallen and further authorize the selectmen to prove amendments to the bill before an act meant by the general court which shall be within the scope of the general public objectives of the petition which would be an act increasing the membership of the board of selectmen in the town of belmont be it in acted by the senate and house of representatives in general court assembled m a and by the authority of the same as follows section one the number of withstanding the preceding sentence at the next annual town election following at least sixty five days after the effective date of this act one edition a member shall be elected to an initial two year term member should be elected to a three year term nothing in this act shall affect the terms of those members serving as selectman on the effective date of this act mr dash zero vote of the board of selectmen yes there is mr moderate adam dash chair of the board of selectmen tom reading member large the board of selectmen unanimously recommends unfavorable action on this article that is unfavorable action and i heard you with all actually respecting the work of the committee that produced the report the war committee feels that fundamental questions were not addressed that need to be addressed when considering a reorganization of the government of the town and for that reason the warrant committee actually recommends that this article be postponed indefinitely so that additional study can be done and if such a motion were put forward the warrant committee membership would support it by a vote of thirteen in favor with one if such a motion did not for post for indefinitely postponing the article motion did not come forward the warrant committee has ten votes supporting unfavorable  i just did all right i this past suit has ten meaning member precinct three and first i want to thank the committee that studied this already for their very hard work and their thoughtful report why do i favor support support increasing the size of the board of selectmen from three people to five partly it's the group dynamics a board of three selectmen can divide to do one and stay frozen there rather than moving toward a more nuanced discussion this is one reason the study committee favored a larger the path to a majority be less contentious with more members it's understandable that current and some former selectman prefer the system they know but i best system for belmont mail kleckner was ten administrator in belmont for many years and then worked with five member boards in winchester and now in brookline he said the potential for division is greater with three he told the study committee he spent a lot of time in belmont responding to select men who are disagreeing with one another and his experience in the five member board that was less likely on a five member board if some members get stuck on an issue a fourth or fifth member is likely to offer an alternate approach the group dynamics of five or better does not depend on the individuals who fill those spots another reason to favor a five member board of selectmen is that it's a practical step toward creating a policy board rather than a hands on mistake on your brock then you want to chance to object some say many say we should first change or town administrator to a town manager but in fact the town administrator al ready can do virtually all that a manager can do if the selectmen delegate the task the board can ask her now for example to recommend candidates for committee appointments by asking current members what skills are missing and asking residents for suggestions that would take a lot of work off the selectmen a five member board is more likely to assign that job our former ten administrator mel went from town manager of winchester to town administrator of brookline i called him last week he still is in town but i called him at work and he said there's not much difference in his authority in those two towns it's not about the title then there's the question of cost in a budget of well over one hundred million dollars paying two more selectman would not be a big item however the study committee came up with an interesting proposal the principle cost for the selectmen is not the few thousand dollars salary it's the health care and potential ben pension it's not select when they're paid at all are town employees intitled to employee benefits but that money is one one of only five comparable towns of the study committee reviewed to provide salaries and benefits the committee suggested an interesting alternative instead of salaries belmont could budget a pool of funds for professional development travel membership in organizations subscriptions to  total cost no health insurance no pension no other post employment benefits meaning long means that a quorum of committees of a committee must post a notice forty eight hours in advance and meet in public this is gus anytown business for the board of selectmen no two members are quorum if they bump into one another on the street or at a party they can't say much i've watched trying not to say anything those rules have a people who want to try out an idea few people are as familiar with the minissha of an issue as another member of the same committee if you have what might be a crazy idea but it might solve a problem who can you bounce it off of virtually every other town committee has five or more members that means two of them can brainstorm without breaking the law they are not a quorum and are not making a decision they're just thinking out loud about possible solutions to a problem a former member of the school committee still may she'd never run for selectman with only three members she needed to be able to talk through issues and consider off the walls solutions we in belmont must give our selectmen the tools we trust every other committee member two years finally our town is diverse but our board of selectmen is not we need to increase the number of points of view of backgrounds and of skills among this among the selectmen just like most other towns our size with our budget population and bond rating we need to have five members on our board of selectmen thank you thank you i wasn't too painful to listen that voice this discussion is to town meeting member to fellow town members i've come before you tonight to ask you to vote no on this article as a town meeting member for over forty eight years and i was two and i started i have served on various committees for example the alcohol committee in the electronic voting to many of which we all enjoy this right now i was totally against both of them but when i finished writing them i was in favor of this time i asked the moderator if i could become part of the study committee because over fifteen years ago the league of women voters started this article and what happened then was we have study younus we presented them in the vote was five but when we went to new meaning to present our case it was voted no and that is why you have not heard from the league of women voters because we have no stand on this position when the last one of the last nights we met in the committee was great fun to work with even though we didn't always agree with each other we've explained why we voted the way we did and i told my committee and i'm probably heard again the reason i voted three in visiting and talking to other towns and i is a no person to go on my computer i went and visited them and talked to the people who work in the offices members said well they never come to my committee well i have a town committee that i'm on and i wouldn't invite them to come because i'm wasting their time when we need the they will come no food for example was one of the towns  further discussion you can go there any trotsky town meeting member precinct two i was one of the members of the committee who believe that the number of selectmen should remain at three for several important reasons first don't buy into the argument that we need five selectman to increase diversity on the board we simply need more women and people from diverse backgrounds to run and they will surely get elected as they have in in fact of the sixteen current and previous selectman we contacted for our study five are women in people with diverse backgrounds that's roughly a third from the previous selectman and current selectman in belmont furthermore we found in our study that towns with five selectman tend to have very little turnover that means select men hold onto their positions term after term after term which certainly does not promote diversity of opinion or fresh ideas and despite the last election most elections i believe would remain competitive with three as there would be a proper bedding of the candidates and townspeople would have a choice as to who would represent them with five three one the risk of people without the proper background commitment or temperament just running unopposed and walking right into the job in addition with three all deliberations between selectman would remain transparent and open to the public in keeping with the spirit of the open meeting law plus belmont has not strengthened the role of its town administrator and has been the case for other towns which increased the size of their selectman boards you know they did at the same time increase the responsibilities of the town manager or administrator finally three members are more apt to reach consensus keep meetings to a reasonable length and not take on additional resources from the town in terms of time and money the current selectman and past lekman have largely had the view that the job is not overly onerous they don't need extra people to spread the work around so in some i believe that belmont has too much at stake with coming large and important capital projects to be contemplating a change of this magnitude in our town governance we shouldn't try to fix what isn't broken and please vote no to keep the numbers of  you roger mr moderator roger coleman tammie member precinct six i stand to speak in favor of increasing the size of the board of selectmen and i think there are two contributions i can make to  deliberations tonight first there is no standard size for a municipal governing board nor are there any definitive guidelines on how such a size might be determined perhaps the closest that exists is the model city charter which was last published in two thousand and eleven by the national civically which is was formally known as the national minnesota league in its commentary on council size the model charter recommends that quote the council be small ranging from five to nine members even the smallest council endorsed by the national civically in other words has a minimum of five members a three member municipal governing board has never been recommended by the league second a two thousand and nine study by the university of buffalo as regional institute examined the size of municipal government boards regional institute found that larger councils are generally be better able to represent diverse opinions respond to demands for constituent service deliberate reflectively and tackle tackle complex or controversy all issues in contrast the regional institute continued that smaller councils are belak better able to respond to community consensus and to handle quote a light workload of routine and uncontroversial decisions i would submit to you that that is not belmont it would appear that belmont falls on the side of those factors counseling for a somewhat larger council endowment would not be unique in reaching that conclusion the institute study reported that of the one hundred fifty six communities it studied only one had municipal bore governing board of three persons in by far the most common size of the local municipal board was five persons so i conclude that the town meeting study committee's recommendation to expand the size of belmont's board of selectmen has merit for our community and i conclude in urge the town meeting should act favorably on that recommendation i yeard urge a yes vote on this article thank you  the i'm in favor of of this this article and you know there are number of good reasons have been suggested by both by mr colton and by mrs bass but the thing that gets to me is  aside from the open meeting law which of course we have to follow i think it's absolutely bizarre that our selectmen can't talk about town business other than at a formal meeting i think having five selectman where two can speak to each ideas are crazy without being embarrassed of the public forum and i just like that this is something which would be a real benefit from increasing the size of the board from three to five so i do favor this article thank you out some of the reasons for and some of the reasons against i think it was a very fair and balanced report but to some degree i worry about that i worry that this article can seem to fair and balanced can seem like either decision would be ok three select people five select people isn't more better why does it matter i worry that it seems like there's no risk involved in increasing the board so i'm i'm here to argue for keeping the board at three i believe the proposal has very significant downsides and i'll explain why my thinking is this we all agree that it's important to have a great board i believe we're more likely to have a great board if there's three select people and i think we are more likely to have a problematic board if there's five slick people so why do we need a great board because our board runs the town they are not a policy board they are our chief executives and they make a lot of big weighty decisions in the process they decide how much to pay town employees who to hire as a town a minist department they decide what budget to bring to town meaning what's in what's out how to use every parcel of town land what should go into every town contract for trash for road work for town council everything what projects are we going to undertake what are we not going to do and the list goes on they make the decisions they are the c e o that power is not invested in the town administrators so our town depends on having a great board why are we more likely to have a great board if there's three select people it's very simple it's because elections are more likely to be contested if there is only one open seat each candidate is then fully  vetted together as a town we choose the best candidate the candidate who best understands the challenges we face the candidate who by definition has resonated with the majority of residents not just a minority the candidate who  is best able to make those weighty decisions also why are we more likely to have a problematic board if there's five selectman and again it's simple it's because the elections are less likely to be unkind sorry more likely to be uncontested if there are two open seats but it shouldn't be that easy to become a select person our c e o they should have to study the issues talk to people and make their case in an election the election is a job interview and we need options to create the best candidate also in an uncontested race candidates are more likely to walk on to the board without being vetted if there's only two applicants for the job they all get on and i believe that you could wind up with no relevant experience you could wind up with a huge learning curve you c wind up there's many reasons why i think that's problematic so it's very simple we need more candidates to fill five seats and at the moment today we barely have enough experience candidates to fill three seats on the  board some think that the job will be easier with five select people and therefore they'll be more candidates but i disagree they still have to go to the meetings which will get longer they still have to study the background book for every meeting they still have to do research and solicit opinions to serve as lives on the committees and now they have subcommittees one more data point in the last few weeks and in the last few years i've spoken with a lot of people including women and younger people about why they would or wouldn't want to be a select person they have really good reasons why they can't make the commitment and these reasons don't go away with five select people they have young children they travel too much for work they're finally empty nesters and don't want to be tied down they have new grandchildren we are fortunate in belmont we have an incredible number of talented people who serve on town meeting and roughly seventy volunteer boards and committees but running for and serving as a select person seems to be different and if there aren't enough people who have the experience the time the interest the commitment and the willingness to run our town is at risk that is why i don't want to expand the board i don't think it's a simple easy decision i do think it has significant downsides and i think it's a risk we can't afford to take we need a great board to run this town please join me in voting no on this when i were a younger man's clothes twenty years ago i had the privilege of sitting on that table looking at you from that angle it's quite an experience and one that has bade me a better person and given me a better appreciation of how great a town we live in there's a lot of work and a lot of responsibility that goes sitting at that table the gentleman at the table now and all those that have gone before me have certainly filled those responsibilities with dignity and honor their disagreements on everything as bill monahan the late bill martin who i served with always observed that's why they make chocolate and vanilla there are always choices to make those should be made those choices and discussions in the open the open meeting  serves a purpose that's why it was instituted that's why it's so difficult it's to prevent or try to prevent people from having off camera offline conversations forming voting blocks moving around outside of the public view only to come into public session and cast a pre determined vote without much conversation the proponent was saying we should have five to bat around ideas well i suggest you bet around ideas in public session if they have viability they'll be discussed if it's less than viable it'll be rejected it's done all the time it's done and i didn't table it's done on public topics done it's done all the time with everything i went through town today through the center and there's a erroneous stone but there's a big stone there on the on the belt that says belmont eight hundred eighty four that's a long time we were actually incorporated eight hundred fifty nine and since that time we've had three selectmen that have run the town hundred fifty nine years if my math is right but there's a reason i'm not an  so open that somewhat right this town has never been stronger the schools are great your homes are worth more than we ever could possibly  people are climbing over each other's backs to buy houses goes on in a day doesn't matter the price the realtors in town they're doing a great job things stay on the market for one day and i haven't seen a post yet go file less than the asking price they all seem to go over that's an indication that the town is run well and it continues to be run well with a management team that is functional and works i suggest this is a solution to a problem that doesn't exist we don't need to do that moody's just came in recently aaa bond rating that doesn't happen if we're just functional what's wrong with the town yeah we get some bumpy roads but begin to deal with that well that we have fine people that run the town department heads run the town ms gavin the new administration is doing a fine job and she will continue to do that the previous speaker spoke about vetting and qualified candidates we just went through an election that i think still has vacancies  couldn't fill the school committee just had enough trustees several precincts didn't have enough to put twelve candidates together for a town meeting and we had a discussion just maybe last time meeting on an elected or appointed planning board or a major route where major argument against an elected board was the lack of possible candidates now i went through two pretty bruising elections i did not have the luck the vetting process of two key pretty good elections that i went through and many of us went through you need to know that joint with the pain of going down to dunkin donuts and meeting people you need to know the joy of the pain i see it donald of of going to league night and having a debate and getting people to see what you're saying and what you're not saying so as someone who has sat in that being who thought we could do it so join the senator and me and vote no on this and keep it at three thank you mr gamble jim gamble town meeting member precinct two mr moderator i would like to introduce and pulse with a resident of belmont in a forward former town and a former member of the board of i draw the first from my own experience on the boy from nine hundred eighty six until nine hundred ninety two for those six years i was the minority member both as a woman and because of my political philosophy and view of the town different from that of my colleagues i learn quickly how uncomfortable it can be when you are impotent into the discussion the silence can be deafening how many times can you repeat the same argument over and over it but we did agree on occasion we supported final budgets initiated the position of executive secretary instituted the planning department appointed the traffic advisory committee reorganize employees health care and we appointed the first housing trust but to ensure that there would be discussion and votes on my positions i had to go to the citizens my supporters came to the board of selectmen meetings to speak in favor of the positions i took and to create the push to achieve the aforementioned goals no selectman should have to go to those lengths to be heard not once in six years was i elected chairman and unfortunately some of our decisions were not as strong as they might have been with more board discussion i noted in the interviews that were held that bill schelling a pharma selectman also thought of himself as having been excluded that was wrong in contrast to the idea that we need a stronger town administrator before increasing the size of the board the position of town administrator with a five member board will immediately be strengthened why because presently a change in board membership in any given year can threaten the security of the position of town administrator with a five member board that diminishes and her position is strengthened today in belmont the town administrator who directs and manages the delivery of municipal services she provides a leadership for strategic planning she scuse me she works with the school department prepares the annual budget and the capital budget in conjunction with the appointed committees she makes recommendations to the board of selectmen for policy decisions she does the collective bargaining and coordinates town council services among other duties and any that the board of selectmen ask her to undertake with less likelihood of being let go in any given year because a member of the board disagrees with her recommendations his or her advice and recommendations to the board might actually be stronger and more direct of that we seem to love to talk about tonight the town administrator in brookline and a belmont resident reported that much communication with and updating of the bowen can be done by email and does not require a phone call on every subject to each member i was interested to know that at last week's town meeting the amendments dealing with the new marijuana more marijuana law were presented to town meeting by a woman the vast majority of proposals presented to the town meeting from the community preservation committee were submitted by women women serve on the school committee capital budget committee has a female chairman town administrator is a woman and yet in the town of belmont and opal almost one hundred sixty years of town government only three women have served for a paltry fifteen years i am sure it is not because women are not qualified or even think that they are not qualified research has shown that women are more likely to serve on boards and committees that have discussion share ideas and reach conclusions in a collaborative fashion they serve on boards where ideas can be discussed where there is diversity of membership and diversity of ideas which leads to strong citizens good discussion is not just idle chatter but i need not confine my remarks to women's involvement i know there are men that would consider participating on a five member board we are missing many of the wide range of skills that our capable citizens possess as posen skills never getting close to the five minute you can wind up ok another reason for the lack of diverse leadership on the board of selectmen is the idea that the job takes hours and hours of involvement a five member board would relieve that burden and the workload would be shared there would be more representation on the why not us presently if a member is absent the decisions are being made by two with a five member board there would be four recently the board has had to change its meaning dates because of barack and travel issues and that interrupts the longstanding tradition of monday evening meetings it's important for citizen involvement to have a stable meeting time and to stick to it i am not surprised that i board of selectmen isn't favor of maintaining the status quo they work together i think they like each other i think they share the same points of view that makes it easy and that means maintaining the status quo a five member board that engages in discussion of issues has membership and provides an opportunity to show a new ideas and goals will be more attractive to more people and finally a five member board of selectmen through the election process will create a broader constituency of involved and knowledgeable citizens which we need as we look at the financial future of this town i hope that the town meeting will recognize that we are in the year two thousand and eighteen and it is time to make changes that will encourage more involvement in the leadership of town because the future of belmont hands on thank you thanks man jessica bennett precinct one town meeting member i hate to follow and she's so incredibly eloquent and i have so much respect for her and i disagree with her on this issue in spite of the fact that i  read with her on so much of what she said there i agree that we need more diversity on the board i love i love the board that we have right now i think they're fantastic people who are incredibly qualified for the job i hate that i haven't seen a woman serve on the board since i moved here i think that we have a tremendous number of incredibly talented people in this town who don't consider running for the board but they give to the town in many many ways the one thing that has struck me in reading the report is that i just didn't see evidence that the things that we were hoping would happen if we go to a five member board would actually happen that these things are happening in other towns that they have competitive elections that reflect the community better i mean i started going out and trying to find evidence for more diversity and for what the level of competition there was in different elections by looking at other towns websites and looking back at election results over the last few years and how many people are running and i just wasn't seeing strong evidence there that by doing this magical thing of making the board bigger we would we would achieve these results that we want what kept coming to mind to me is the saying if all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail and i think that the hammer here was this idea that we need to look at the number of members of the board and change it because it will help us solve some of the things that are frustrating to us in town but i think that these are complicated issues and i think that we need to at least at the very least  committee has suggested postpone this until we look at this a little more thoroughly i think this was a great summation of some ideas about what could happen in town if we change things versus staying the same but i don't think that there was strong evidence in the report that these are the things that would happen i need more data about what really goes on in other towns before i can vote to make such a big change to our government in our town and i really do think that we have to not come at our problems by saying ok we're going to study this thing because we think we have issues in town and not in not look at it comprehensively i think if we're going to change the structure of the board of selectmen we have to do it in a comprehensive way that looks at other matters like how strong a town administrator as i also want to applaud the board for making fundamental changes in the last few years that address some of the things that i am brought up by changing the way the chair and vice chair works on the board i think it does allow everybody who gets elected to have a real voice on the board so i think that we have made some structural changes that address some of that and that we can keep looking at further ways that we can address some of the problems that we have i'm going to be voting no tonight but i do look forward to continued discussion on how we can improve town government in the future and how we can improve that representation of other voices on the board  mr jones and when i served in that office and even though i disagree with her conclusion about the issues facing us tonight i believe that if you read the text of her report in the in the larger report that we have in the appendix what you will see is a brilliant discussion of how a woman who was outnumbered two to one nevertheless kept up the fight for her positions for her entire six years in a very strategic way thank i speak the seasoning as a member of the minority of this committee to study the number of selectmen we small band over here i voted to retain the size of the board three members and while i was a minority in the committee as you probably heard i was joined by a vast majority of former and current selectman who support it and still still support the three member bo one fact might explain this i was the only member of the committee who had ben selectman and what does that tell us in my opinion it means that the committee majority different from the selectmen on what the board should be and what it should do a major argument that we've made in favor of keeping a three person board was if it ain't broke don't fix it but those who favor a five person board clearly feel that the board should be improved to fix something whatever the outcome of the vote tonight i therefor urge the selectmen to meet with the members of the committee to discuss what the committee members felt the board should be and could be this was a very good committee and as a moderator said a great report and i think a selectman would do well to get out get a meeting together with them and discuss this let me just discuss diversity for a moment one potential benefit that has been a d to a larger board in which i supported as a possible larger board is increased diversity and i think this means in this town primarily gender diversity in our entire history there have only been three female members of the board in our entire history all of them have been named an and speak in from experience i know the understand i understand the lack of gender diversity from my own personal experience i was the only male member of a six person school committee when i was elected in hundred ninety five i was apparently the token male member i'm not sure that shows however that the larger board creates diversity but it certainly did create the potential for diversity  my concern with a five member board is the potential downside risk and in large board may well have members who do not understand the job and  decide to interfere in the day to day administration of the town which is the responsibility of the town administrator and department heads virtually all the sounds with five member boards that we look at have bylaws or boards and she feels that they could require an increase in her staff we could change government and bell not we need to address two issues and pull rector mention both at the end of his speech on friday there are issues that rove concerned all of the committee members in this committee first we need to insist not assume but insist that select policy making and second we should insist that select one hold professional managers accountable but not interfere in the day to day administration of any talent agency we have not done this yet i think those two things are the most important changes we could make and governance so in conclusion because i can't be sure that we can change town govern protect against downside risk i support leaving the sides of the board and i urge you to vote no on this article tha i read bundy time any member precinct one firstly a mere four weeks ago we had done contested election for a position that we are now looking to expand to five seats just let that sink in for a  minute secondly this board is operating in extremely high level right now they're highly qualified and it seems as if all cylinders are clicking right now again why are we trying to break or try to fix something  my last point is this if we're going to promote diversity why don't we start with the name it cliff notes for those who did not read the appendices it tennessee's were important out of the representative town means listed all of them had five member boards of selectmen with the exception of  milford recently had a vote to remain at three milton recently had a vote to go to five and in belmont we may decide tonight belmont i don't like using the word campaigning or convincing or recruiting people to for the board i think serving the town must be a labor of love all of us serve the town to some degree  it's the degree to which we decide to serve and deciding whether or not to run for the border selectman is a big decision i talk to some members of the committee and i looked up some data for  belmont and there's this thing called campaign finance reform i don't think we can implement it here in belmont but let me just give you a few facts back in two thousand and two which i moved here i can't give any prior data there is a race between dance shark men and the rojas decided by thirty five votes that race cost the town of belmont and it's those two candidates thirty thousand  i've been on campaigns i've helped out with a number of them where candidates knock every door in belmont where they call every town meeting member where they put together free publicity social media campaign on a shoestring budget campaigns may end up uncontested if you have two people and they're running and one gets forty nine point seven percent of the vote and fifty point three percent of the vote i wouldn't necessarily call the person who gets fifty point three percent of the vote a person who represents belmont well in a recent school committee campaign we had three people running for two spots i feel like those two people represent wel l to get to the gist of my point this like men who are running and running these large campaigns often they need to put up five thousand or ten thousand of their own money when you look at the campaign finance reports  online they're still in debt themselves if part of the decision of running to first selectman is do i have five thousand dollars or ten thousand dollars or do my friends have fifty thousand dollars that's going to keep them from running for  to sue bass's list of diversity one thing we need to add there is social economic diversity and i think if we look in this group we do not see enough members of town meeting and we do not see members of the poor selectman who have soci economic diversity there are lots of different reasons to expand the board of selectmen there are lots of different implications of it but i think that one that hasn't been talked about and once again to be talked about if i didn't bring it up was social economic diversity of the board of selectmen town meeting member at large this is the most important article in this entire town meeting i think is the most important article we've dealt with in a very long time because if we get this wrong we're going to mess a lot of things up for a very very long time  not want to influence the committee or who was appointed to it but now that this is before us that we felt like we had to take a position against it i've yet to hear a good reason to go from three to five and i've read that report i mean i'm trying to figure out what the problem is with the board of selectmen in does three to five fix it i would say from serving on it i can tell you my belief is the no problem with the board of selectmen i think you've heard the litany of how well we're doing and why and i think right now and i don't think going from three to five fixes any perceived problem or any of the problems that have been raised tonight i don't know if you realize that the board of selectmen earlier this year changed its rules to address some of the things that i am paulson raised we changed the rules to allow anyone selectman to put an item on the agenda to get discussions that no one's frozen out we created a rule to rotate the chair to get politics out of it so everybody gets to service the chair and the vice chair during the three year term which is one of the things  i'm going to move for this where you second it and if you move for something else second then i mean be real this is what's going to happen if you're talking about going to five and a patrice just came back from a conference of town administrators where they were told by the attorney general's office spoken even though that was never my intent that's why i don't want to talk to him as much as i may like these guys i could live without talking to them for you know outside of the meetings to say that this will save us time i think it's just the opposite we have shaved a lot of time off the meetings recently but if there are five people and everyone has to talk we are not going to get to our agenda we've already had meetings that go to eleven i don't mind it i signed up for this but but we get least we get our work done if we have to stop at eleven and we don't get our work done in five people we will not get our work done if everybody has to weigh in it's going to drag everything out as far as than the committee's report they talk about how we can then go to all the committees th we don't have to choose these liaison's to these committees but we're go when there's something to to do i was liaison to the planning board and when they have a question they've i'm sorry the school committee they asked me to come and participate on two occasions in the last year and i went but i don't go and bother them when it's not when they don't ask me to mark is a liaison to the board a library trustees and when that discussion last year about moving the library was going on he went to the meetings but on a general basis we don't stick our fingers into these other committees because we appoint good people and let them do their jobs their couple the statutory ones like the warrant committee capital budget the community preservation that we do serve on because that's statutorily required to appoint them but they're basically very very few of those committees around i don't we use the town of ministers office and we have a lot of advisory committees traffic advisory and and such to do research and deep dives on things the work committee i mean unlike some of the other committees in town we actually have staff so it's not as if we are going to do the research if there's something we want to look into we'll ask patrice garvin to look into it she looks into it and comes back to us it's not as if we need to create subcommittees to do deep dives it's not really the nature of the job which i think gets to part of the problem which it sounds of not just to say if i were in yours seal it probably wouldn't like to hear me say this but miss a in any way but if you haven't served in the job it's really really hard to understand what it is i did a lot i've spent a decade you know going to all these meetings and be in the work committee and i thought i understood it and i understood probably most of it but i've got to say sitting up here at a city rizal is that it's really different and to see the inner workings of the town and stuff that never gets to you there's a lot going on there's a lot going on and i don't really want to create a problem where everything gets all messed up because there are too many people and ms garvin has to call all five of us and yeah does she have to e mail us she could e mail us i can tell you there are probably a lot of things you don't want to have permanently in writing that our conversations that we have i feel like i feel like i can call patrice and ask her things and i do and all of us do because we don't talk to each other if she's on the phone five people all day long we're not going to get anywhere she has work to do i think it's very telling that most of the most all of the former selectman current and former oppose it because they know the job i've got to say that i've i've never heard of a whole lot of solutions where the answer is more bureaucracy well you know i want to just don't back to two ms bassa slides i think i have one here selectman should be a policy board not hands on managers but that's not the town government the government structure we have is we are not a policy board we are the managers we're the c e o s it says town administrator the job description already allows her to take on many of the board of selectmen tasks that is not correct the town the ministry of hers job description is advisors and recommends to the select this needs policies programs and actions she deems necessary expedient for effect of operation of town government advisors and recommends we make the decision it's not a we're not a policy making board if you want to be a policymaking board that's a big discussion that can involve creating a town manager and i think that's what that weren't committee was talking about that is a not that's not what's in front of us today was in front of us today is keeping everything exactly the way it is but adding two more people to the table that's what some front of us and i will say please please don't do this i'm afraid that everything's going to wreck that we've got really going really well and from faces i'll say it again please don't do this don't increase the number of the board of selectmen don't just please don't that they're all men is working right now doesn't mean to me that it couldn't be better with five a few years ago i was one of those people who made most of you show up in the summer when things fell apart a little and we had to have a special town meeting i think that if we had had five one person might not have dominated as much and caused a confusion that made us to have a special town meeting to have to get the town back in discussion over an issue that we thought had been settled i think there are reasons why with five somebody could have a family member sick or or have a work event or there are all different reasons why three people might have some other issue in their lives and can't quite focus at one hundred percent every single day with five people four can still get the town business done you don't have to wait and i think that  other towns that have five give us enough incentive that it could work that way thank you mr al thank you mr moderate i have a brief comment and i also do have a question as someone who served on the three member board for this town for decades i have to tell you that i am strongly opposed to increasing to five three works very well it takes a little getting used to i have to tell you when you start it's not that easy but it works and you get used to it and you get into the system of it and i would maintain that we accomplished quite a bit i will tell you because our meetings are not televised you would know that the health department did know was get along but i assure you we did not always agree on everything but i found one of the things that was unique about three people is a little more of the drive to try to create a three in the even if there is a two to one bringing in because you do want to present a unified front to the town when you make an important decision which means that three people are going to take a little more time to make sure that you can come to a compromise i do not see that happening with five people is easily and so for this reason i feel very strongly that three worked for me granted we did not have the workload of the selectmen but we worked pretty hard and we made it work i also will mention in the last five years i was the only male member of our board so diversity was not a problem at least with us i had very strong capable intelligent women that came and worked with us and worked very well as to my question mr moderate i would request that our town administrator patrice garvan answer the question of how increasing to five would affect her job load her staff's job load and the cost to her department thank you very much as this  thing i want to do is i wanted to take this opportunity to really thank the staff and the department heads for their diligent work coming up preparing for this meaning the amount of work that it takes to bring all this information to make sure you get this body is making the right decisions it's a lot of hard work i want to also give a shout out to allen and her staff the amount of work that i see the town clerk's office put in i can tell you being in other towns  s by far the most i've ever seen so i just wanted to let you know that looking at my office we received multiple i would say more than multiple many e mails from the selectmen and how i quantified the impact to the office i decided to kind of look at the number of e mails coming to my administrative staff and some days it's a little longer some days shorter it depends on the question it depends on how available they are when we're trying to get meetings together i would also say that i'm also monitoring e mails that the selectmen are sending to of the department heads so what that means is anything question that goes to another department head that i'm c c don i will take action to make sure that it has been addressed and followed up with that department head so i think conservatively about an hour and a half per per day is a good estimate of what my office is spending if you add to select into that you're going to just see an additional fifteen hours a week just to respond to e mail for selectman then gannon appreciate it and i think the other thing is this the drop in is really dependent on the selectmen and the availability due to their profession now i have three selectmen that happen to how full time jobs so they're less available to pop into my office but there have been instances in the past in other towns that i've worked in where you can have multiple retired selectman where you're at the point where you're just giving them a desk in your office so it really depends on who's sitting in that seat so when i quantify all that together i pretty much calculated there's about maybe twenty hours a week that i would probably need an additional help to just do all that administrative work the more questions that i'm being asked in more things i'm asked to research by selectman the more i have to put off to my staff to do the smaller things if i were to quantify that in terms of a salary at a base rate it's about forty five thousand dollars why a twenty five thousand dollars it's it would be a twenty hour week position fifty two weeks a year and then you have to add a benefit because master a law any employee that works mercer the question vote under article twelve if you support the motion to go from three to five vote yes if you oppose a motion to go from three to five ok now they are you have a few support three to five no if you want to retain three support that will have a roll call so glenn can this is a motion for roll call this is a motion for roll if you favor roll call vote yes if not vote no it's only takes thirty five individuals according to our bylaws to have a roll call  clinton eighty people support obviously more than thirty five so we'll have a roll call vote this is a vote on the motion itself voting yes if you favor three to five is open again this is the motion itself thank you all very much