included in that is that potential merger of the water sewer department at nine o'clock the board of selectmen will do action items jim would you leave us in the pledge of allegiance nobody for citizens input ok we'll move on to the first item on the agenda board of selectmen goals and objectives we have in our package and we have copies for the public they're doing  think through things from the town perspective so what i'd like to do is i'd like to ask him to just start off with some of his thoughts and ideas and then we'll kind of work it through from the board standpoint and then after that we'll go into i think you  a comprehensive proposal you'd like to make regarding the potential merger of the water and sewer department well actually i was chairman i think i had done a series of with the water sewer commission and with the of the board and i c c the board and what ended up being the consensus because we knew we'd have a couple folks out tonight today almost want to a commission was unavailable because the consensus was to have a special meeting of the board next week on tuesday night everybody indicated that they were available for it so that will be the night will do the d p w proposal ok give me and i'll give the board a presentation  be here and so have everybody in the room to do it so ok as far as goals and objectives go we've got two documents at this point one document is the one that the board put together  build and sent to me the other is the list that i give the board which is really not i can't call it a document just a comprehensive list of all the ideas that departments submitted departments were asked to provide a list of what their three to five what they felt were the most significant issues that they were dealing with in their department and a separate list for what they thought were town wider issues i took those lists and melded them into the list th see separately what i need to do is to figure a way to blend the two lists but looking at the selections list i needed some clarification on what some of this what it means because obviously the board has done a great job of putting together your list of priorities and a lot of what you've got overlaps of what the department had sought because obviously but i don't have quite enough information in some of these to be able to do the proper job of integration so it's time time it is kind of a matter of going down the list and having the board tell me what is it that you want to see happen with these things and then we're taking some notes and then i'll be able to put those  well then why don't we start with the first one and give each person a chance to share their thoughts behind it and we don't need to repeat each other so if someone i'll rotate it so that it's not the person going last can't say anything so right if you want to start off on the first item which is working with water and sewer and others to develop effective sue was drag a g expanded program and maximize revenue and product to vittie essentially that's really what we're working with right now with the board of water and sewer in our executive sessions which are related  that to get really one short sentence and i would think it would it would fit in to that one there had been some discussion before about whether or not a d p w worked or didn't  work and again we've worked hard over the last two years eighteen months to develop a working relationship with water and sewer to be would discuss all of these things so i would see your proposal kind of fitting in as part of our whole working together with water and sewer on the overall strategy not just for water sewer but for the whole organization and not to read about it i can concur with both of what you said and then you know it's on for discussion next week but that process that we're going in covers the water and sewer the master plenty of infrastructure so i think that's going to be covered a lot of the discussion tomorrow and that i mean i'm sorry i next tuesday on that are there have been as master plan infrastructure improvements  financing jim you want to take that one first yeah that's something i was high on my priority taking and we've talked about it on a couple different meetings in the past prior to you coming on board as let's take a look at the roads and the funding sources that we have that we're getting every year and what's needed to maintain it and put together a master plan and we are going to load management plan management plan that goes hand in hand with drainage and pavement improvement and things along that line a means they're in great shape and then about how much the if the average street would have a twenty year life you know a would mean it might have fifteen or twenty years left to be says maybe as high as from eight to twelve we have an idea and then some some some numbers are what it cost per quarter mile per mile so that we could kind of come up with if we were going to maintain the roads on a reasonable timeframe what would it cost what would it cost on an an basis and then once we know that then we could start to talk about potential funding sources and that's ok i think you get a very clear idea of what you want to know i assume when you say b and c you would have no objection if we broke it down into into even fine or not it works because most of the pavement management software that's out there will break it down and anywhere from five to seven categories in a similar can look great all right if you want anything to that y well maybe if you want to take the lead on that just share your thoughts along which had been absolutely you know i think it's a collective view of the border at least it is definitely i myself is regionalize as much as we can you know we had a poor start of it with the veterans agent and i think that we all viewed that as somewhat special to us so we weren't ready to push to have that regional or walpole but i think barring something is personal as veteran services i personally am ready to follow the lead of an energetic town manager who would push for any regionalization so you know as far as i'm concerned you know i'm at your service in terms of trying to carry forward any great ideas that you have a regionalization which i know is something that you you know thought was important and hang them so hopefully you'll feel it's important here so in this regard the board you don't have a specific idea at this point about some particular thing as much as you want to see the whole idea of regional cooperation service efficiency reduction and cost pursued anywhere we can i mean i would say personally for example i know you've had some things that you've already thought of i don't claim to be any expert in public safety but i mean even if we had you know combine public safety sounds great to me but you know i wouldn't want to be of potential that were discussed for example franklin talked about their willingness to share their fire chief that they had g i s capability that they could share i think it was walpole talked about planning  very strong dept in their department that they would be able to offer us support we talked about conservation agents and the veteran's agents who were mentioned and also there was discussion about looking at d p w assets you know at a local level who has what type of equipment out there figuring out you can ask him so just you know my sense of things is with stuff like regular ization inertia is a very powerful force and you know it won't happen in unless there's a very powerful influence to push it going one way or the other and i think that we're a very opportune time with a new time manager because you know if it a minimal you know politically we can say well this guy you know because some of it might be you know it will be unpalatable because no one likes change so i really think this is one that would be good for us to hop on board with whatever i think the opportunity just is two things happening at the same time you have the the deficit at the state and while they're saying revenue is stronger they are saying that the federal money that filled in last year's gap isn't here so really the gap is is two billion dollars plus so that i see being bad for a couple of years it's not going to just come back so there's going to be tremendous pressure on all communities the cuts back as a state that's back and we're going to not want to lay off people so the way to do that will be delivered around and see if we can't combine some things with other communities that in combination with a brand new town manager who comes in with no bias no prejudiced no no preconceived notions of foxborough and how it's all open eyes and so we're looking for i think a clean fresh approach to say considering all the economic conditions that we have today and that we're looking forward to in the next couple years what might we start to look at and i think recognizing that we have to take this slowly because it's not something that lots of towns have done and so we've got to build that build a awareness build a time and that we may want to start with one or two positions make sure that those are going to work that they're successful for we start taking on bigger things for instance i think people would have more of a concern sharing the police or fire chief than they would a d p w person i don't know and so we found like with veterans agent that was a very emotional issue not so that wasn't one that we wanted to start with so as if we're open to the ideas are open to the suggestions we're looking for you to take the lead on that didn't get it can ask questions on that so let's say when your experience with regionalization in the savings is it losing people through its people right  almost invariably could just hit the nail on the head when you try to regionalize and you end up you know doing something that's going to result in job losses you do you run into a couple problem number one is you save a dollar but you pay back sixty cents  invariably the personnel part of it is almost invariably what kills regionalism or prevents it from getting gone and what creates the opportunity almost almost universally something happens in another community  the director retires the fire chief retires there's a retirement or separation service somebody leaves and all of a sudden you know you've got another town saying we have a vacancy is this something that you'd be willing to share the service and because you've got a good professional person there more stuff has happened because of that soon the reason alone than anything else i can think of that's how we got to the veterans is because we both had an opening at the same time you opportunities there the other ones that come around are ones where somebody creates an economic incentive so right now regional dispatch is a hot topic and you guys know i just came from you know the best project in the state as defined case anybody has a project and gets mad about that was as defined by the nine one one commission not us but we had the best the newest one in the state gone and it's now under construction they're providing the grants for that so  we're networking right now trying to find a community in the area who wants to partner on it so those are the you're right the personal side of it is that is the problem because when you talk about efficiency you're talking about shedding jobs and when you talk about shedding jobs you're talking about layoffs and people get upset about down so the way you overcome that is attrition i e somebody leaves another place and now you've got an opportunity and then  you know you blend the service and then you use attrition to reduce the amount of people you need but you don't lay them off and that works really well ok and it were but my count right now i think we've got five or six different initiatives going on right now and they're in such an exploratory very preliminary stage they're not worth you know really spending a lot of time briefing the board in on because honestly i don't know of those five or six probably tool their fruit and when they get to the point that one of them is the d p dover the shared you could have a director services or plainville so once those get to a point where i can say with some degree of certainty that there's something here i'm going to report those something that was been the buzz words of late in this town in some of the surrounding towns but it's been you know you go to western mass and they've been doing it not because of necessity but more of convenience they just didn't have the large populations to have a full time exposition so they it it's coming here now more because we need it because of budgets and it will look into kind of think outside the box but the seminars i've gone to or the work that i've seen through what i do there's more success stories and there are failures that m m conference we went to they were talking about down the cape the technology that they have acquired to make one town work with the other one they send an ambulance and it's all state of the art now and it's been working well usually here stuff when it's a failure but when it's success it kind of goes quietly so i'm optimistic i think we're going in the right direction and like you said if you try eight and two you know get off the ground i think that's great to start with brain you want to take the lead on the next one german cost in funding sources for replacement of the tunnel ok that's essentially what we've been talking about kevin the town as that review committee working with the permanent municipal building committee  architect has completed the interviews with all the staff in the town hall to determine basic needs closure and so i guess now will be putting together some ideas and proposals for costs whether it's within the existing structure or some expansion of the structure or potentially new structure we'll need to see so that process has been started and the idea is to keep this moving forward this you know i think is a high priority town hall is well beyond its good life right now and we really need to renovate and or replace if whatever the recommendation is that accepted by the town but i feel like that's in process but also  on your list i saw complete a municipal building need study so i think again all this ties in to looking at you know everything that's out there i think that the boy that's good to hear  that whole municipal needs concept was because in that in the course of doing some when she'll tours and touring town facilities i saw all the vacant property that we've got a lot of tory i'm over here it  just not green the cafeteria our laundry building rather the former funeral home the fire station you know the worth town as a review committee is doing and the thought basically sort of whole variety of conversations with different people kind of occurred we really need to get a grip on what do we want to do with these buildings what space do we need before we make the mistake of selling one and then ten years later saying when we're all gone whatever it is we'll be doing in ten years and have people saying wow well they shortsighted what did they do that for   so that's been done once and for shoots out of date because most of what they recommended we did so now we've got a kind of rethink through that process and take inventory of what we've got before we start making moves the other issue that i think we've talked about is the fact that you know the library was forty years old it's being renovated the same time the high school which was forty years old was being renovated  the town hall we have lots of buildings that that all hit around the same time and one sense we've been fortunate because the economic conditions have made the repairs to be much less expensive they might otherwise be but it's also unfortunate at the very tough time for the taxpayer and so when you look at the the override that the overrides we still have the debt exemptions for the current school and you look at the high school and then you look at the the new public safety building and now you got to look at the library so there's also that whole financial picture that we have to kind of not only take into consideration for now but think about it over the next twenty years would there have been a better way of staggering it so that everything didn't hit all the same time i know one thing i've started discussions with randy stone's about is the funding and he was explaining the potential to and he would work on this with you to bring forward a proposal would fund the town hall renovation through included debt and opposed to doing it that it's been you know it is not about that the last few days and he's done some excellent work on that and the idea is you definitely some reaction to that and the library hadn't hit yet so that's that's when you just so to not go back out there and say to the taxpayers here we got one more project for you is going to be tough particularly since the economy's not remark markedly improving so he's working on an alternate plan and that may involve having to make some compromises you know and what we would like to do for the building and not spend as much as we would like  but by the same token try to give the tax payers a break and i was going to step up so much again so yeah he's done some excellent work on that you as well on the way i think on this topic ok jim want you take the look the license oversight gathered the liquor license from my perspective getting you know the first year it seems like every meeting a great deal of time has been spent on either violations or little lace and extensions or renewals i saw on the package i think kevin you put that together the list of all the liquor licenses and the type of liquor license i think that's the first kind of have an initial oversight or initial understanding of who has all the liquor licenses what's left and then a schedule when they're going to come up and just the third time you know there has been coming in about it you know at having training for different servers and things like that but if we could just kind of put it all together so when we say liquor license we have some entity that we can refer to we know who they are how many look the license that they're out there and what the training is in our packet today there's one liquor establishment that's asking for an extra hour on new year's you know some some understanding before we say yes or no who's who's already asked for it who's done it in the past so we're not you know we've talked in the past about making it not so much a spy case  yeah well you know it should be on a case by case and there's no general say yes because we said it before but some that we can kind of look at have a reference for anyone that comes in i had some discussion with italy or about this and  liquor license regulations really have not had a an overhaul since for a number of years and especially now that we have so many more liquor licenses and he is very interested in and has actually started reviewing regulations from other towns that have larger bases of establishment is like we now have and so what he was what we were discussing was that we could have  potentially a subcommittee one or two members from this board working with ed he has his staff who are expert liquor license reg types and  i think there was one other person he mentioned but anyway having a subcommittee that would work to put together more comprehensive regulations to handle the impact you know it's handle what we have going on in town now and yes they're really out of date for a community that has many licenses we have they are really out of date and there are some great models out there you know communities who you know and i frankly looked at it and i just said with him on it last year we talked with you know end of the day have a little more licensing stuff is yours this is your purview this is clearly board business because you are the licensing authority it is you know we're going to work on and that's great you know he's the guy who has to force it and it's great if a couple of you want to do that two or three months time you can go through them and produce something for the board review beautiful it needs work no doubt about that was the time frame he was o i'm like wow that's really bad i must like men in town and this is the first time hearing about it and i'm interested in the process or maybe it's just a matter of me calling ed or you know just talking out loud here is the process of how complaints get to was or you know the when there's a problem what level of problem must there be before we hear about it so for example just something that's really not such a big deal in terms of my real concern is we have places that are over serving and someone dies in an accident right so that that's a primary concern but even something as simple as you know does the health department if they write someone up one of our licensees do we you know get that information because that reported to us to anyone else share that concern or well i think we only hear about it seems like by accident it's had it's a little bit of a gray or and i think out of all the groups that we're looking to go into or task maybe this is something that we could have a subcommittee where we have a couple of the liquor license holders the business owners representative of us and i know some people have come up to me that they're in the insurance business of liquor is going to be willing to help in the seminars and things like that but you know the liquor license is one of those things it's a volatile issue and i mean it's a bread and butter of a lot of people's businesses and the lifeline out there but it's also a huge liability so i think for us to sit up here and say this is how it's going to be without understanding the other side so if we could put a group together that understands it better and since lenders not here tonight the chair usually would do this but you know you in my view you and lorraine of expressed lots of passion around this topic and at numerous meetings with the two of you be interested in leading a subcommittee with song licensees in town and the police chief and over the next three or four months coming back and doing a presentation now for a long before you came on the board so i think that as we finish the discussions and i don't go as an object as i think it would be good to try to move that thing forward because many of these others we've talked about we've made progress over the issue you're referring to the you know ad hoc nature of approving extra hours are you talking all out all in together looking at the look at the rules regulation oh ok going through the working session of coming back with up i'll call it a booklet for the board of select you know notifications of violations and i wonder if that's just you know asking for labor to come in fifteen twenty minutes and you know just educating us i'd love to hear that you guys feel that that would be helpful or do you think you'd be part of a package because i would envision the package being something that who ever sits in these chairs after us a good example would be when you were first elected how long did it take you to read the select min's manual i'm not sure if it appointments and we had all sorts of old information and we actually updated that so that it would be easier and more so i think putting all that together into the rules the regulations the information how it all comes together would be would be very helpful both for the current board and as well as future boards but it would take some time as a working group and i think is as jim pointed out having some of the liquor license holders to be part of that ad hoc group so that we get their views as well as our views look at best practices have the police chief exciter but i so it's interesting you say this because this is a perennial problem in every community i've been in where the board was a licensing authority there's a communication gap that exist between the law enforcement agency police department and the licensing authority for selectman in terms of understanding when violations are happening other happening and police reports are getting written but there is no systematized way for someone to sort through that and get a more pity or attention this is a subset to the larger effort that linda is about at the ranch talking about let me do this let me take that one piece and the only reason i'm volunteering to take it and try to express it into a policy is because this happens every single time you know every board of a work for this has been a problem and so in my library i've got a bunch of policies for how to address this and it's kind of a matter of pulling all dust them off and trying to turn it into something that you in the chief look at and say ok that makes sense and what it is is it's specifically a way to get from individual officer on patrol answers a call and there is an incident i'm not going to call it a violation of a call an incident at some liquor license holder how do we get value brought to the licensing authorities attention so that you begin to get a sense there's a problem somewhere right now there's no system for that and that's by the way that's pretty much universal in every community  enough what you do have i guarantee you because every town has this unless they put in a system where they culled those there's going to be given the number of license holders we've got this going to be fifty or sixty or seventy or eighty of those sorts of police reports a month guarantee but most of that is minor stuff what you're looking for is two things wat minor stuff that begins to look like a pattern of a problem at one place or so moderate things that cumulatively look like a problem sooner what i don't think you have is a problem with is a major incident because out of come up here you'll feel will bring out and the reason you don't have that system is because you've got a bunch of individual officers out there that are seeing things and filing reports but there's no systematize way to say wait a minute we've got thirty reports at one place what the heck is going on there's no way for that to happen and the reason i know that is because that's just normal less the way the system works so i've had some experience creating a system where once it starts to accumulate it actually gets to the chiefs attention he looks at it and then he says oh i've got something to bring to life and licensing authority you guys so let me let me take a stab at trying to put something together for you sooner rather than later  forecast has really been more randy's than anyone else has and then the school committee does their piece and we do our budget piece and historically it's been you know roughly you take all the fixed costs of track that and then what's left gets split seventy thirty approximately and the discussion we ought to have a three to five year financial forecast and it ought to be one that the two boards have ownership for it shouldn't just be was planned it should be the community's plan it should be own in my view by the school committee the town manager the c f o and the board of selectmen and as part of that we've talked that we wanted to have a review of all of our accounts and you know we have money and lots of different places in some cases it was a prior appropriation that wasn't spent and other things so that we could look out for especially the upcoming fiscal years can be really tight  where there may be some surplus funds that we could move and a good example would be last year at the december town meeting i think we set up the one for the opium week and we did that in the spring and that was money that went with it was in other accounts that were it was no longer necessary in those accounts it was reserved at one point for a reason it's no longer necessary we're able to move that and so as part of this whole financial side is making sure that the two elected committees the school committee the board of select on how we get our revenue what the revenue looks like and we own that as as well as the budget pieces and it's a great idea you know that's the the revenue forecast drives the budget because budgeting in the post prop two and a half era is no longer what's called expenditure driven number the old days and if you know the old days i do were you pass a budget and then you'd set a tax rate to cover and whatever the tax rate  increase that's what it had to increase now it's here's what you can raise and you can't raise any more you make the budget fit in that now it's revenue driven so the single most important thing to budgeting these days because you guys know ninety percent of what the departments present is going to cut to a number and we're not going to change probably but five percent of that because that's the reality the real game the real name of the game these days the revenue forecast and it is so helpful if the paid staff those are our best forecast and presented to you guys and you guys by saying yeah  you tell us more about this one to tell us more about down and that's all done you guys say ok we agree that's the forecast then when i go to work to the departments and i say here's your goal for budgeting this year here's what it's going to tie out to i already know i've got a message from you i'm tired i'll to the right number the revenue really drives it having seen this some weeks ago frank still around i sort of made some assumptions about what you were doing here and randy and i are working on a project we expect present to you in january which is exactly what you're talking about in a powerpoint presentation which we would give to you that highlights the revenue forecast as matures a little more by hopefully we get some from one state that's the single biggest piece and we ask you guys ok here's our best shot ask us all the questions you want make us defend this thing and then when it's all said and done tell us it's it's ok he represents our conventional collective wisdom that would be a great exercise and as far as all those accounts go we're working on that that's a that's a big body of work but it was well underway know the comments on that topic i think we've talked a lot since you've been on board with the with the talent asset review so maybe paul you want to take the room one development comment and we're going to flesh that out for oh actually might need some help on that i mean essentially i think the this board would like to if they can get out of the way and enable one development or proactively help with that and we've had some starts in fits with some zoning which i don't know if we're really going to be able to resurrect if it's that's our deal that larry i really don't have you know my say other than you know i'm more than willing to get out of the way and you know whatever we you know we can do within reach here and we're talking about one area there last year the you know i was about last year that the town that is owning review committee that kind of looked at all of foxborough zoning  that and assisted living and then the third piece was looking at the route one's own the area along route wanted what can be done and they did a tremendous amount of work but it was kind of rushed at the end so that piece never got going  can i just have one and i also think with any changes up there i think there's rightly or wrongly conspiracy theorists who you know we just you know died on the vine i think people it wasn't going to go through but through one part of it at town meeting and that was at least my view yeah it was i think i was on the advisory committee at the time in the concerns that we had was you know what landed we're looking at can we look at some aerial so not in clans is it ten acres or five hundred acres and it kind of came at the eleventh hour if you're a couple months ago i had brought in a group from the i d c industrial development committee kind of looking at how we can work with mansfield in another town to kind of group that together  maybe i could be a speaker and i invited you and anyone else that's on the committee to say look what do you guys want to do on route one and this involves a patriot's as well as a you know that's our lifeline on route one do we want to leave it as parking lots do we want to leave the business  want to expand it do we want to change his own ng and kind of get that discussion going there's a couple other people that have stepped up and want to help as well i think as we are that jim it was also you know the pages of talked about two office that has very little impact on the residential does not impact on the schools etc then that would be to our advantage and we talked about the fact that that route one area still has lots of growth potential lots of revenue potential and we ought to be thinking about you know if we can put our arms around and say let's look at some smart growth that as larry said doesn't affect the schools and we can be proactive rather than waiting for the big office development to come in and then say everyone scurrying around to see what we can supplement it with you know the last thing people want is ten mcdonald's along route one but if we can get some smart growth maybe changes owning maybe do it change the overlay district that says this is here this is the pallet and something that foxboro is good for foxboro you know you can i just as you view on this is my personal thought on let's say the two office buildings you think the patriots like what are they you know realistically how much energy do we want to put into ok fella's you know what can we do to help i'm certainly willing to help them because i think it's smart for the town but i mean let's face it they know what they're doing they're going to come in and ask us so you know more than happy to be very you know is helpful as can be but in terms of a goal you know we're going to scurry around to think about how best to zone for that purpose when they know exactly how it needs to be going to the those those plans and i mean it's already in the state to it's bright and you know it's got to my point so i don't know how much you know scurrying around  on our part is going to help but i could be wrong too i think the point is just like on the look of it we said that sure we could look at all those because we have the policy the procedures but having some of the license holders give us near him what he thought is valuable i think the discussion was there's lots of businesses up there are one other than the crafts but you have to bring them together to say let's brainstorm what are the things collectively further develop that area and who knows what those ideas may be and as is the folks in mansfield that came  here they've developed a large commercial base over the years but they've always had that partnership whereby the business is in the in the in the community we're talking about how do they do more how do they do things differently and what would make it more attractive to bring business to mansfield well i think with the idea here was was to try to do the same thing here in foxboro the area that is prime for further development is really one it's less disruptive on the entire community and if there were ways by working together collectively i worth having those brainstorming sessions and just think through what changes might be nester maybe there's not at the end of the day maybe there are some so i think you get on here because of the revenue side of things and saying let's start to brainstorm what might be in the best interest of the something else i think i just want to be proactive to say the zoning that's there is that the best we can do if it is fine but if the owners of all the other parcels want to collectively come up and brainstorm as long as it you know if you address the traffic in the schools on the taxes i'd rather do i would get in the way i'm just you know ok and i think that really ties in maybe lorraine can lead a discussion on the next one which was to work across the town with all the functions planning waters others to look at potential growth across the town where could the growth come over the next ten years i mean the impact on water the impact on sure the impact on the downtown whether a train station was necessary  is undertaking and i'm not in any way suggesting you don't do signaling a cautionary note to you about that right there is so big that you sort of have kind of got to make a fundamental decision you guys two towns that embark on a master plan i mean that basically ties up the resources of essential of the whole town government for a year or two while you're doing it it's a huge undertaking or you plunk down about one hundred thousand dollars because that's what these things cost they're very expensive and you get a consultant who engages the community still takes a lot of time  and basically produces a master plan for you we had one i think it was back in the sixty's because i saw it it's obviously hugely out of date but we had one back then  planning board has had some discussions about it so if i could suggest to you something i think you might want to do you go on this list too to have joint meetings occasionally and i would suggest you keep this on this i want i want to try to do is translate all these from the notes i've taken in the interest here's the goal and here's the steps we need to do to actually get to the goal so we know we're getting there this one is so bad government even want to try to break the pieces out i'd suggest you have the conversation with the planning board and kind of decide if this is something where you think the town is ready to commit to some funding and putting together a real deal master plan it's a lot of work it cost some money but the good news is all the really smart towns have something like this because as the old saying goes you don't know where you're going any road will get you there planning and the come from the commonwealth capitals corps all about giving you an incentive to do it can you explain that i don't know that everybody you pick up that is a whole score sheet with commonwealth capital and it basically it's all about planning and if you do a capital plan you pick up a ton of points i'm sorry you do a comprehensive long range master plan or whatever you call it you pick up a whole pile of points why is that important with a lousy score and right now would be a lousy school to go sixty five top schools one thirty five or something like that grants are tied to that score we're so low right now grants that are leveraged by that school or community development block grants low interest  they can't get low interest rates like one percent loans and one of the revolving funds to stay fun those are called capital scores so low so we're working on a way to improve that but we're trying to do a little bits and pieces to pick up a point here two points there three points here and over the course of the year i might be able to get that thing up six seven points for you which gets us into it's not really competitive territory but it's better than where we are now capital review committee looking at all the buildings and that kind of thing does that help though if the three moving parts would get going right now that will help the score the open space and recreation plan the downtown redevelopment plan which is on the warrant for funding and the space needs study which is also on the want for funding those three of the things we've targeted right now which you  can be seventy five seventy five to eighty in that room by this time next year and it is it obvious said if we that we get a fair return on that so if we spend a hundred grand on it is it this  plan we can to get our money back or close to it we need no guarantees in life obviously but well when you're dealing with community development block grant money you're dealing with hundreds of thousands typically and want to grant and millions i mean those those walkmans are massive so far from the goodness of having the plan that we can work on which i suppose it is a good that is valuable for you but we actually realistically could expect monetary you know discrete returns i mean you do a master plan because you want to have a plan for your community right you want to know this is where we want the community to go and it looks at a lot of these issues you've been talking about it it gets them all in one comprehensive the argument so it's worth doing in and of itself but in terms of the effect it has on your commonwealth councils goal which in turn lets you focus on grants winship it has a hugely beneficial effect one of the things that when you're filling out a cd b g a community don't block grant application they want to know do you have a master plan and you get points that's fine and you can say here's our application and this application is consistent with our communities you know five year plan or ten year plan you pick up points toward that ground so it makes a lot of sense  no doubt about it i just i'll be honest with the you don't often hear boards talking like you're talking you don't you don't often hear boards saying we need a you know comprehensive plan for the future development of this  community it's sad to say and that's why there are many more around because your ship just doesn't usually embrace it it's a huge amount of work to do we know whether or not we have any funds from i forget the term said you know sitting around money to go do something or not it is a surplus we've probably got a fair amount in the tens of thousands which could be revoted redirect some of that i got a couple proposals like down on that special time meeting want list if you had a chance to read it and there's more now what happens with that money if if we know the project is closed out the town accountant statutorily massachusetts has the authority to close it out to free cash he doesn't need a vote a town meeting just close it all to free cash so those things all flow to the bottom line what usually happens in towns is this so many of them it's a lot of work to go through and say to the departments that have that money is this thing done we still need this so we need to do a comprehensive look that's part of what that project to us was to look at and we're doing it and i think there's going to be quite a bit of money is it one hundred grand i wouldn't be down optimistic probably a pretty good hunk of that paul i would tell you that when i was in the eighty's when i was a selectman in mansfield we did a master plan update and i represented the board of selectmen and it was a two year process we met probably had you know that that the planning board and the board of selectmen appointed some maybe a member like fifty people from the community all different walks of life and and we probably met every other week for a year and a half looking and studying and talking about every piece of undeveloped land and what it should be for and how and why and holding public meetings about sharing so you're right it is a lot of work and you need to have a group of very interested citizens and a very diverse group of citizens because i can tell you we did a lot of arguing you know someone wanted this some thought that was just the the worst thing in the world but it was through that debate and that argument that we came up with no master plan that last of the town for you know some length of time after that so so i'm in love with this idea i mean do you like it as well or do you guys like it as well yeah i think love is strong and like hospital and they're looking at the downtown so that's already working conservation commission the meeting on january seventh it's a friday at noontime here to almost finish up their master of the open space plan so you get all the different pieces that are bringing it up and i think if if we can just kind of push that wrap our arms around and played it going i think we're almost there you know it's that if it's fascinating if you guys sit back and stop to consider for a moment it's fascinating how many different initiatives you're hearing you where does that exactly so you're talking about the kinds of things that a master plan does that's exactly what it does you tell the people that are going to pull it al together here's the here's the dominant questions we want answered like we want to know how we're going to grow route one into denser kinds of use to produce better return on investment  more revenue for the times tax base and that's one of the big questions we want to have answered we've got three hundred thousand dollars in the sort of capacity that may be coming online in next couple years we're do we want to dedicate it because if you'd not asking yourselves questions like that and you don't have a plan here's what happens if you sit here five years from now at three hundred thousand gallons of sewage capacity is gone and you're saying we're going to have to that all go and what did we do for economic development to return to the taxpayer is the investment of some thirty million dollars that we made to do it and sad to say what the answer the question is in most communities is i don't know why some to go figure that out put the stuff you discussed about in a wrapper so to speak or it could be a story here's the reality you're going to engage as larry said been through this twice you're going to engage this community in a huge way work and it's not going to be volunteer citizens who are going to who know the questions to ask no the best practices that are out there you can take that combine it with what people say is their idea for the for the future of the community and combine it into what's going to be a huge volume i mean master plans are huge three four inches thick but so yes that you need somebody to do that for you we can't do it because we have what i'll call a professional facilitator didn't just facilitate the meetings but understood planning so it was a planning person so that they could the right kind of questions they could facilitate the dialogue we invited every board and committee at different points we use maps like that so we knew every piece of vacant land in town and what it what it was own for carly what was around it and it just a real long process but we had we had that one person use you miserable space needs study it's probably about a twenty five thousand dollars for it done piecemeal those things are fairly expensive duffers combine all out into a master plan and you get a lot of work done but you get it done in a much more comprehensive manner with a lot of other pieces in it too like one one so there's a certain degree of efficiency in doing it once all at once and one big big effort and the key to it is you've got to be very good at  to find what it is you want the plan to answer and as larry said the consultant will ask you a lot of questions that you don't we don't know enough to ask ourselves that they know from experience writing his things you know what do you want to have happen for economic development done on the mansfield line you know there's a there's a fair amount of vacant land on there do you want to see that developed yet lasky a lot of stuff like that and sometimes what you can find is a  college professor who teaches planning and municipal and in these kinds of topics who is willing to come out you know every thursday night for a year working with the community  master plan they you know boston college for instance has asked people to do that where they have the credentials they've got the professional credentials they have the experience they've done master plans before and because it's part time for them coming out every couple of weeks and working with the community is something that they're interested in doing and that and the cost for that is much less than if we just go out and hire someone who does a full time monday through friday kind of eighty five things harvard urban school design used to do them don't know if they took them anymore but you can certainly get components of a master plan and i don't know that you'll get a whole master planned but if you get major ok jim this government review committee you'll recall that i recall of a little bit this was low on my list but my feeling on that is there's not a lot to create i look back at you know that has a lot of information open meeting law things act ethics i think piecemeal we go to these seminars but what i'd like to see and i didn't initiate this but looking at just what i would like to see is a complete package that when someone comes in to be a s of faithfully cataloging them and the been the book is in there you know i showed it to you one night it's really like a piece of work so i went through it and here's what i found it basically was fill into three categories policies which were strictly administrative in nature like andy's directive to a department had to do something and that's not a board policy board and then the all the rest of it was a board policy but some of them were enormously out of date and just not operative would be to tell managers purview what remained was about i'm going to say so much i mean ten and fifteen actual board of selectmen policies which still have resonance they still have meaning and some of them are pretty new actually so what we're doing is when sunni and chris get really involved in the licensing the last couple weeks or so once fact gets done hopefully after next week or two they're going to take another pass at that book they're going to put it back together for me and i look at it a second time to a more refined review and then we're going to copy it and give it to you and that will be the policies of the board of selectmen as they currently exist and you've got some you've got some very good very high quality work in them lot of there are other areas need work like you've asked for policies on then i think that the board needs to do is begin you've got to review those make sure they still work for you and then you get to start adding to them and we'll just keep current cataloguing them as you go along but the good news is it's obligations and i think that is from the the m m a that they they have that separate they could just pull that in some really good boards and this is a good board often adopt a policy that regulates your own affairs and your business and you conduct sometimes called the selections call to conduct some sometimes call with the selections policy on you no relation whatever name you give it is wonderful models out there wonderful event you're actually in the book right now there's three or four from a yeah you said the m m a has what you may have a model one but the way the enemy has a wonderful book i don't want to tell you this because it's kind of cheating but i could produce what you're asking for like that that's that's what i need not give somebody a call they have it there if we can just get that in committee or others just to make sure that there's a line across the town no one cross the community audits is it going to be a i'm not sure if it's going to be a board of selectmen meeting or it's a town manager meeting that you invite the board of selectmen you invite the school you like that because we're an elected board there's other elected boards but if this falls under your umbrella like you've been doing with the  to employees and you do volunteer boards and so the elected boards certainly are folks that you should interface with occasionally in whatever way you deem appropriate the appointed boards are of pointed he either by you or the moderator their elected board so it's a little presumptuous for the selectmen to say come to our meeting this is our meeting and you're invited rather than have i think what may be more advantageous is to have one group with  it's not our meeting it's not their meeting it's a town meeting where you're pulling all these different boards elected or appointed together i mean we can certainly come up with an agenda but i guess that was in visioning it more like you know as there is an issue say for example planning in this ho e for example in downtown revitalization object you know that we could ask the planning board can we meet together to discuss that major topic and you know just joint like and without planning in us when i put it on the list last year my issue was that there were some members of the world that had problems with conservation but we've never we hadn't had joint meetings to talk about strategy or goals or objectives and so when it got take time to appoint a new member reappoint members there was it was uncomfortable at times and so my thought was that if the board of selectmen are going to appoint people to a board like conservation we ought to be talking about goals and objectives and where are they and and and how do we make sure that we have a well rounded committee and that they have the tools in the resources they need and so we do lots of different appointments and then we ended up as a result of those issues we then went back and revisited the appointment policy and who we bring in and how we bring in the whole process so originally it came about just how do we how do we create alignment especially on those we appoint  and then it started to expand from they had to say you know are there opportunities for let's say the school committee the board of selectmen to come together once a year and talk about things that we could be working on together are there things that the planning board or the war to health you know we've had issues that we've had to deal with with the board of health but they only come to us when there's an issue and as we're talking about going back to the whole idea of the master plan if we were to go forward with the master plan at least now we're involving all the boards all the committees all the groups in a dialogue about where we are where do we want to go different people's points of views and we get a chance to kind of align with what are we trying to do with  growth and that growth impacts the board health that growth impacts planning fees it impacts all those kinds of things and so maybe even instead of the joint meetings you know if we were to do a master plan maybe that helps create the kind of communication that will help us be more lying going forward and in a void some of the situation we've had in the past when i came to comes time for appointments clear as mud well you know usually boards a slip and always want to meet with everybody god bless you and that's great because i'll tell you what those boys love to meet with you they do because if there's one complaint i hear all the time boards and committees don't get an opportunity cannot you know to meet with the executive you guys can talk about stuff so i've been trying to be very proactive in reaching out to them from my level but you know my level is not your level you guys are the the chief executive so i think it's very productive to do it the problem is always ok now  that we talk about nailing jello to the wall discussion where when it's all done everybody goes home and you say wow it was great what we do nothing i'll tell you well but you've got something now you've got this and we're going to take this and we're going to translate this into an even more specific work plan which is going to affect every department when this is all done this should be done and next two weeks every department is going to take this because of already told them and they're going to take their component parts from this list so you know you take something like a masterpiece well that means every single department is going to put in their work plan you know they're part of the master plan so now i have got something to go and whether it's a master plan or not the point is that you've got a work plan they've all got a piece of it so when they come up here to talk to they've got something to talk about specific they're parts of this plan all the goals and objectives they're set by the board and they flow down and then they flow back up so they are all aligned you're going to end up having a book about this that which is going to be this document the goals and objectives for the town for the year expresses some fairly high level goals and objectives a lot like this but with more things on it and then you're going to have individual work plans for every department i'll have one conservation one planning is on and those are tailored around the chief  administrative person in those places because that's their work plan and that's what i pull out at the end of the it'll do their evaluation right becomes their goals and the template for evaluating them at the end of the year so actually so just a few points on all that is  i think any can we have one of the boards that we have point in and they were all going to learn something or if not us if we've heard it before i think the public well so for example conservation commission comes in or few of them and tells us what they do if it's so i think be great to have them and every once in a while just to refresh our memories and what they do in terms of the genesis of the idea i'm not so sure that kind of meeting would be helpful in terms of the issues about you know we've had some controversy on who gets appointed or you know who we voted for i don't think it'd be pretty take particularly helpful on you know some of the controversy we've had on appointments but i think that's almost irrelevant i think would be useful for you know the reasons i guess what the only thing i would disagree with paul is that some of the discussion that some members had seemed to be more philosophical in other words that that that the direction that that members were taking us from the border city weren't necessarily where they thought and so i think that at least having that discussion about what are they what is it what does god take conservation what are their goals and objectives why do you think that's important and if the board of selectmen were to disagree on a couple of things why wait to the appointment time and then try to change it by appointing maybe people that have different why not have that dialogue open throughout the year maybe they'll educate us to say well i had thought about that that makes sense maybe we'll educate them this you know we had thought about that that makes sense and that way there we don't get into the the philosophical that we need new people because we don't like what it's doing to whatever it happens to be and just it would be a more dialogue that that was  from you on that develop a strategy for streamlining delivery of services by departments i got some real fascinating ideas for you on mt one but again i want to get a little background from you and what you're looking for thing master plan for infrastructure improvements and financing that's really cuts to that master plan that you were talking about and regionalization you have got it working on it so that really leaves two things that i'm a little fuzzy on the implement succession planning and develop strategy for streamlining services and a lot if you could just give me a little more well i think on the succession planning that really came up originally when rand went and he decided to retire and we had not where there wasn't a plan in place we have a we have other department heads who could retire at any point in time and so the thinking was is there a succession development program within the community to not only replace department grow how do we help them exceed and when there's an opening you know when is it appropriate to promote from within and what is it appropriate to go outside it's probably the hottest thing in h r these days succession planning outside because the recruitment process is very expensive so it's two thoughts one there's two tensions when you talk about succession planning one is do you want to count when you have a vacancy if you want to cast the widest possible net and get the most talented person that you can possibly attract which is sort of opposed to the whole notion of succession planning because you're going out there  work force to find a good person the other philosophy is you try to grow your own you try to groom people from the inside those on necessarily contradictory completely but they are a lot you know in a fairly significant way second thing is if you were really want to him in get involved in succession planning and you want to have been a really organized program the department heads are going to have a hard time doing it because it's a lot of work you really need an h r director you really do let the cat out of the back a little bit here i am going to propose an h r director to you in the budget and the reason is we are inundated with h r type stuff and we don't have that professional on the staff and we are just getting buried with it frankly we're substituting with a lot of labor lawyer cos that's what we're doing and it's extremely expensive you're talking town and school or just town i'm going to propose just town just town alone with over two hundred full time employees there is not a corporation on the planet that has two hundred full times employed full two hundred full time employees and does not have an h r professional got corporation doesn't exist i don't think there's a corporation with forty full time employees it doesn't have an r capability it's just doesn't exist so little sidebar there if you want to get involved in succession planning it's a good thing it's a fairly straight forward thing and it's bread and butter for an h r type of person very hard for us to do a really organized program but i'm just going to give you for instance your clerical staff what you would like to be doing is cross training with your clerical staff and developing them and you can do that i considered a part of it had to make sure you take your staff to the professional development conferences that you go to sign him up as a member of the treasury's association or whatever and it happen but it will be organized you know it will be kind of catch as catch can you want to really good organized succession program you need somebody who's got their eye on that and is really focusing on it but it's a great you identify within your organ your department or your organization is it necessary to cast that wider net so you do that assessment it's yes or no does it exist or doesn't it just and then you know and can plan or you identify that you have someone who has the potential and then you can invest in them to bring them up to the point you know and so you know from that standpoint  i guess i don't envision that creating their age or person but anderson what you're saying and i looked at the list of detail that you provided and i was going to  and you know i know you have proposed that and hang on randy had discussed a similar proposal and i was going to suggest that perhaps that would be an approach to consider looking at to see how that addresses  challenging yeah yeah like that's the thought here you hear by the way as a manager is not going i love better than promoting from within training people developing them and i mean it's that's the name of the game these days  all i'm doing is i'm striking for you a cautionary note that in order to do them in an organized way that yields real benefit you actually have trained people internally we're ready to be promoted it takes a real effort and it's got to be organized and i'm not talking about what happens you get a real sharp cookie in this department and a department head retires and you say ok we're going to make it a partner because guess what they might be great at the skills but you didn't train him as a manager right and now all of a sudden this day there are a mid level manager and this day there are a manager you know you can't do that to people because you're not necessarily ready for that challenge so turning somebody  who's a skilled technician into a skilled man is a body of work that takes a great deal of organization and time but if you do it provides tremendous dividends no doubt about it but i'm just saying it's not something you can do you know in a catch as catch can on organized fashion it's really going to be worked on the other section was a strategy for streamlining your comments for  service but do it for less dollars in addition looking at you know as this process of looking at renovation town hall goes on as the renovation plans are created are there ways of building that will have a chance to think it is a commitment of time and i think we would need probably you know two members of the board to do it so if we could just throw that on the agenda for a few minutes of the next meeting and see if we can move that that forward great  k we have a few people in the audience anybody want to comment on anything we just talked about you have to come up to the microphone give your name and then just for the record  building up what approach is you making to try to temper this friction because otherwise you're never going to get put through i haven't heard one word  at i tell you out there right here and we can i think we all probably imagine that there's a comprehensive memo that the town manager wrote i'm sure half the town employees have the memo that are interested and i'm sure there's no answers and we tried to get it on the agenda tonight so that we could have a discussion including having those employees come and listen to this question and part and participate but that was we couldn't get everybody have the time next tuesday so hopefully at that meeting the not only w people you talked about but those who work in any of those departments have the opportunity to come is while they're on notice that we're having the meeting and we get to hear their thoughts and ideas as well when we're going just on the site the water department is absolutely refuse and it's you know it's always the case with change people tend to be a lot more fearful of what they think is going to happen then what's really going to happen and i hope i did a lot this morning to demonstrate to the want to sewer employees that the amount of change that's going to happen is a lot smaller than they might have assumed and a lot of what the good work is that they're doing now is going to continue and i s scene to extend their opening hours to two a m new year's eve just for the record rob would you give your name and address rob christiansand sixteen cranberry no drive in plympton massachusetts oh two three six getting out here is how you i sent the notes of the town manager and to the police chief we had approved one opening till two o'clock for new year's eve and and we kind of foresaw that this could be others and obviously it at patriot place where there are twelve or thirteen restaurants the question i asked the town manager and the police chief was do they feel we have adequate resources to handle message it's a tough night there's a lot of drinking that goes on that night and till two o'clock even longer so did we or did we not have enough resources habits of the chief was going to send a man one is the man we talked about yeah and just embellish on that basically the board's approved to to him closing so far as this would be a third ok we have not had a rush of them in the office i would expect probably we might get a couple more but we have not had a lot of them in past years actually met with the chief on this today we've not gotten a lot of them in past years we're not expecting this is sort of what a lot of them this year but frankly if every license holder asked we could put we have sufficient offices on our list that we could generate enough folks to do  it but i don't expect that's going to happen i think we'll probably end up with maximum three or four or five establishment so we can handle that easily and just so the public has a night the board is allowed late service of alcohol in the past i facility has an expected crowd of over three hundred then to detail offices are required from the hours of eight thirty at night till two thirty in the ok so you just want to kind of share with your  we're just looking to provide a safe festive atmosphere for the people of this community neighboring communities to come obviously to be helpful to us to be able to speak that we will be open till two o'clock and will help us bring potentially in more business  we have security on site every busy day that we're in operation so we'll have three to four members of patriot place security on staff in the restaurant at our door at all entrances proving carting everybody on the way in and out we'd be twenty one and over starting at nine thirty at night ten o'clock and that range will start only letting twenty one and over and and i mean i think our our record and and how we monitored alcohol service and the steps that we take has has been very good and i think we can make sure that that continues on new year's eve and allow people to have a fun place to be to ring in the new year how many people would you  shape or form it will be our second floor and our third floor which we will be utilizing a percentage of that space taken away will have a van taking over a large percentage of our seating space on the second floor so that's why i figured the capacity would be at about two i think the question would be if you think you might hit the three hundred then you'd have to and my suggestion to the board and to you would be have the two anyways it's new year's eve it's to a if you even think you might get was up till this afternoon opposed to this i didn't realize that you did this last year you're allowed to go to just i did also talk to the chief and he said the numbers were low they did not have to do an extra police detail i was in o last year from the extended hours i'm sorry you have to interrupt and it definitely the sales in the restaurant i wasn't here last year or years if i joined the restaurant at the end of january but the sales dropped off dramatically later that night so we're not necessarily even trying to you know it's not all about packing people into making money it's just allowing people to keep celebrating that are already in the restaurant and that really if he doesn't need to go out as well my concern also was we've got one more meeting the twenty eight so i just envision saying yes and then having twelve fourteen other restaurants coming in doesn't give you a lot of time on this board to plant lease but listening to the police chief and knowing that you did it last year and there were no issues i have a hard time hanging my h is not a lot of dollars it's not so by doing so the cost of incurring that when we're already earlier in the evening going to be paying three to four people of our private security that will be staffed maybe we won't have to do that at that point you know if we have uniformed officers so you're going to have a three or four private all have that starting it by eight o'clock on staff yeah just a suggestion again  might want to consider in as much if you if if the board does impose two uniformed officers you probably could get away with less non uniformed officers and offset some of that cost but service on december thirty first you know through january first and kevin we can make it contingent upon i ring to detail officers if the board so wishes it is my motion that is in the motion so that motion s there's just one sentence i want to strike ok in that in the november ninth that's an addition many addition to that about just right th public hearing discussion if you choose to do thirty six lines down or actioning off both the old fire station and the contiguous market street property we didn't want to refer to the name you know our discussions in a contiguous market street property and strike former ok and then  the next sentence it's important to open this up to the public is the terms forward with the sale of a prime piece instead of the best a prime piece and then in the very last paragraph second l same page second line again to strike the former description and insert market street property just as a look at the paragraph that you're putting in yellow because we're going to have a paragraph that will go on page three caution may second all you discussion all in favor opposed motion carries four zero now the november twenty third minutes another twenty three hours after the picture notes to write with this address this we got this right you know i wasn't here for that meeting so i don't know the minute thirtieth any comments or corrections ok with a motion to approve motion made second by lorraine all those in favor  six and thirty three seconds second any discussion all those in favor of post motion carries force is next item vickie low counts on aging request acceptance of a donation from the mansfield lodge of alex for four hundred ninety dollars to the motion second is there any discussion all those in favor of motion carries and the second is rivonia were a large chapter not our borough donation of five hundred dollars most you know except with gratitude thank you motion made second a discussion all in favor i posed a motion carries for your old fox field taxi there is a a real hackne expire twelve fourteen two thousand and thirteen rosemary smith two year term to expire on twelve fourteen twelve john he will need two year terms of expiring twelve fourteen two thousand and twelve and frederick grossmith one year term expire on twelve fourteen eleven so this this is been in front of us before but because of the there were altered schedules you want to go back davidson's from the gentleman that is the driving force behind this and these are his recommendation so i bill cutting him off in theatre requests for three one day param wine licenses december twenty sixth twenty seven comments from the board to make a motion we approve fee to each other through quests seconded to him any further discussion on the board all those in favor of motion carries four zero told that we do not have to read all the names at night just that we can make a motion to approve a license renewal schedule as many of our package pages one through nine to make a motion we approve discussion just clear i mean there's a tremendous amount of licenses on here we soon that it's gotten to the stage for renewal of the bills are paid there's no outstanding issues with the board of health the board of health has been the building inspector a discussion just another question so when they when these establishments come in to ask for a license they go to sandra might fill out the application and anyone looks at it to send it around just goes to you and then it comes to us i'm not sure what the procedure is to review i know that at least goes the treasurer's office because we've adopted the bylaws types which have to be current now remember it's not taxes current as of today it's taxes current as of a year ago summer that's the way that law line take the exam again remember that said exam you can't possibly fail because if you give the wrong answer it tells you they guess again you keep guessing until you get the right answer hopefully we don't have to guess too many times some of us are brought to the attorney general's attention the fact that that's really poor way to do it but it hasn't changed so and also want to let you know that each member of the board is like and has to do that to get everybody three quarters of a million dollars and we use that to pay out claims that were incurred prior to a cut over day september one of this year the normal procedure is the carrier in this case the blues ask us to send him a check for about three quarters of a million dollars and they hang onto it and they make interest on it and they pay the claims as it comes in lisa sink us and i'm very proud of or in cooperation with randy or see a fault said wait a minute there's no law that requires us to do this tell you what we're going to do we're going to keep the seven hundred fifty thousand and we're going to pay you each month the actual claims that you sent to us by doing that they've retained all that money in the town's treasur which improves our cash flow position probably earns us about twenty five hundred dollars in interest not a huge amount of money but nonetheless the initiative that this represents are employees not doing typically what everybody else on the planet does i e sense that the pause it in and instead takes the initiative not to do it represents the kind of activity that i'm really proud of them for doing and it's that that sort of thing i want to bring to your attention and the public's attention by writing letters like this and kind of heralding not you know you do this ten or twenty or thirty or forty or fifty or sixty times in a year and these town employees do it and these little twenty five hundred dollars start adding up in a substantial chunk of change  and the other thing is on the backend when all those bills are paid all blue cross blue shield typically will hold on to that money for a long time before they'll finally give a bacteria way past the point where they should be less not going to happen loss from those claims are paid off we're going to have that money ourselves and there's going to be a substantial balance in there at some point more than likely you won't mature for a year to those claims run out but that's one of those accounts we've been talking about that will hopefully throw off a good surplus that we can use prover something else i just want to bring out your attention very proud of what what these folks do every day and i don't want that sort of thing to not get brought to your attention in the last thing left and next week i'll be asking the board  sewer billboard advertising thing will not be ready in time for either of those either in january or february special so the decision you need to make is do you want to call this special and deal with those twenty odd articles none of it is origin but some of them are fairly timely we've talked about three or four of them tonight or do you want to just put those into the may meeting understanding that will almost for sure create a two night town meeting so that's exclusively your prerogative but it is something i need a decision on because if your decision used to have the special then obviously we need to know when you want it and get t at the preparations made of the list of warrant articles as it has grown but it has a decreased since last time is it really hasn't because it really needs you to go through it all we do is we just but it really there may well be articles that you look at and you say look we don't think this one is ready for prime time and that's your prerogative and you should do that i always encourage boards to say look we just hope it does and we've got some controversial ones on there you know so you know you've got some decisions to make i think and whether you want to pitch those it or not one of the things even though department heads and lawn and i've i've always recommended the boards i've worked for boards that have just said anybody as soon as anything will put it on i've always encouraged boards to be more selective you the policy makers don't put something on that you don't endors out but that's up to you that's what you haven't just given the discussion we had about the master planning aspect and you mentioned there are two articles in there individually representing components of a master plan approach so they add up to about seventy five thousand dollars well plenty of board wants has put a number well the time planner has put a number of fifty on the downtown study i don't know if that reflects the planning board's  idea or just his i'm not sure but that's the number he mentioned to me that number hasn't been vetted in any way so i don't know if it's the right number not but that's what is mentioned in the space use study of twenty five is a guesstimate it really depends on if the work that was done a few years ago is still usable and so it's an update versus just a whole new species plan what i'm wondering is if you know is there a way to get a little more in depth understanding of those numbers just so that you know if we are going to decide to we want to go for the whole hundred thousand as opposed to piecemeal and comprehensive good point good point maybe can we can you get some information for us that we can yeah i thought some more the next meeting i would suggest what you do is have that conversation with the planning board and because they've got the key study here which is the down time plan really is a component that could easily be done as part of a master plan so it's really a matter of do you want to do it would probably be about a six to nine month downtown plan and get it done or do you want to encompass it into a master plan which is going to take the better part of two years and accept the fact that it's going to take a lot longer to get that piece done that's kind of the decision the work doesn't get wasted either way because if you do the downtown plan that work is going to end up getting carried into the master plan it's just really a matter of do you want to try to achieve some more reminded to the savings where you're looking out you know maybe ten grand you know take it off the want  do the other would you talk to the planning director tomorrow and share with with him hard discussion maybe he can take it to the planning board and then they can feed back that i know and it was watching the meeting tonight but she was ill but maybe that maybe the chairman could call linda and and have a discussion and then take it back to here because it whether it's next week or week after time is pretty tight from that standpoint so i think you could start with the planning director have him talk to the planning board will do you ok you do anything else given that said thank you all hear anything not all right jim you know the only thing the next week we're meeting with the water and  sewer i agree i don't want to underestimate the time that we're going to spend on that with the motherboard and gas so probably putting more stuff on tomorrow next week's agenda and then the next one we have after the race to twenty eight so it's next week the only  on them right now is the liquor license discussion that you asked for earlier tonight and the  it we're trying to keep that as a very specific agenda item and not pull out of other stuff on it twenty eight is your regular meeting and i did ask the chair if it's possible for you having three weeks in a row that i have a promotion and consider that she said sure so we'll take a look at what we've got on for the twenty eighth we may be able to get you going to the meeting right now that so you may be able to skip the twenty eighth for next week's meeting with  come because of the importance of it so i ask you to give consideration to whether this room is large enough to do that and if not that we have it in a room that will accommodate you because we're required to to limit the number of people in this room easily and it's a little harder for the cable folks but they have been able to do it in the past so you know yeah right a little yeah right so i mean i just there's a lot of things to take and i just want you to think about it