i thank you frank for the welcome to the selections meeting february fourteenth happy valentine's day to everybody at home our gender this evening seven o'clock a citizen's input and seven ten the town manager is going to be discussing with us not street parking lots seven forty five the board of selectmen all talk about town council candidate reviews proposals that were received for town council services eight o'clock town manager  or town manager fiscal year two thousand and thirteen operating budget and eight forty five in executive session to review executive session minutes only to adjourn after that in between that will do some action items and let's start with the pledge of allegiance and l couple of quick things first two things i got from citizens if they asked me to bring up tonight one is a number of citizens kevin are getting things in the mail from alternate energy companies off suggesting that they  sign up with them and save in this particular case ten percent off the current national grid rates and they're asking if if any of these you know what do we know anything about these are they serious are they reputable or this happens to be a constellation energy company that's offering not only ten percent off the rates for up to nine months but a fifty dollars welcome bonus and i didn't get they didn't come to my house but someone brought it over and asked if if you could comment on that at all i would just suggest to you mr chairman that the legitimate company but we can't endorse them or say anything more than consumers should just check it out then call it to any general's office going on a web site and find out given all the publicity i'm not surprised by this and it is happening in other communities as well so ok and then also on the electric note i got an e mail that i was asked to read relative to national grid here's some information on an issue that happened over the weekend i submitted as a follow up to a top of it was raised at the last elections meeting regarding power interruptions that portion affect portions of the town sunday morning between two forty five and three forty five we had three of those power failures each one lasting as usual only a few seconds a bit frustrated these outages were still occurring and it gone from annoying to becoming disruptive i e mailed mr develops in the morning with the information he responded immediately and forwarded my email to marcy ri with a request for her to return pass the information along to someone who would address it within minutes she replied that she would do that and less than two hours later i received an e mail from bob russell manager of community and customer management with an invitation to call or email him he had already begun researching the problem with the information i had provided jim after an exchange of a bit more information email me a follow report with an explanation of the problem the momentary loss of power occurring at two forty nine three twenty five and three thirty four the crews found to the distribution wires located on a pole near justin mechanic streets so swinging in the wind and touching causing our line protection devices to shut power off momentarily to prevent cable failure our crews have readjusted the tensions on each of the cables to prevent any further contacts at his request i had a fall of conversation with him on monday about these outages in his desire to locate an address any storm related service issues that may still be lingering within foxboro in an hour long conversation we talked about a myriad of topics from the union loop and what they are doing to strengthen it to tree trimming i asked many questions all of which he was happy to answer for me his focus from the beginning was on customer experience relations and what they could do to improve communications in foxborough he asked about my experiences and what i had heard from friends and fellow residents about our experiences our frustrations and our expectations bob was wonderful an absolute pleasure to talk to and i was very appreciative of the time he spent with me was also very impressed with a sincere desire to learn more to solve any residual issues and to take steps to keep communication information flowing in the future from my standpoint it was a very productive dialogue with great promise for good evening i hate to keep bringing up the same issue but it still is hanging out there and i have to ask it in a different fashion was the zeroing three by your board well dick for them before i answer i did we've reviewed i've reviewed your e mail i reviewed your questions and i went back through the the december sixth video tape and watched that and i do have some corrections to those minutes and one of the questions that was raised that night that i don't think the board has an answer to yet i want to check with kevin the meeting you had in question when you raised that among you had seven questions that evening was the night after town meeting in a town meeting a dick had made a big issue relative to how we negotiate contracts and the fact that the the the the personnel wage board and the way they did things versus the way kevin did things and in our discussion that night kevin made it clear that it's been he's the way he's done it has been the way that and he did it and randy was in the back he confirmed that but one of the questions that was asked to kevin at town meeting and then again that next night was to please go to town council get a written opinion that said that the strong town meeting law that was passed supersedes the old outdated personal wage bylaws that dick was was holding up as as being true so that we have an official rul one way or another and if those bylaws are outdated we can we can fix that problem once and for all and we can put this issue to bed and so kevin have you ever got a response yet from town council to that question no but now that you mention it it was relayed to him verbally almost immediately thereafter and we don't have that written ruling so i'll have to call and ask him what happened what he meant to get the strike could with other stuff that's going on we've got quite a few issues going on with him right now right but i will call and find out right so that's one issue parking it was correctly you said is parking on park so i'll sit down and we'll will cry those minutes and we'll ask the board to correct those thank you there was also in here dick it had a question i'm glad that randy is here as well there was a question regarding the minutes and how we documented in the minutes dick's question about snow one ice and how that was handled and the disc and some of the discussion centered around the fact that that i guess i'm just not trying to put words in anyone's mouth but that we that the town manager can declare an emergency and then we can overspend and historically we budget x and we spend two x right because you can't you don't know what's going to be the tommy energy to play it explained that he declares an emergency he tells that the  finance director and they spend the money and then is really explain when they do the budget for the next fiscal year it was human the advisory committee has to vote in concurrence to go along with that that will ration of emergency so it actually caused two actions one with the management and that's one of dick's issues and so then the other issue came back that said so when the budget gets done for the next year ready set it comes right off the top you've got to pay that first before you spend anything the current year and the question came up as to whether or not under the law the ad com has to officially vote both of those actions are not and dick has gone back to the to the minutes from the ad com and saw no wreckage of those approvals and so the question was you folks were saying it had to be approved by then he couldn't find anything that was approved by them and so he raised the question as to whether or not we were accurate in what we said that evening if i said it i wasn't accurate and called never approved it last year it's in a statute by the way to my law it's a national massachusetts law gone was never told last year i asked to do it now i understand it's a formality because it's not like anybody is going to say no stop plowing the streets so it's a formality that's commonly overlooked and it was last winter  they did vote this year just like two weeks ago you need to suppression all those running over and it's normally what we do when we know we're getting calls who go to say we're going to go over can we keep spending in obviously it's always approved so it an approved last one so i'll reflect i'll make sure the minutes get reflected that that is that there's a disconnect between that story in the story we had before we make sure that's correct now regarding the other open piece you had in the in the discussion in going back over the minutes you would ask them questions about a request that you had made relative to minutes kevin made it clear that he felt he had responded to you you've appealed to the attorney general and he urged the board of selectmen to have no further discussion on that matter to the attorney general ruled on your request and that's what the minutes the minutes don't reflect that but when you watch the videotape it does and i think the minutes ought to reflect that as well that the reason why the answer wasn't wasn't forthright that evening was because of the the  that one is a particular note at the presentation on the police contract there was a very strong point made by cabin been given a directive for zero and three and he got it i asked where did that directive come from it was noted it was an executive session everyone more or less agreed seven sat seven minutes later december sixth i asked again you asked him if it had been copied he said yes and i asked him if he had given it to me i guess it never happened right when the videotape does confirm that and that's when kevin said we should have no further discussion because it's on appeal let me let me help was the minutes that i had been requesting twice officially and now a third time officially and all three times the complaints filed with the attorney general the responses from the town were nowhere near the ten days in the statute or the by law the response is the filing of the complaint that thirty days have not existed on two of them i received three letters no record exists no record exists in the format you are requesting i finally get the same december twenty first if this is the document there is no directive in it it mentions zero not three percent it doesn't even clarify in that set of minutes and the on i give a copy to you do appreciate it that said a minutes this is not even identify who was talking making a presentation or commenting in three paragraphs covering zero per cent and no directive and no three percent and that copy was sent to me seven weeks after the december sixth meeting at which i was told i had already received that document i'm a little tect i'm told don't exist i'm wondering where the directive came from was it from the unions or from you was there a directive if there wasn't i don't want to hear such a statement again you know sound bites are good we may have some later that day we talked about south soundbites smarting and i think we  some things very congenial but the point is if you're told something as a taxpayer it should be done if it isn't i should know why and that is a basic question i can't get off those december twenty first minutes very simply i request that all of your executive minutes back to the town meeting of twenty ten maybe i'll find it on one of those other you released the december twenty first back in april you telling me in a minute executive sessions two years ago are still tied up we have statutes sad state must be released either in part or in whole if i'm looking for a park and its release of all i should say if that is the main point within the thirty days or within the ten days not till march sixth i'd say eight months to the attorney general copy to you in those minutes that is in one of those executive session minutes in the last two years is one of two things either the fact you're looking for doesn't exist in those minutes if it's not in there i can't give it to you because it doesn't exist or it's in the minutes but the board has a release to do yet now i have no independent authority to release executive session minutes only the board of selectmen can if what looking for his not yet been released by the board then it's not been released for good in substantive reason we believe the board believes and more than likely with my recommendation and it's up to the attorney general and that's why you've appealed it to the side if he agrees or disagree if he disagrees with the reason the board has not released those minutes because the board feels the times into the towns interest would be harmed by releasing them but if the time if the a disagrees with that he has the power to release them or to order the board release them so while your appeal with the a g is pending he has those whatever minutes he's asked for even if the board has a release them the a g has been given them he will make the determination while that appeal is pending so i hope that helps but the kevin just to make it clear for those that are home that be wondering so the way the process generally works and correct me if i'm wrong but that you sit down with the board of selectmen in an executive session to talk about potential contract negotiations and get some general parameters from the board you share your thoughts you share your ideas you share what you think is achievable what you'd like to achieve exciter the board has a dialogue back and forth and we send you off with some set of parameters that the six of us ever agreed to then and remember as chairman then and that what you're saying is perfectly accurate sometimes the board specifically votes and you say going to get that we want you to accomplish this right and that might be a zero percent raise a one and a half a two whatever it is and sometimes the board doesn't vote you just do it by right by general consensus and sometimes that gets recorded in the minutes and sometimes it doesn't but with respect to zero three percent one only has to examine all the labor contracts for all nine unions i believe there's nine unions in the town five school for town to see that they're all adenike and they're all zero three to understand that whether you find a specific vote of the board saying zero in a three or a three and a zero because the board's parameter was that the all time on employees would have a zero year and a three percent year and then it didn't matter board's intent was and of the board and again so what i was going to say dick is that the minutes may not be as specific as one might like but what happens is that we send kevin off yemen comes back periodically discusses where he is we go back and forth and ultimately he comes back and says i think we can settle on x the board says ok goes back he does this final set a negotiations with the union i'll timidly the board puts on the warrant for approval the town meeting the contract exciter so the board is iraq and has an interest a small correction which is of great import i come foster has a very unusual provision in the strong manager act or what i call the charter it says the manager  the right to negotiate and conclude contracts in consultation with the selectmen now that's unusual because every place i've ever worked prior to this the board has to vote to accept the contract but here in consultation so very often when i come back and i say i have a contract on or i have a grievance settled the board doesn't actually vote its approval it yourselves ok great we're happy with that it's within the parameter we gave you and then i sign it miss conception the vote that occurs a town meeting is strictly to fund it or not the law provides if the town meeting funds then the then the subject union can receive those wages not until however if the town meeting rejects it tommy doesn't have a right to say we want to prove the two percent raise will approve a one time he can't do that tommy can only say yes or no up or down if it's rejected then we go back to the bargaining table and we basically start all over you realize that what you're saying except the word cunt consultation of the b o s is in a different sentence it's not in that same sentence that's a different sentence but that's beside the point the point is there was no three percent ever mentioned how did we arrive at zero and three how did he get a directive of zero one three and three was never mentioned and there was no directive the other point is that his is point was the minutes may not reflect a vote of the board took but a consensus the boy came to and sent him off to go do the negotiations and with hindsight maybe if we look at the minutes we say that's not in their specific as it should have been but the facts are i think the board will agree that we had we agreed to that to that level kevin went back negotiated and we supported it ok but the consensus some would have been noted in normal terms this is the intent of the executive session section twenty  f the statute but it also says when someone is requesting copies at the board has up to thirty days to release him or state exactly why they can't be released it's now over sixty that's why i filed with that with the attorney general just you know where else can we go i don't want to file what that meant there and if you think your thirty days is a problem you know my first filing was march of last year and it hasn't been settled right so this is all part of it i think i got it at this point he's thinking but i would like to understand where directive zero and three came from that's right and in fact and just so you know dick it may not be in writing but it was and if that's the case will tell you that while go back i'll talk to you have a look at it you know one of the point they might be helpful all i can tell you is that the zero three parameter was in place when i got here in september two thousand and ten it had already been established by the board and he had already negotiated labor contracts with zero three in it i don't happen to remember which one it was i was in the middle of negotiations with the police and i picked up and he when he retired labor consul was negotiating with the d p w and and i asked him it's a team of people it does  what's the parameter and i was told several three and that's in fact what we did and all nine labor contract school in town all reflect that exact same cost a living adjustment ok are there any other comments under citizen's input all right having none the next item on the agender is the north street parking lots the town manager just for some background information we had a meeting back and probably in november oct nov we were getting lots of complaints from citizens in the north street area with the number of cars that were parking on event days we had problems with the volume of cars cars going up and down neighborhoods traffic jams people were leaving themselves on people's property things like that and so we had a we had a discussion we felt that it would be better to wait till the end of the season to address it in the meantime the chief tried multiple strategies to try to deal with the issue each week and tonight where we have a proposal by the town manager to review with the board of selectmen so kevin r i'm going to recuse myself i had said it last time again i checked with the attorney general they said i do not need to but the fact that i live in that area it's not because i'm parking cars it's just because i'm living in that area so i'll sit there and if i speak speak as a resident ok lots in the town and it's pretty complex body of law so the current situation the town has promulgated regulations pursuant to all those  laws that provide that parking lots with less than ten vehicles do not need a license that's a that's critical over ten you have to get a license issued by this board and it's subject to these regulations and there's a lot of things in here about what you did what parking lot owners do and do not have to do but if you have ten cars or less you don't have to comply with these now from the fire chief in town planner what appears to be the case look i think the current issue is twofold number one people get trapped particularly on north street  residential neighborhoods now is proliferated enormously in the last two years roughly our theory is probably due to the economy because with a declining economy and people looking for more creative ways to make income more than likely people have looked at this and taken advantage of the opportunity because it could be frankly be quite lucrative so there's a lot more parking going on in residential neighborhoods now than there once  was the primary problem at the board asked us to take a look out was on north street but in the course of doing that we looked at a lot of other neighborhoods probably focus on illustrators yes you've got a street and now parking on some side streets as straight and he stops through want to obviously they're trying to get that stadium cleared so he stops and he lets a few cars go out and route one starts again if you go the other way down a pace and then through whatever series of road you choose to take eventual e you get out for the most part on the on ninety five those some cars go out cookouts one of six one forty but primarily it's traffic going up to ninety five but that traffic gets queued up from the so called luxury gate because again as an officer position there you'll stop traffic on north a lot of luxury gay traffic to go stop when there's enough cars queued up along no street traffic to go so what happens there's a lot of cars queued up they can't get out so people have started using there's been a lot more cars now using the size st pete street etc all of side roads leading to a lot of traffic now here's here's the issue number one people who live in those neighborhoods who have never before been subject to this kind of traffic and i was suddenly being subjected to lots and lots of traffic that frankly wasn't there in prior years that's due to the increase in parking on north and the related area secondly because of the queuing people's inability to get out they just have to sit there a lot of odd behaviors are happening and that's the stuff you described earlier third problem public safety is extremely compromised because our ability to get an ambulance or a cruiser down those roads while all that's going on is is is very very difficult it's not impossible but it is very difficult and so response times depending upon where the crews are the ambulances coming can be very very lengthy now all of this is led to you folks getting a lot of complaints primarily from those side neighborhoods but from paysan far away is mechanica cetera so we took a look at all that we went through the regulations we went through the statutes and we came up with three or four solutions we could well alternatives and i want to just tell you what those were so that we can let the public know what we thought about and why we didn't recommend certain things so the first thing we thought about was won't want to reduce it from ten to five because frankly there's two things creating all the parking if every single homeowner in north st and some related ones now did part ten cars you'd probably have a few thousand cars out there i don't have the exact copy it would be a lot the fact of the matter is some homeowners are parking less than ten and some are parking any at all except their own cars but some frankly are parking a lot more than ten and we know this because you only have to drive down there and count the cars you know when the chief tries to enforce that it's impractical because people say well that's my cousin bob and my cousin bob's three kids and you know we know it's nonsense but there's no way to regulate it we've tried permits and all sorts of things i'll let the chief describe what he's tried in the past that has just not been effective so what we've got is a very few number of people who frankly take advantage and if you drive north street you'll notice there's a couple places where people have created large commercial parking lots they just give them and their intent was support forty fifty a hundred cars in there and they try and the chief in the building commission have actually had to go to court and shot some of these operations done but people are always pushing the on the low and trying to get more so all is leading to the problem so we took a look at that we said well if we reduce it from ten to five would really be creating any would be really be solving the problem probably not law abiding citizens might limit it to five but a lot of people won't frankly because they're already not living with the ten's or why would they live in the five moreover the same problem that causes tend to be completely completely unable to enforce it it wouldn't matter what it was three or five or ten or fifteen we can't enforce a particular number because there was no system that allows us to do so without an enormous police presence that just frankly isn't cost effective so we pretty much for just the right of way the idea of reducing it the second thing we thought about was the simply block the side roads now this was solve the problem  of of traffic spilling into other residential neighborhoods and limiting the public safety issue however the problem is we would have to have a police cruiser literally at every single one of those streets i believe th five of them not in correct and that would be a very very expensive proposition if we put up barricades which we do they simply get knocked over they get moved so that's not going to be an effective solution either we look at a lot of those two main types of solutions limiting or blockading and by the way if we did cut off access to those trees with a cruiser an actual police officer who denied access we would have probably a mediately an extreme public safety problem on north straight because we would have people who would not be satisfied with simply sitting there waiting to get out they would start doing u turns they would start double laning we'd have all sorts of crazy things driving over people's lawns because people's behavior when they're forced to sit there for extended periods of time just becomes really bizarre and that's the truth so blockading the side streets for all those reasons didn't seem to be down prudent alternative so that left us with only one real choice and that was to ban all noncommercial non regulated parking once and for all and just say in a residential zone there is no noncommercial parking no interestingly enough the town zoning does not provide for noncommercial parking the citizens of the community have already made that decision i don't quite know how this practice was allowed to get started in inconsistent with the by law i don't quite know what it was somebody should have said wait you can't do this it was only bought and allow it so somethi practice never should have been allowed to start because the people at town meeting passed zoning and they were spoken to really they do not want commercial parking operations in residential zones it is not a permitted use so we have a regulation which is inconsistent with the town zoning why is our problem because the regulation was not passed by town meeting the zoning was passed by tommy so the will of the people express that town meeting you know two thirds vote by the when i was simple majority of two thirds of the will of the people is that there be no parking in noncommercial non no commercial parking in residential  once we realize all those facts are pretty much lead to the conclusion that a respect for the the peoples will know in the zoning and for all the practical reasons that i pointed out that allowing parking lots for a fee and by the way this notion that parking is going on and not being charged for is just it we all know the truth and it would be silly to sit here tonight and suggest to ourselves collectively that that parking on north street and other residential areas is free it is not if it was free it would not be at the level that it's on and we have seen people that are even so brazen just to hold up signs and say park here thirty five dollars twenty five whatever we've actually had in the chief going to lab or eight instances where people very enterprising that's a charge for people to park on the public ro park on north street i mean is it crazy as it may sound there's folks out there probably from out of town who don't know and somebody will say yeah you can park right in front of my house it's twenty five bucks and they'll pay it and the chief has had cars towed because we can't have  obviously so any idea that this is noncommercial parking going on is just frankly ridiculous it's commercial and it's become a pretty lucrative business so the only recommend recommendation we could come up with and it's unanimous recommendation is that we ban parking in residential areas period and not allow it now that can be affected i want to two ways amend the regulations and that's simply a board of selectmen vote it's a public hearing notice so you can't do it tonight right it would require amendments the regulations you have to advertise it notice in the paper and then come back and vote it or bill has given you a bill because bar has given you a by law which is a copy i n the package which would be a general bylaw which would go to town meeting in the spring and the people vote on it and this would be a simple majority vote up or down or if they chose to amend it so if the board accept the recommendation to ban parking then there's two ways you can facilitate that general by law voted by tom meeting have the times been a change of the regulations either one will work and that mr chairman is our collective report and we're more than happy to answer any questions of the board of the public they have i saw me start with the board well just i think how this started and i that she probably knows better than i do that i just know that when the state mccain there is folks on our street concerned just like they are now  traffic etc so i think that it was stated that you could have up to ten cars in your your home those to important fact the reason part of the reason that this is so lucrative the park there and why frankly it's that you can charge a fair amount for cars is because of that access road to the town well and then the fact that there is no fence on the m b t a train track many people cross it and so provide very fast access much faster than virtually any place except a parking space in the stadium itself u nfortunately that exposes people to some significant amount of danger as well particularly if train usage gets increase which is being proposed so because the only train track i know of pretty much anywhere that's not isolated with fencing very unusual well i you know i just you know just for history's sake and if i'm  keith can follow me and or a bus or something and i i thought that at the last meeting bill was going to be charged with coming back with some kind of  by law which i think that you attended here and i think that's probably how we should go as for the ending it it being what it is right now it's unfortunate that there are several individuals that are taking advantage of the situation but the problem is is that we have nothing to protect ourselves when the chief or bill goes over there to say look you're over the ten and he has nothing in front of them as to when he goes to present to the court that you know these folks are out of line so i think that's what we need to give bill is the ammunition so that if the several folks continue to go over the limit of ten that says no more than term and now if there were more than ten bill good if you took a sort of what the police department issued tickets here's your problem how do you distinguish and i don't mean to speak for the true for good because they can speak both clearly because they deal with this i don't but they get people saying all the time who are over ten well that's my uncle bob or that's my nephew pete or that's my sister in law marcy and parking lot kevin what we're talking about is somebody's home so if there's if if there is you know twelve cars at somebody's house because they have a party you're going to know that there's at least twelve people there  asked for comments and that's what i'm going to do and then i was into that we tried to figure that out because we wanted to create a system where people could continue to do it but limit it strictly and basically what we came up with is there is no way to do it there's no effective way to do it and i'll let them tell you about things they tried because when you hear what they tried you'll see why nothing will work either you folks want to make a comment to address linda's comments i'll just start a significant increase in the number of parking operations that have occurred over the last several years prior to that time we were at having the volume of cars at the end of the bets or even going into those neighborhoods and there's been a dramatic escalation and that traffic congestion has had a ripple effect on the ability to move resources through that section of town this is not a new issue i can remember that chief godat during the late seventy's actually had some of the detectives working on a couple of different individuals that were running parking operations on oil street a more substantial number than let's say ten cars and going through the bother of you know having the officer go in pay for the parking having a photograph taken to try and bring cases to court and that wasn't very successful we had a lot on route one that wasn't licensed and the person turned around and sold a ten dollars sandwich park for free and we ended up with i know the officers getting a sandwich up there so they can bring the case to court i think with that perspective in mind we have have some of the methodology so people can still have relatives go to their house but limit the commercial aspect of it and i think the proposal that mr sparrow drafted would help us then with the limiting that aspect and if we can mitigate the number of cars in that area traffic will flow smoother all the residents in that immediate region nuisances to the neighborhood by reason of blocking access to the house for emergency response vehicles creating a public nuisance we find for that car if you boy if we put a number on it growing because it's all about the money anything else linda writes that was what i was curious about you know approximately what number of cars are creating this l this year actually even seems to be different from other years and i know i've had a conversation with ed about this there's a change in the internal parking workings of the stadium that is potentially contributing to more cars coming out earlier is that correct what happened within the last two years because of constant congestion on a major roadway within the stadium property we call it the ring road that was blocking up because of the way the parking lot was designed it functioning so we couldn't move resources whether it's fire service personnel my people with bands from one side of the stadium to meet different types of calls whether it was about o'clock margin see or disturbance by changing their interior design and we're working that they're able to get cars to move along the lane and come out of it no pathway more effectively now than they have in the past and they're allowed to have fourteen hundred cars go into fourteen hundred cars go out they've never time we have more cars up on your street trying to come down because route one because of the problem at that intersection that the troopers are contending with all the cars going north out of the stadium up north street and ring road that everything was tight and that's what i put in the tub to try and reroute traffic to force them back towards route one knowing that probably people that were allowing the parking lot got to say hey you don't have to go to one go to young road go to beach and he get out i'll see you next week you know the numbers that you've seen x when we got those numbers last time i asked if i could get the actual you know if we could see the actual for recent as opposed to the average because i wasn't sure what period of time the average had been calculated over and that could potentially skew you know what we're looking at in terms of what's really going on here because it just seems like this is very different i don't want to see how many numbers i asked a question i was given the answer by multiple people was the average is like eleven hundred twenty five and the there's no santoli conditions don't have proper disposal for even trash i asked a female this question bear with me she said i if they're all liable to liable for everybody on their property that they park to libel for any kind of conditions with some you would have a medical condition and i'll call it a condition emergency or a hot fistfight or know the homeowners problem of liability by handing it in compassion to those that have family and friends and tradition or ending something here that you know i i feel that we shouldn't and totally i mentioned before the sticker program that if you were i mean when i lived on the street every week a friend of mine across treated the same people come and they went up as pay for those stickers whatever cost just like the dumb stickers and you pass them off for every game and that's it can't be for commercial you can't charge people for it it's for friends and family that's what that's why i say we need to somehow make that happen picture emergency vehicles up and down that road the only way you're going to get anybody in there is a paramedic on a bicycle and you won't get in the person so it's a public safety issue which was board has to deal with directly this is not something we can do is let slide because it's a major public safety a five stickers per household that requests them that they purchase the same as they would a compost serious sticker per game  with the burden of dealing with that just a clarification the bylaw that bill drafted and a town council review and then we collectively recommend to you only deals with commercial parking so it would not be in homeowners from having whole of the many family members come park but if the chief of the building commissioner catches on trying  charging a fee and that's pretty easy to do with that then we can do something but some i know the way they get around that already given a lot of people charge before the starts they say ok you the chief in his offices and the other public see fishel from the down to find the difference that's all i'm saying i said it before i'll say i won't beat it up that's why i said yes let's open up to the people in the audience if anyone has a question or comment if you do just come to the microphone p the town's been put on notice that they have sanctioned an activity in a residential area that's not allowed and i think it's not if it's going to be when there's an incident and you're not going to have a leg to stand on it has a you know it's got to it's really gone out of control again and again you know it is a business been we've never begrudged anything residents who want to have some people over grab a couple of bucks but  it's out of control and we support the chief and the commissioner on your initiative ok thank you with comments from anyone else in the audience ok we have one more my name's great spear thirty nine prospect street i'm a commercial lot owner one twenty four washington street and basically it's south of the seat i'm next to dunkin donuts is my commercial office building and what happened sidewalks to go down main street so basically and people walking up there walking around dunkin donuts and then you know cutting through their parking lot in there walking in an active breakdown lane as an active  pass in your car area or so walking down and the people come around and within i forwarded photographs to chief o'leary showing that you know people almost getting hit least a half a dozen times and actually accidents happening from two cards one stop to not hit a pedestrian a car behind him hit him so it's not just a issue it's a real public safety issue and from a practical standpoint from a business of you know we pay the equivalent almost forty two dollars per parking space between what we pay the town for their permit plus the state as part of our contribution for the infrastructure along route one and it it not you know we don't mind competition but it's unfair these people are non permitted they don't have any puerto cans there's no fire extinguishers that i haven't you know lighting you know we've been working with both the chief o'leary and the building inspector to require all commercial parking lots to have adequate lighting and it's not a you know those people but people you know using the woods as bathrooms and it's totally out of control so you know you don't mind working with people but it's there is it's out of control i mean everybody's got because i'm sure so it needs to be stopped and you know i think as far as enforcing i don't think the chief is going to be going around and count five cars if people watching the game or people coming over that's not the intent it's the inten violence to stop it and have it in force and vehicle one hundred dollars a car because right now you know if they find one hundred dollars and go to spirit court summons parking fifty cars that you know forty dollars that's not a you know that's like a non issue so i really think the board needs to take a hard look and it's been something that's been happening for years and zoning doesn't allow it and they're not supposed to be able to park commercial charging in residential zones and that's a bottom line thank you thank you anyone else ok no one else so we really haven't you say we have two alternatives one is to you would be the boy selectman and have a public hearing and allow people to come in comment a second way is to go directly to town meeting with what the proposed by law to do the three of you have a recommendation as to which one is your preferred method proposed poem till the third week of may for budget reasons whatever and there's a concert coming or something we just would want to be lined up point good point it so we could schedule that some time you know down the road before a town meeting probably and take with you folks to discuss what we discussed tonight because they may not be here this evening to talk about where it's going and why it's going there and that there certainly is a compassion for when they have family members no one saying you can't have family and friends come to your house every part of town has birthday parties or whatever they do and maybe kind of have a dialogue with them to see their thoughts and ideas on how we might be able to do something that addresses the root cause of the issue but at the same time does not infringe upon their rights to have neighbor our friends relatives come visit them in any time whether it's a game day or not again i mean i don't know any other part in town that's there's a rule that says you can't have more than five family members a time is it you know and they're you know so we're trying not to be unreasonable about it but again it gets back to this commercial operation and we want to avoid what you said i sent a check in the first of the month in the non the your uncle harry for the rest of the season kind of a thing and you know we got to this we got to this place because of the abuse  and it's really a safety issue today that stated rest is absolutely public so so maybe before we have the public meeting if you had a chance to kind of brainstorm me with some of the neighbors that might help us think through what's the right the right balance to address mark's concern but ultimately i think you've heard from the board today that that we acknowledge that it's not allowed it's a safety issue and it has to get solved and it has to get saw before the next season starts and that's not just the football season but we've got concerts in the summertime so we need to we need to really get this thing done this spring ok thank you gentlemen appreciate your coming tonight but you're right right ok the next item on our agenda is town council proposals i had shared with kevin that the she had put together seemed to be very mechanical and that everybody was going to kind of get the same scores and so what i said what i thought in my dialogue was that we have a few that are fairly large firms the cover dozens and dozens and dozens of communities we have some that are fairly small we have you know questions just like you know some of talked about retainers and some of talked about hourly fees  some address the complexity that foxboro has and some don't and i thought what might be helpful is there's only six of them if we just had a little bit of a dialogue as a board is the board interested in a very large comprehensive full service f m interested more of a smaller firm does it matter to you whether they are more prover tain or versus hourly i know kevin and i had earlier in the year concerns about a retainer yet a number of them have talked about the advantages of retain g so i just thought if we could have a dialogue and maybe identify whether it's three or all six but certainly one of the six we already know quite well so that's really really only five and whether there are of those five other any that you particular interest in or not have an interest in and if we discounted one or two of them and said we were interested maybe we just meet one evening and we meet with three or four of them and interview them and i think it's also important as i said the cabin you know town council comes to  meetings but particularly to town meeting and it's important to have outstanding in my view outstanding communication skills and so you also to me you want to see and hear who's going to be representing at time zero how well they explain things to the public how well they communicate things in the public you can't get that from a proposal from a sheet that has scoring on it so i just thought we'd take you take a few minutes if you would in kind of share your thoughts and ideas and allow kevin to share his thoughts and ideas as well let me just mention something to the board there might have been a bit of a misunderstanding about what the scoresheet thing was all about all the scoresheet was designed to do was to list the requirements now these are things that i was required these are things that are in your hour of pay remember the can't then change the requirements after the fact so the board can have any discussion you want and do anything beyond the requirements but you can't suddenly now alter them let me give you so or do you agree that they all meet the requirements it and we came out with and i mean very close and i'll give you the the copies other because we did and you'll see with the three of us came out very close to one another so yeah and in fact what you've got here is a situation where for firms have your minimum requirements and two don't and that's the that's the bottom line so would you so my suggestion to have been to squalid yeah i would say frankly to have been disqualified are the two that don't have at least five or knowledge of that firm and no knowledge of any vigil and if i go on ancestors dot com i don't think we're really in that the point differential between those two forms and the other four is enormous and you say it's you know on the composite school is between the three of us this is the four that meet the requirements are all scored over four hundred and the two the didn't one scored under three hundred the o scored under to under one hundred four hundred one of the three hundred so they're way off in terms of what and the single biggest reason is because they don't have at least five in a simple clients so he'd have potential and that's presumably why we put that in the r p v because we don't want a company that's only got one or two other missile that's town council it's only want to two other towns you want at least five and beyond that's up to you but well that's why i didn't realize that was an r p shame on me i didn't see that concentration and i you know as a small business owner i like to work with other small businesses i like to work with them personally relations with people i enough front they stay the night they go obviously going to be competitive to but i found their resume strikingly better i don't want to firm that has a hundred other liabilities and other towns that's hundred different towns or fifty different town sending me a different guy i know they say if this person is going to be a target point i want from the get on one side law firm in this town where i could call and three get an answer to a bigger firm where i could call and get five different answers and i was promised that this would be the rate and it became this rate and then i was also promised that i could answer a question that would take other firms that had led very little experience in fifteen  but when you i guess i could say them all the way i found these and i put a lot of time as i find it very hard to put out a first name myra's my right virus and harrington two weeks and two weeks and then there's nobody here said weeks to do anything come in two weeks and then we got this after all out days after our last meeting logs everything else we got to deal with i was actually trying to get to this i don't you know want to get to a for me i did well but again the review of the proposals is a whole separate issue the art of p you were guy i can go check and see how long y'all had it but you had it for weeks some of you submitted comments the art of pique came here to a meeting one night here i sat right here in a meeting and i said do you approve this or do you want changes i put your edits in i put it out it's a came up at the meeting i send it back to you again you look at it again and you have now published that folks you have sent out to the world and said this is what we want you can now turn around and say that's not what we want we want something altogether different now that you a firm that i really white their resume more than one to help would have under five towns i don't know that was going to be the situation and i understand how we would see the board what they want to do with this because it's a dilemma with me well i mean i'm the other one that you probably slap and right now too but you know and very well you should i'm not sure that you should and not because we sent out an r f p and i right she would have been great if we got you know two hundred you know law firms that want to represent us and then you know that's a great starting point but you know when i picked up the six of them and i looked at your school or sheet i said and i started doing i'm like ok well they're all like close by and they're all you know the five members but when i start you know they're not some of them have one hundred and some that have twenty five the some that have whatever so  you know again you have to remember we're all individuals here and we all have our own little quirks about us and how we do things you understand that right kevin so don't slap us that hide for working outside them so i took the time and i went through every six of them and the one for having you know myers and harrington you know if they started right off and they were very you know open with us and said look we can understand that it was like in the r f p but you know nevertheless they prepared it because they believe that they offer us something different and when i you know if if you folks looked at it and said i'm sorry it doesn't meet two of the criteria for p and you guys already threw him out the window then you guys confused me and i'm even more confused now looking at the way jim and lorraine scored it and you and i see member of mass board five points federal bar five point five zero one two three four five six questions worth five points each which totals thirty so how do you get one hundred thirty seven hundred forty nine hundred twenty two hundred forty nine from their statement see this this is what i think actually is the beauty of this tool is what differentiates even if you dropped that everybody five points for the not having more than three clients it's the statement of experience and the municipal law experience they grade themselves on in their proposals and that's what creates these total points so these are there but it's not our points on top of your five right or right so even if you take out five for everybody you think thirty all for everybody right so this is this is how the score should works the first five factors are the ones that you said right the five of you said you want as a minimum qualifications they have to be admitted to the massachusetts bar right they have to be admitted to the federal bar right they have to have an office within fifty miles because they all charge for commuting they have to have at least twenty different areas of minnesota law i would put it in three sections one was commercial because if there is one thing that is an overwhelming concern in this community is the stadium and it's there for commercial so we asked them to rate themselves and submit a whole section just talking about their commercial experience and you had to read them and make your own subjective five point one b n not a lot five b n a lot then we gave them t their six brands so they provided their own scores and i think what you have to look at very carefully is companies that graded themselves low you know experience you've got to ask yourself if they don't think they know a lot about what we want to do why would we think they know a lot about what they are and if you look at the scores the two companies are graded themselves low with the two that came out loud and the reason they came alone was because they themselves didn't think they had a lot of experience and that's frankly not a surprise because then they also tell you they've only got one or two clients in a civil clients so obviously if a company has only got one of two towns as their client then they're not going to have a lot of experience in municipal law and they know it about you but when i go to more of the pianist and he's going to cut on my knee the very first thing i say to him is tell me where you went to school tell many home and tell me how many of these you've done and i'm sorry if it offends and i want to know and if it offends him he's not going to name well similarly with a professional like a lawyer you have every right to say how many towns you know do you have as clients you're going to be our town council how many do you have as clients and then you have a right to say to him and what do you for experience and zoning and what do you have for experience in commercial and what do you have for experience in environmental on a set or several it's obvious and if you get somebody who admits right to you i don't have a lot of experience and frankly why the heck would we want to pay the tax payers money to hire because here's what you're going to do you're going to pay that person to do a lot of research every time you ask them a question because they don't know the answer so they don't have to go find out now as a lawyer you know and you know you want to do that because you're going to get a lot of good service just understand if you go to the small from that there's not a lot of experience because you like a small firm because of the personal relationship just understand you're going to pay a lot more than if you go with a from that's got either a middle number of clients five to ten or from has got a lot more but that happens i don't believe that happens on the other have the spectrum to get in because you know they've they you know we've gone from the lowest on your score sheet too pretty high on a school sheet within the last three years so and honestly i don't know that going to a bigger firm has helped us because i just i don't see that it has i don't see that it has so size law practice is a bit seven or eight lawyers on them yet but they're not they're not big minister bull practices they're mostly private sector and they say that in their proposals we don't do a lot of muni law one of them has our neighbor sharon and that call a minister boy or with experience a town council experience has been doing it twenty twenty five thirty years some of these folks have they don't go research they give you an answer like that really go really commonly really i would have been i've been doing this a long time well i'm talking within the last year since you've been here the council you have right now does not do that and that presumably is one of the questions that has led to the issuance of this pay right now when you ask a council who's very experienced a question you tend to get a quickie answer which is an inexpensive answer because they've already dealt with that question for one of their other five or history of fifteen or twenty minutes of a client because we all tend to ask the same questions if you deal with an attorney who has one or two other than a simple clients they tend to have not heard our question before so they're going to have to go research it research cost one hundred eighty dollars an hour it's a it's a it's a policy question of the board if you want to pay for that research time  speaking as your town manager i will tell you i know all these companies all of them dealt with almost every one of the principals in these except one and i will tell you that on this piece of paper there are firms who when you pick up the phone and you call them with the kinds of questions we ask you will get very quick answers and you will not pay a lot of money for that there is a giant company on this piece of paper complement in page thirty forty fifty sixty seventy town councils and over one hundred cities and towns of their council to it could be special councils or town councils but they're the giants in the business now the advantage is there's no question we're going to ask them as somebody hasn't already asked them except for the some of the special things we do related the state the disadvantage to a company like valve is we're a small fish in a big blunt they might not like that the middle range companies black and brown skinned need though each williams and you already know them that your car council murphy has see those are medium sized companies that have five to fifteen minutes a bill clients that we're we're going to be a pretty big fish in a little pond so it's going to be a little bit different and that might be the compromise from what you're looking for middle ran companies that were an important client for but still have a big body of experience and lead lawyers who have got twenty years experience in a simple law that are going to the people advise you so that might be the compromise you want but all this was designed to do by the why was your screen it so that you go from six to a smaller number and you need interview the smaller number because at the end of the day the right counsel whoever it is is the one of the five of you want it's got to be somebody that's got a fit with the and as i like to say just like your town manager your counsel has to be have enough backbone to stand up and tell you things that sometimes you don't want to hear but that you need to hear so that you will have the best information to make a good decision you don't want to layer it don't want to time energy and you don't want to see a phone advising you or police chief who's going to say we're going to figure out what the answer of the board really wants to hear exactly want us to give out on information right and you want to sometimes get mad at you like you got mad at me a little earlier that's ok because if i sit here and i don't give you good advice i tell you what i think you want to hear you may make a mistake i mean that's what you're paying a professional for me to give you good advice so you want to talk to these folks and you want to make sure that they're going to do that for you and that only happens in an interview right so all this is designed to do is to get you down to a smaller number but frankly isn't six it's my mom you know if you want to interview six companies then you should interview six companies right you've got the to reject it start over but you know like it or not the proposal went out people had a chance to look at it maybe smaller firms said ok i don't qualify i won't do it some said ok i'll still do it last but still no album others may have sold screened and didn't almost assuredly bound by definitely and morally because if you sent that out and you said this is the minimum qualifications and other companies didn't the right lie because they couldn't meet them and then you turn around and you interview a potentially higher these proposals i was just trying to organize the information that each firm had presented to us so there's some extra copies and so i just listed the to some of the highlights comments retainer what it includes what's not included the hourly rates travel coffee discussion who their town council for just like as a starting point for us to all be able to see easily because it's hard when you're poring through these to keep straight who's got what and who's you want so you know i thought this could be a starting point you know again i think that the the scoring she did what i understood it would accomplish which is to screen us to a group who we could interview i understand what you know mark and linda are saying that the i have concerns about that that  t i really think that foxboro being unique as it is i think that looking at the sizes of these firms that we're considering here that scored highest and and again i just ask that everybody take a look at the section that talks about the municipal experience and the statement of experience where they graded themselves i think that's critical because you see their own grade of their own strengths and weaknesses and that's what really made this fall out the way it did so you know i think i know we went out to our if p everyone said we're going to do this to see what's out there i think this is a good indication of what's out there for foxworth to consider and i think that i know that my colleagues may not be happy to hear me say this but i think when we see what's out there and when you look at these scores based on experience and i really think that there's no doubt in my mind as i've said in the past that we have good town council right now they have been strong they've had a backbone i think that the art of p that just went and you know that's being responded to right now for water and sewer for the advertising management is a perfect example of how good of a job they have done on behalf of the town and so i really think that this tool has shown us that we have good counsel now and to take it any further i think is a tough exercise because i think we're at a critical point right now we've got this has seen zero thing looming at us we have counsel who is from mill you with us who's familiar with working with the craft organization and has you know obviously they have a background also in the casino development of the regulations i thought that the presentation that was done to us was excellent there's obviously more that we can learn from them i really think that the service that we've gotten i have not heard really i understand that people have issues sometimes that you know they expect a clear or shorter answer i think maybe working for a an attorney i don't have that level of expectation because i expect that when i ask a question i want researched and especially given our circumstances in foxborough you know we're so different i'm not surprised that maybe it takes a little longer to get certain answers but that translating into cost if we're on a retainer go back to the retainer situation we're on again i think we continue in a good direction with our current town council and it's almost like i feel like at this point in time where we have so many this critical issue of the casino that we're like it's like we're changing quarterbacks in the fourth  well why would we do that at this point so i just want to put that out there for you know my colleagues to consider that i really think that this helps confirm that we aren't in a bad place with our current t are in a very good place with our current town council where you see where they were the only thing i would disagree with you lorraine is i think that when you look at ours and you look at retain as we look at dollars and cents yes they are in a competitive ballpark but  i think that at times there have been been issues personality issues or quality issues or whatever it might be and that it is important and you can't get that from the proposals and you can't get it from the spreadsheet here manager it's about the fit how they going to fit into the organization it's about checking the references we certainly have i think the five of us have a background with the current law firm that we use and we have our own thoughts and ideas on that and i don't think it hurts us to interview a number of these other firms and have them come in and to showcase to us their differences and how they how they respond to boards of selections and what their personalities are like and how they answer questions and how they might interact with us and then to check references in these other communities that they work out just to find out it's one thing to have a lawyer that's competitive price wise and there's certainly there's no doubt about that competitive pricing and in fact when you went through the proposals they're the only ones who don't charge to come to a meeting they charge you for meeting time they don't charge to drive your most the most of the charge half or something to charge or so that you know from a financial standpoint there's certainly an attractiveness to retaining that the current attorney but i think it's more than just the dollars and cents it's it's getting comfortable around the firm itself the breadth of the experience that the speed at which they can respond at the the ability to communicate effectively to the board to the community etc and i just think you know we owe it to ourselves at this point after doing this much work to at least invite a few in and and see what we think of them i just want make it clear larry that i wasn't even addressing the price competitiveness of current town council i'm focusing strictly on quality of product that has been delivered to the town since i've been on the board and i think that again that's that's where that's really what's having me try to point this out to everybody as we go forward with this exercise because again i think you know from the beginning it was just that we just want to see what's out there and i think that shows us what's out there jim yeah a couple things i thank you i think i don't want to send it out just to see what's out there i  want to bring people in and listen to him and see what we're missing or what we have so i look at it a little differently that the firms that i expected to comma i look at law firms for my experience or even the year and a half i've been here actually three different types of firms that usually deal with either a single one person firm with maybe a minimal staff we didn't get any of that that's that's a small firm which was good out of the six that we got i think two of them were medium sized firms medium firms a handful of attorneys with appropriate staff and i think the two people that we've got in that category gellman and arrington fit into the medium size the larger firm we've got one that claims to filled out the evaluation form i'm surprised that your number and my number and your number one identical because there was no subjectivity in there from what i do the way i read it we looked we asked the firms to rate themselves and they did and all we did was just tally it up so you know if you got five points if you had five clients municipal five if you had more than five and we asked among the two tabs about two dozen questions and they rated one through four so they should all be identical i didn't look at any of the say which one was better but just to see how they fell out of those six firms i'd put them in two separate categories some of the larger firms provide legal services so if you want to go to a shopping list of litigation and supreme court the larger firms excel in that area they've got a hundred lawyers and they've got people in and out with you so their scores on those are higher than the medium sized firms the medium sized firms i would categorize as legal not legal services but more of legal counsel i think some of the success of the smaller firms is because it doesn't get to the point we need the legal services they're more user friendly their business is influenced by our contract and vice versa they're here they're approachable and i think they work hard to work things out i don't know gallopin and i'd haven't worked with them but from my experience he considered a table in work out differences so it doesn't get to this table he's less apt to swear people in at the table and go through the formality because the issues got worked out we don't have to spend in crunch through the process going up and up and you saw this over this past year at some of the biologic where you know it was more if we get turned down well this is how we litigate it let us go in this direction so the larger firms excel in that in there is a reason for that in there's a need for that the smaller firms i think i'm more in tune to the smaller towns now the casino issue i don't i'm not going to mince my words about this whatever council we have is not the council we're going to use for that if it if and i want to casino i don't even know if there's an attorney in massachusetts that's qualified i think we may have to go to las vegas and look i don't know but whatever we have is not this right in this what we have would legal issues with a person now or  contracts is not we have a different counsel for that as well ok we're looking for meaning and we may think was special because we have the stadium but but when the majority of the work is something that any age so you look at experience that they have their partners sixty five years of experience serving the needs of littleton stockbridge  air bridgewater hamilton kingston rockland surely stourbridge where and when him that's probably a good amount of experience for the size firm i don't want many more than that i don't think we need to look at gellman's you know and he's been here for i don't know how many years there he served here for thirty plus years in foxborough representing sharon tunnel westwood city quincy subway housing authority mansfield special counsel town of rent them these are towns that have you look at random you get thirteen million people a year coming in and out of the whole album you know you know i don't think any of these are under qualified to work  foxboro and i think we should take a hard look at our relationship community building working with people you know we come and go this is going to be an election every year two people leave two people leave one person comes in  i think legal counsel to this board into the town is sometimes more appropriate than a lottery list of legal services so the reason that the legal services firms the larger ones scored high is because they're in that area and i don't think we need to get in that area if we if we get up to the area where where in front of you know the stuff that they're in court yes supreme court we've got bigger issues than you know a population of eighteen that direction but i don't think the firms that applied necessarily don't meet the criteria and there's a question i want to ask you jim because this right was a little confused to us so i thought you did what i did you did some circling so kevin just  help us so i don't have to read the r p in front of me did it say that they have to have five as of the day that they did the proposal or as jim just pointed out for both of those they've had more than five communities that they don't know what not you have to go get it for you but one thing i want to comment because i've spent a lot of time reviewing these jim but some of the councils that you just mentioned for the two smaller firms they were not town council he was special counsel gregory particular project  here's my car chanel reno to the board lawyers like doctors like engineers like tom who just specialize in certain areas that the this is the sort of specialization the generalist is hard to find any more and indeed you go to your general practitioner doctor and if you're sick what is he or she do typically send you to a specialist municipal law has become his specialty it didn't used to be  it's an accident lawyer i'm going to go find one of those ambulance chaser guys because they terrify the other party and they do good by if i'm on trial for a dui i'm going to go find out who the the point is if you need a specialist in any in one of these areas they're there and that's why we have five now if i need that specialist and you know it matters to me you know in terms of my settlement of the litigation that might happen to be advice i'm going to get i'm not going to go find somebody who doesn't do a lot of that kind of law i'm going to go find somebody who does pretty much exclusively that kind of law if i experience compared to firms that have a lot of miserable experience what you are doing is you make a conscious decision to go with a far less experienced person when you heard me there you hired a thirty year experienced person now you could have hired somebody with five years in pam a lot less but you made a decision in a community like this that deals with issues that are vastly disproportionate to our small town size that you need a body of experience in your senior professionals that requires them to be late career people not rocky's ok honey i will tell you that the lawyer you need in this community is not the lawyer who's got one or two three towns or a special kurt about it when when the stadium came in here and there was foxboro and then they chose to expand it to the patriots place tourney that we had was the same attorney that you want to exclude from this yes he's very qualified he's a veteran he's got you know decent experience you know this this is his package and it's not the best looking it's you know could have been blowing in gold you know first you know this where they've got to turn his i think he did a damn good job on this and and i think he's appropriate size that can handle fox well i would hope we get into this along to big i'm sorry guys but i to handle when i go to the doctor i'm not going to go to a doctor that does brain surgery and hearts are going to go to a generalist these guys are qualified and in a civil law this is what they do if talking comes up and it's out of their expertise then we hire special counsel that's what these guys do as well if you look at their resume they have been special counsel to some very housing authority mansfield special counsel they do that and they also do general municipal law and that 's what they do in a time when i was trying to get to jim i was trying to get before we make the decision mark is that kevin started by saying there were two that were non responsive my word maybe not his but the two that would be disqualified because they didn't meet it but but i don't know from a technical standpoint if that's correct or not because it depends on how you count the towns that they had on their resume so it would be important to get you know you as the chief if you're an officer of the town which you  are to officially tell us whether or not when you go back and look at the r of p when they identify six or eight communities that they've worked on does that technically qualify or not now you can say you still wouldn't pick them but but i need to know from a technical standpoint is good rationale for including them as opposed to just saying well we made a mistake in the proposal so we're going to know that that's i'm just trying to understand that i mean i just ask the question i thought in the r p and i don't have money i thought we should five years of experience not five let me get it for you because i think that's what we agreed to was five years experience i don't remember ever seeing it five talent that's why i have kind of caught off guard yeah well i remember kevin talking about the importance of having some breadth of experience but when you look at some of these  these are the listed minimum qualifications and section three counsel must be a member in good standing of the massachusetts bar provide to be on number trial course a mouse chooses counsel must be licensed to practice  town hall item three the appointee must represent or have represented as general town council a minimum of five massachusetts municipalities of over fifteen thousand population each for no less than five years each falls right right so there's three things within that within that town council five times fifteen thousand population in five years and i didn't get that specific  because what i noticed was that two didn't cut the mustard in terms of that they weren't even close the rest did and i left it to a higher level of analysis presuming frankly that you would screen all those to interview the four and then you'd get into eyes now so i think that answers the question because you based on your own or of p there's no way these other two companies can meet that criteria so that's presumably why they ice that's why i scored  well and why in the one the one subjective area where you could and the only place where there was a real difference between the way the three of us scored it we came out very close but the only real difference was in the number of towns they represented as town council or not because that was a ten point swing and it was also a difference in commercial development experience because they gave you a whole page on that and i looked at don i said this guy's got a lot of experience that's a five and guys give or a minimum that's a couple points so those are the carious now again and i want to be sure the board is clear on this you were not bound by this this is not a legal requirement but your problem is in my estimation an ethical one because if you publish this and you said this is what you want there's a lot of town councils out there you pick up the beginning you look in the back they all a lot of them  lot that didn't respond to you and i know for point of fact at least one that didn't because he called me and he said is that five town business real and i said yeah it's really r a p yep it's real and he said we don't have it and i said do what you  want now did more not respond because of that i can't tell you but i can tell you there's a lot of town councils that didn't respond presumably because they read this and can't meet something they're all hungry i can tell you that they're all looking for clients so i think you have an ethical problem if you know after publishing those open it up to companies that clearly didn't meet your standard my recommendation to you is if you want to open it up to the companies that can't meet this but made a different set of criteria my suggestion is reject them all and start over nice believe me i'm not saying that lightly because that's a huge amount of work for me  but i would rather see you do that then get yourselves into a problem with one of more law firms who say whoa wait a minute i didn't apply you know what they had here is i i don't know that they can cause us legal problems but i don't know they can't either attention i would have had that in there and the r p my bad i'm just going to hear about i made a mistake by allowing that and they are paid public image that statement i myself would see that you know what bound i'm fine with that to keep these they're just going to resubmit them save to tell some paperwork and asked we would go back out there because i agree with jim one hundred percent i agree with linda that i want  i'd rather see this come back and i want to i don't want to make this mistake because i think if we don't do it i will make a mistake in that you know i had both councils i mean you had one i had both and i like the last just want to suggest if that is the way the board to serious to go there all of these entities would need to respond again because i think if you're opening up to a much larger group that may change the landscape for the proposals of you know cost wise or whatever in terms of their competitiveness so i just would suggest that so i'm set so that you open it up that you open it up you have to get a better price everybody that had it right yeah absolutely and then you can rate him with that minus the new restrictions i'd like to see often that's i mean because you've got five years of experience times ten and one of these firms would six different talents it's not his talent coun members mention prior counsel gillerman i think is what has been discussed i'm just going to ask a question point out you do majority of you want to hire him because if you do you have a right to hire i've never i've never met him i maybe i met him once never had a discussion with him about this he's got an impeccable reputation in town for the work that he did and i think even when the town council switched it was not because people weren't happy with him or he did something wrong so you know for a firm this size to do so much for so long in foxborough to just take it and say big is bigger is better you know that's why that this this is intriguing to me and i mean i can give you history when when the vote came i was the only one who said you know what i i'm not going to vote for a new council even though gallon and had said you know i'm not even i'm not going to put my my hat in the race he didn't put our feet he didn't put his hat in but i still felt like you know again four years ago we said well let's just go out there and test what is well i know exactly what my other four best what members if if a majority the board feels strongly that you need to start this thing all over then i'm going to offer you two cautionary notes and i was going to offer these earlier because frankly i really didn't think that's what you were going to do here that sounds like you might be going at what i don't know the two cautionary notes number one when we do it this time i understand that if we look at that our of  let's be sure that when we send it out and we say these are our minimum criteria that in fact everyone has agreed these are the criteria whatever they may be these are the criteria and if you're hearing a little frustration from me folks i apologize but you know this is a look at this this was a huge body of work this took me dozens of aa was to do i mean no repeat you know i always went into th and i was going to throw in a trash can and will start all over and i can't tell you how frustrating that is for me i can tell you second point i think you are great i hope i have larry because my time is paid for by you right and so when i waste dozens and dozens of i was i just waste the whole pile of money and as we should i'm given i appreciate that but we don't play that the dollar yes if we make this decision based on a few of your hours and we make a mistake there's a heck of a lot more at stake in the other side so i do understand that one way was saying you know pennywise pennywise and pound foolish but i think we're looking at the bigger picture or on the same boat very much stuck with holes in the other side on this front off second point i don't know what you're going to get for proposals the second time around because i'm going to be honest with you we're going to look a little silly help there to the world i will which way she let me very much let me  please understand what these law firms are going to see we send out our paper we say here's what we want is a minimum credit criteria we get those in companies don't minute meet it we put a new r p i out that's got some different criteria and we say please but again now if you were a law from face with their scenario i'm going to tell you right now we will probably get less p you know not obligated to take it you could change it and send it happens all the time maybe less in municipal but maybe they'll look at it and say well now it's going to be a little more competitive like laurie said and i sharpen my pencil and be a little more competitive  m and if they don't want to send bennett you know like you said people are hungry and if it's because of a glitch and mark apologize i'll apologize if it makes it easier i missed the five years but if they're not going to submit maybe you know all the better minutes ago you said you know if we go back if we you go with one of the firms that scored low because of the five years it's address then you know morally we look bad so right then you took my hat and said ok right well then what are we going to do to make it right so you suggest well we can just trash everything in go back go so i said ok that's great now you know it has no folks we or agree with the minimum criteria that you yourselves approved and you want to change those sold value can look at other companies like the two that didn't qualify then the only way you can do that i think fairly to ties i think is the only way to do it you know that is a point of fact that is not something that i'm happy to recommend to you and in fact i'm not happy to recommend to you that to you i think it's a mistake i think it's a bad idea because you're probably going to limit the number of proposals you get from qualified for arms and i've already told you as far as i'm concerned we are isn't harrington and young women and whoever can do this job the way those other from they have a lot more experience of municipal law can do it how do i know that because i've dealt with a lot of those firms over the years and i know what it takes and i'm telling you right now a firm that's got seven or eight simple town council clients and a bunch of other special knows more about this business and can give you better service better quality at a lower price than somebody who's got a lot less experience what they h common sense could almost tell you that but i'll tell you also a lot of experience tells you that too and exactly kevin i go with both these and i want i figured out is it's exactly the opposite of the statement you just made and i think i find that offensive because if you've worked with all of them i worked with them and i'm telling you right now ninety thousand dollars by law that went in the trash can is worth a lot more less than what we're going to do right now resubmit the arab peace and waste a couple of weeks because that was just horrible what that whole town talks occasion by law was horrible right from the start we lost ninety thousand dollars on it and i'm not interested in that kind of council again that's why i want to deal with the interview process if we have to go back oh let's do it and mark just to make it clear for the folks at home when you say we lost ninety thousand the bylaw had a funding mechanism and when the attorney general struck down the bylaws being illegal then you couldn't implement the funding piece of it so therefore we didn't collect the money that we thought we're going to collect right so the the legal expense we put together to create the bylaw a attachment fifteen criteria in terms of areas of practice the attorneys themselves not us the attorneys themselves got to write themselves this from a young woman who could run in those fifteen criteria with for being very experienced gave themselves one two three four that w three being extensive experience gave themselves one two three four three s with the two being so moderate they gave themselves one two three four five six t had to go to court so when you get one whether the lowest on a category of appeals before massachusetts supreme digicel court you know how many times we had to do then you have to go that's where the city of boston you know i wouldn't pick this guy because they're appealing every other day every other day but really put it in the perspective where a population of eighteen or so thousand people with the stadium have we ever gone to the appeals before the massachusetts superior court we haven't so that one doesn't bother me i turn to attachment age and he scored the highest in every single category except for one category where he was a two so so let me let me explain on attachment you've picked out the massachusetts supreme court probably very few of them of ever argued there if any of all these applicants but the mass of a service commission the joint labor management committee the mas commission against discrimination the labor relations commission that was the way lawyer would do i am so i would little be doing all those not necessarily no he doesn't know right leader would be doing the civil service commission yet he wouldn't be doing there we just hired a special counsel to delay b c c because because our current attorney didn't have the experience so you decided to hire a special counsel but given he is now you rambling off the same the d p leo wouldn't do that full of them all the time when full of them white now can right now and he's got almost no experience in a lot of these areas don't you think there's a reason why i'm being so strenuous again about this folks it isn't because i don't like this firm or the other firm is because emotional we all get that way sometimes all right i don't think it's wise to make decisions when there's a lot of emotion so i either like to ask the board to let's put it back on the agenda for the next meeting everybody let's you heard kevin in very passionate way go back look at the polls and then make a decision in two weeks i don't think two it's going to make a difference but i think we ought to let cooler heads prevail now that we're just a couple of hands in the audience and i'll just take a couple questions if they had a question but you have to give your name and address for the record all right i will try to make a quick george let it it's not a question you know to kill him and since he moved into town and has moved out the thirty plus years that i've lived here dick gentlemen was our town the only reason calamine is not still continuing to be our town council is because the previous word regarding a dog park they were wrong and the minute he told our board they were wrong they wanted an r f p out for a new and he was he knew he wasn't going to get it because he didn't tell them what they wanted to know of what they wanted to hear so you know what figure we had small and your limited and yet firm i never ever remember going to a team meeting and coming in here having somebody ask him a question and he didn't have any answers but i remember sitting at a special town meeting and mr durant's just wasn't there and he sent another attorney and a question was asked from the audience and he couldn't answer the question that's a big law firm that we're dealing with and big money so now we've had big law firms and we having gotten everything we need we are not a unique situation lorraine we are a town of eighteen thousand people you keep saying that where morally and ethically and we're going to be the laughing stock we already are we already are out there right now with the way the firm we need someone who comes in and knows the town knows the people in the town and how the town works so we've had we've had ways all right thank you very much what i'd like to do is as i'd like to put this on the agenda for the next meeting and i'd like to take a five minute recess and then we come back i will say on the budget what kevin and i talked about in the budget just so you know as you as we go to break here the the ad com has continually advocated for a closer working relationship with the board of selectmen so what i said to kevin is that as one person i would i would prefer not to approve the budget tonight how manages budget i would like to schedule a joint meeting with the calm allow them to share their thoughts their ideas allow us to share our thoughts our ideas and to to try to improve that working relationship that they've been critical of and they may have questions that they've researched that they have answers to and we have questions and we kind of all work together on that but obviously it's up to the board to decide if they want to do that kevin in the town and the department have done tremendous work they've got very good news they've they've been very great at getting things done ahead of time i'm just trying to be cognizant of the criticism we've had in the past from the atacama i think this is an opportunity to reach out into kind of work a little bit more collaboratively and having a joint meeting with them on the budget might be helpful but let's just take a five minute recess come back we'll talk about the budget and then we have an executive section and some action items to take care of ok thirteen operating budget and as i said before the break that in listening to some of the suggestions in the past from the from the ad com i thought that a way that we might bridge some of our gaps and build our relationships would be to schedule a joint meeting where they can come in and they can share their thoughts and ideas and we have a collaborative dialogue as opposed to two independent distinct groups they've done their research we've done so our research i think pulling some thoughts and ideas would be very very helpful but i don't know what how the board wants to proceed so i'll throw it out to the board i talked about this last year and you know we got to really start on that this year  be in together on this and i i totally agree that we should you know not necessarily be together on each line item i don't know that i i think that just trying to put a plan together chairman of the advisory committee is that he has a i'll call it a philosophical view of how the budget should be put together he talks often about zero based budgeting and that it shouldn't be last year's plus two percent or last year's plus one and he has some some opinions on the process it's better and and some distinct opinions on different aspects of the budget and i just think that it's important for us to have those dialogues rather than we just do our vote and they just do their vote and we get to town meeting and maybe we're not on the same page and we're talking out of it for him no we still may have a different view at the end but i thought it would be important to let them share with us their concerns their thoughts their ideas you know at times there's i think the joint meeting would be good i just want to say you know tonight i was prepared to mention a couple of specifics on it i have attended all of the comm eatings and i want to commend them on the thorough job they do on reviewing the budget they really ask very pointed questions to each of the department heads and i think everyone every department head walks out feeling equally fried by the process so you know they've done a great job really and i just had a couple of thoughts for two of the budgets one was the d p w and i know that the said jim had mentioned something about this too there are two positions being proposed and  i had suggested an email to kevin that you know it it's clear that historically they have been understaffed perhaps looking at one of those being proposed in the other position rather than fill it look at whatever that cost is plus benefits and using that those dollar amounts to subcontract out for tree trimming help or whatever makes the most sense to the department but with the idea that last week's presentation which was public safety  very long discussion about again police staffing and the problems that are going on what's happened with just call volume how everything about patriot place impact based on that initial review by the patient place for you committee has come through issue and in terms of the numbers of calls and the impact and how far off they are from what the number of f t s they were supposed to be at based on the recommendations of that study back then so you know i thought if we were looking at potentially two positions in the budget this year perhaps one for d p w one for police department again tying in the fact that there is also discussion about it over time analysis and perhaps that would help you know certainly there wouldn't be elimination of a lot of overtime but maybe that would help in terms of funding opposition so that's what my observations have been over the past presentations there's one more tomorrow night fire games yeah i won't talk about any of the budget questions or details but i think it's a long time coming and it's if the timing works out you know a lot of the department heads of already made it up their presentation and i think the ad com has changed a little bit over the last year or so that you're taking it all in and then you've got to spit back a process so if we can get in there before that's out i think the timing is great mark and i appreciate larry because about it well and i do appreciate that but i also want to make sure that the public knows how hard kevin in the department heads and randy and everybody worked on getting the budget done early and i think that i'd also give our new head of d p w a credit for he's come in and he's looked at things a very critically and and jump in and trying to do some of the analysis and you see the team of three of them here tonight at nine thirty ready to deal with anything we have so i think we're fortunate in that sense and hopefully you know kevin i can reach out to mr grey and we can schedule something to dig into the budget in a little more detail and you've got her that's not a no one should offer you criticism you've got way more on your plate in a variety of places and the icon does but it's your smart business to take advantage of the knowledge that they've gained in going through it in detail and you know compere one thing i did want the board to be aware of and a reason raj and dave and bob are here tonight and randy is well  there's not a whole lot new in the budget as you know but there is one place with a something new and that's the two there's actually two things in the d p over budget this year there's one position out now that's inefficiency roger achieved in the clerical area by  putting a plan to cross train the clerical staff and we're going to go from five full time was to four so one position was caught we to put two labor is in now originally i had led you to believe because i believed that those laborers combined with a seventy foot bucket could get up over the wires and actually do work that the power company doesn't do well thanks to jim initiating a conversation with national grid and he's kind enough to include me when i found out was that guy is a little this communication on my part and talking to d p w in a point of fact we can't work all of those wires there's all sorts of reasons why we can't do it the reason they really want those two paper copy tonight so the board can take a look at that now i think there's plenty of need to justify those two laborers and one of the things we're trying to do in the deep is not just get a  couple more people to increase the staff because it's a lot smaller than it used to be meanwhile the need to grow we're also making a conscious decision to try to get to young strong people the notion being as our w gets older it ages they're much more susceptible to injury and you know as i told dave i'm almost my age and as he's still a tough guy nonetheless that's the case so as we get older david and bob help them do that and we sat down have a great meeting jim and i had a long discussion with marcy and some of her folks at national grid and what we learned was that they are doing more than what i thought they would doing they may need a change of policy to be more effective that's the so called ground the sky policy as opposed to the let it hang over the why is that if we change the policy and i'm hoping to have a discussion with the board at a future date by using the exact same resources their use and they can probably protect us a lot better and we don't need to spend the taxpayers money hiring people to duplicate that but then having said that if it is good justification and you know if the board after you look at that says well you know what you have to probably have that on the other hand public safety is a purdy too and we'd rather see you know one labor and a police officer because the dollars on hugely different police officers are obviously more you know on a slate if i was writing the budget today instead of two months ago i wrote it i might well make that recommendation anyways so that's kind of your call the only other thing i want to add is that we don't have any final numbers yet we're not there yet there's still a lot of things changing but the situation is rolling out exactly as we had hoped it appears  that our budget is going to have even with these laborers in it or labor in a police officer whatever we you decide you want to do it appears that we will have a very very large positive balance the budget as it's currently constituted and assuming the school committee approves the kind of budget that they've been talking about there will be a substantial positive balance and you will have the issue put before you and so i guess i want to say to you whereas when i said this back in december it was kind of highly speculative now it's really in the category of this is going to happen and randy and i can tell you this is going to happen you're going to have multi hundreds of thousands that we don't need to spend to have these budgets that are before you the choice will be provide a some sort of tax relief in the form of and i we can't quite cut taxes i wish i could tell you that was  is instead of increasing them where they can legally go to and what we've done every year we don't have to go that high so it ends up however you want to define it as being of a nice opportunity for heck of a tax break for the taxpayers or you can add some things to the budget or you can do some combination it's going to be up to you i'm that's why it's so important to me with the outcome because they have a philosophical view and we should be having that dialogue as we go through the process and not fighting on the timing i just want you to be aware that it really is going to happen now we can say that with accuracy the exact number i can't tell you yet but it's going to be big and you're going to have that choice so definitely start thinking in those terms tomorrow night will meet with and in the memo it talked about the ball fields going from twenty acres to one hundred twenty acres and so there's obviously a lot of work to maintain all those fields  are there revenue opportunities to allow the fields to be self sufficient so that if you need x number of employees to relieve pain those is there a way to want to sesa fees so that the fields can be properly maintained the way they should be without taking away from resources that have to do other things within the town the short answer to your question is yes because it's a lot of times field maintenance is done very successfully through private charter private effort if you will in the east in all the fields up at the high school if you go up there and you look at that entire field complex all manage with pride you know tone employees are used but they're paid f source so it is possible to do it not going to say that it's easy to do it it's a lot of work to get to that point and frankly the way and hang them by the way we did it the same way it was all done pretty much but your private money the way it happened was parents of young families who wanted additional sports programs went out and raise the money the town was in  position to do it so they went out and raise the money to construct the fields and then to maintain them and so it wasn't the case that the town already construct constructed and maintain them and then the town walked  responsibility to be the liaison to the rec department so i went in there with the thing in my mind that says well how many kids do we have those put in a spreadsheet if every family chipped in three or four dollars you know your budget goes down and it takes is the burden off and i think you know they've laughing because i'm laughing i think they almost threw me out there's a little history and there's a lot of pride for not you know letting the flooding the families participate so there's a balance right if they don't pay their they pay and the taxes are some way but it's not just a six fold increase and more fields coming on you know you can expect to do more and more and more with less and less and less so so i was saying i'm trying to be sympathetic to the memo that was put forth and i think it's in need serial of what's happened so back in the seventy's the tree impact apartment was basically tree department what we had to maintain for grounds was the town hall the common and historical building a few out islands and that was it like basic job every single day except for that slight bit of grass was to do trees you know whether it was take them down take the dead wood out of you from the sides or ropes you know blank on is whatever it took and we had four people to do all that to do that and that was that the focus was basically trees now in one thousand nine hundred four when we took over the schools you know now would put dumped in with four people with all the grass and then as time went on it morphed into something bigger and more athletics more fields people expect a better quality of a better place to play a safer place to play so that's morphed into that we've only gotten two more people in so in order to keep up with that you know the equipment it's gotten bigger or better you know and it's time if if you want to go back to where you know you get a better tree department it's time to you know try to do something about that and every day on my desk i have some kind of a tree come play i mean and you know we got hammered and we're still doing the two storms from august up until this point so i mean it's it's not just trees it's not just grass you know the bucket truck is it and as far as the market truck goes i know that's that's a capital item but you know the reason i would just say the reason why i'm asking for a seventy four that is we've had that truck for thirty years the last truck we had for twenty five years it's time if we're going to upgrade let's make it easy right let's make the quitman a little bit better most of the canopy in this town is eighty plus feet and so when we try to go up and take a tree down you know where we're fifty feet  have but the outcome when it gets there but it seems like tree removal is something that you could sub out where you have a certain program you say you know three weeks out of the year so i don't know you don't deal with the  retirement benefits and health insurance and winter work and all that stuff if and when it gets to the ad com is that an analysis that you could probably get what i would say on that is all of my days here i've taken out thousands of trees and i'm just going to give you one example of one tree that got taken down because of that in the snow down not high street we had to take a tree down a good eighty five foot i didn't have the time to do it at that point because we were in the midst of everything that was on the ground you know with the storm so the town opted to have someone take that tree down at a cost of six hundred dollars you know that's one tree and the last week it was we needed the bucket truck for the national grid work right into labor's for the national debt kind of fell apart and i was said you can't even work over the right the trick was so now you need to back a truck in the two labor's or if you hire other folks you've got costs when you get rid of them if you decide you can't do it anymore and so not knowing what the economy will do you get it maybe a little bit more expensive but it may be less expensive in the long run if you don't think the economy's go just minor the paragraph on liquor regulations  fourth line down where it says page or place and chose not green that's just be have instead of board same paragraph on us six lines up you remember pointed out that not all issues are discussed in open meetings seven lines up the sentence starts lorraine brew pointed out that all members of the board straight should have an equal voice and should be able to process the information in order to make an informed decision all members of the board strike should have an equal voice in sirte and should be able to process the information in order to make an informed decision period question and then the last item is just that the board agreed to pose the question to town council and approved one hour it's not on here zero information from important individual meetings can be shared without violating open meeting law and when you give you that sentence afterwards  this it's in addition to the december twenty seventh meeting it's from the high school and the reason i'm making the addition because it was legal advice given to us and it just didn't make the meeting minutes in this regard in the casino in what i wanted to add in there was when asked by mr developes of the board of selectmen voted tonight in the negative we opening up the town of foxborough where the board is board of selectmen members as individuals to a lawsuit attorney duran's has stated that there is no liability because the vote is not binding  is an expression of where the board is at the time if a lawsuit was filed that would be a it would not be a meritorious lawsuit and the reason i'm adding in there is because it's been discussion lately of taking away rights in opening the town up so  on that same note yeah right where they are assess up on the top so we've already approved those meeting so there's a motion to amend those second and there's a second any discussion compliment as well from them so we're trying to make sure that they get the both the positive and negative the next item is reeky is from the recreation director requesting removal of the following not active members from the playing fields committee and there are four names on here that are not active members have not been able to attend meetings and they would like to replace them with more active people is there a motion think motion in second by mark all those in favor i oppose motion carries there's a request to replace those folks and we have a motion i move that we i posed the motion carries five zero this next item is interesting to me because just prior kevin was on vacation and i think it was  day or a day or two before our last meeting and sandy called me to say that the local area towns wanted to get together and have a meeting to discuss the legislation around gaming and would i would i nominate someone from the board to attend and i said no i wouldn't because we didn't have a board meeting and i thought we should discuss it in public because of all the issues that we've had relative to this and so she got back to them and said the boys like me doesn't meet till after your scheduled meeting and so  better postpone it and so this is an invitation to attend a rescheduled meeting of the area selectman reps town administrators town managers on wednesday february twenty ninth two thousand and twelve for the purpose of disseminating information relative to the new legislation explaining the process as it stands now but what bothers me is they make it clear that it's exempt from the open meeting law or they don't want to have it as an open meeting and i don't understand after all we've been through and all that we've discussed relative to this issue kevin can you help me understand if they're only going to be discussing the legislation process where it stands why it can't be a public meeting the original intent as i understood it and i was that i was kind of meeting of the managers when they discuss this and decided done except that we couldn't do it for all the reasons you just mentioned and actually ended up getting canceled anyways or have recently nothing to do with us from another new date going to tell you actually the end of the meeting but my annual training that i postpone last year i have to do it from february twenty second to march eighth which is a terribly inconvenient time then again and never is a good time so i won't be able to make this meeting so at least part of what they were trying to do which is to share information and understand how the process works are going to find somebody else to explain and we're certainly not going to sometimes counsel and pay for it so someone else will have to do it i don't know how they don't work that out now my understanding was that following that presentation i had offered that i would leave because they wanted to have a strategy session about how are affected how neighboring communities under the statute how they protect their interests and i said you know our interest as a whole is community potentially is not the same as yours so i offered i said i give the presentation i'll leave the leave and they said well why wait and we'll see and i said ok but clearly they were of a mind that they were going to discuss some strategy now would exactly want i don't know and that's probably why they don't want to public because they want to have a discussion amongst themselves about how to protect themselves so is that what is this going to be first of i guess on this right is that all they're going to discuss and who exactly is going to give us the answers because i foresee i don't know because after the meeting i was out you know they had further discussions auton straight as between themselves and i wasn't privy to that and i mean all the meeting was when they finally picked the day it wasn't even a day to day and told me about them and i want to change the date again they didn't ask me because i would have told them i can't be there guys so there's a lot about this that i don't honestly know because it's been the others talking and the fact that they're not including me in that i think is the liberty because they see their interests as different than ours and you know that's fine i mean it's so but the letter is  for the public's sake the letter is clear it says the purpose of the meeting is to disseminate information sounds like a public purpose relative to new legislation which is a public process and how it stands again this will not be a decision making meeting so why would you need close it to the public the meetings intent is to provide information which could be brought back to each community the community may then this determine to discuss how the information applies to them and what steps if any they should take so it's just it it struck me as unusual to make this a non open meeting when eleven murders that they describe as one of the fact that for the not for the just for saying that the other concern was if they made it a public meeting they would have to borrow the stadium to have it because they would have hundreds if not thousands of people but that's not a good reason not to make it about me grant you a lot of fun i'm not excusing it because i don't and i'm just saying no to the fact that they would have to have a that as a public meeting i'm not saying it's a public meeting i'm saying that you know there could be a possibility that three of us are going to go there and i don't want to go against them open meeting law that we are actually going there only they are only as vital and i represent that they only w of you to show up and when i don't want lenders to be accused if i get it of something that's inappropriate or that we picked one person just so we could make it private in the public didn't know what was discussed no and i just don't like the idea of the weather don't hold things just like a liquor license transfer as i did not give anything not been proposed and something else that is also might not come to fortune i know it's being you know proactive in anything else but you know we get so proactive on so many things you never even years this thing it going anywhere anytime soon so let's just settle down with this and stick to what we need to be doing for our own community and paul even brought that point on in his presentation saying that the regulations aren't written yet so actually this is w do that so it makes you know i mean i certainly understand and want to do it just you know we've always tried to be sensitive to unintended consequences and it just seems to me that the way they've referred to the way they wrote the letter raises concerns that somebody to feel like what was what was on behind doors why didn't you know it was going on it just didn't seem to be you know proper and the more i think about it the more i think you're right i can't go i'm physical there's one thing larry probably you know when i have learned anyone it's going to meetings that on public is soul subject to people misinterpreting what you're doing so you know maybe it's not that kind of emotional thing in these other got i think i don't think the town's understand the sensitivity no no clue to how could there not here i don't think they understand the sensitivity of the position you find ladies and gentlemen ren so i think probably  if i was going to be here i would've said hey that's up to you guys but honestly if i was going to be here for this i would probably say the safe same thing to you for one of you to go as president i want a great idea and then you could report back to us what  could report back yeah and that would probably be better because it's just not going to be fair to you i just want to give you it's miranda to go would be helpful just so that you know whatever is being discussed by their own communities be can have that you know me so long as they're ok with that i'm sure there will be that it's good to to give you a quick opinion on if you go to meetings and you want to share information you want to do it confidentially i e the situation larry and i found ourselves in last summer what's a way to do it and so he gave you this answer and he basically said make a quick report you know if you feel this something one of you go to and you want to share it make a quick report we can you know you can do it in one of two ways because you're just reporting you're not taking any action or going to have any discussion other than maybe a brief question or something of the chair controls you don't have to have on the agenda if you're going to have any kind of a discussion and you might want to have an item each week board member reports if you don't have anything to report you don't report but of one of you want to report your week right then that way if something comes up let's say you know on a friday or you know something before we get up yeah right after we get back and says we can bring it up at that next you're going to think it would be a way to circumvent the open meeting law and bring up a topic that's not on the agenda it would be exclusively for a board member to report to the rest to your colleagues hey i went to such and such a meeting last week and i just want you  difficult so let's say that kevin and a board member are invited to meet with company a and company a says we're thinking of closing down our facility or we're thinking of relocating out of the town but obviously we don't want our employees to know it yet so you need to keep that confidential it is very difficult to come back here and say i was a reporter kevin i went to company x and here's what they told us and i think that's what is being said in here is that that information can be shared by kevin with each of us individually and not violate open meeting law yes i can call each of you see you in a hallway or cover a cup of coffee or whatever and i can share that information individually probably is if i felt it was timely important origin and something i didn't want to put in writing in my monthly manages report i would call you and i do that all the time if it's something i figure i can just put my manners report put it in there  and so i do it out way and that gets us around that conundrum right but i but it could also be the case that i consider it extremely sensitive and i don't share it at all i'm not going to say that every single thing every contact i have i'm going to share it i'm not right and you don't want me to frank right right right because you know what if a company shared that with me and i shared it with you now it's you know it's the old school ri game i tell you you haven't a doubt you can't tell anybody and all this only gets out there and we have a liability problem right so they're going to be times and you know i'm working fifty hours a week and i'm not spending fifty i was repeating do you want i did so you know all those things i'm doing that i'm not sharing that's a judgment call i have to make and if i mess it up you'll be critical of me and it looks like a good shot so it's not necessarily talking about when you go to do certain because you know i think larry example here is if i go with a board member ok then it's probably something i want to share because one board member has the advantage and i want something right the others don't right every once in a while when i'm sitting in a meeting with a board member and something ultra sensitive where i think the situation problematic all need to have that information and i think we have to have we're here to represent the town you know we have to know this information if one board member know something we all have to know it it's a bit of a dilemma and i don't have any so answer that well that's what i was waiting for because if one person knows it we all have to know it because seven if you go to a meeting with one of us and his information shared however sensitive it is we are telling you john of the town manager we want you to share it with the five of us if you tell me that then i will do it and you need to then in the meeting if you have it if you and the a selectman have a meeting with you need to say let me just close up front our policy is this what we have to do so if you want to tell me something you don't want me to repeat the don't tell me because i have to repeat it to five people exactly yeah exactly and that's fine with me and if you you can either do it right tonight you can take a bill put it in a motion and i know it's there or you can do it by consensus so i can put it back on another night and talk about it you can have a written policy but if you give me an indication that this is what you want then i will do it and and i will say to the business hey look if you're about to tell me something that you don't want to share with five board members don't tell me you're very private ok you go if you want every meeting what would you like me to do you know take it out of the so there's going to be a lot of opportunities for you to go with different select mints to whatever it could be whatever business could be you know i got i go with you guys on a fairly continual basis to one thing or another so i talk about i don't go on i don't need to be reported back to that you go with elaine to this i think the problem is when that meeting that you've had to that topic over that effort that you've done comes to the table absolutely we need to know that you've been in talks you've been you know do and work with them rather than sitting back and be in saying nothing i think that's where the issue and the stand at this yet it comes to be an agenda item disclose that if you tell me information i might have to report it back to the board of selectmen everybody comes on the table so it's easy it's easy enough well you know your expectations are very easy enough for me to say any business with whom i mean we want to be a government entity or whatever else try to help here hello sir whoever you are you're about to tell me in one board member something and that's why i'm obligated by my board to let them know because this is going to come up at a board meeting yet be sure that what you're about to tell me is something that you are comfortable with my disclosing to my board members that if they say i am not comfortable with that then i'll say change happen and none of us knew anything and so if we have to read it in the paper that someone says business is no longer in town of they're taking a thousand jobs away and you knew about it and you just said you couldn't tell us that that's a  but what you're saying yes he was in this if it's not a canny thank you if the anxiety is what they're going to tell you is going to hurt their business or hurt their chances or hurt their opportunities that's paramount to that is you're working for us and you get a look at the best interests of the town so their needs and wants are secondary so by saying it to them it's a courtesy to them but it's an obligation to us you know even if we didn't make this whatever motion you were going to make with your thirty years of experience and as a town manager you need to bring that back to us whether you tell them or not yet and that's it and that's a clear distinction that's a clear distinction which you've given me and that's an easy one that's something i'm very comfortable he doesn't show good judgment it will show up in his so we have a motion and we have a second for the discussion all those in favor i suppose motion carries five zero when can i throw something quick on informational before we go to executive s we did a three hour training names national incident management system which was probably about eight or ten people it was it was three hours we took an exam afterwards that was certified and what that is if there's an incident  terrorism power outage truck on route one turning over and closing off access it's kind of following suit of what just happened of the last two outages but what she asked me to talk about further more is next monday night there's a second one the i c s which is kind of a follow up for that and then you know from the get much rain and then they want to do it again in march so if we can get the word out like last night i guess to get because it is helpful and it's  people working with public people working with volunteers coming all together so it's very helpful certain staff members are required to be certified to a certain level so we're all getting sort of fighters we need to be a partner and i have just one more thing make it quick you know everyone you have the liquor license regulations these changes last letter from peter to him i just wanted to ask one last time if apologize to you i have a few golden rules about how i do you know tom manager and one of those golden rules is i never get emotionally emotional about a recommendation or an issue before you and tonight i did and want to do i don't serve you as well as you deserve to be served nor do i serve you as well as you pay me to serve you and i apologize for that i can't promise you that because i'm a human being that i won't ever get mad again or  understanding is we've got five people here writing contracts with you we make mistakes and i mean all you have to so i apologize for losing my temper as well and hopefully you know at the end of this it's worth the