telling the town i'm coming to address your group because i have something very important there's another one when the town a member of a boy who has connections personal connections with that organization takes upon himself to bring it to the board to take time off the a critic of mine for several years but i would just like to remind those folks at home that if you looked at mr gallo's goals and objectives for two thousand and ten which he prepared they included to continue monitoring of that bridge in working with the state because the prior board of selectmen had voted to support the preaching to work with the state in order to do that and they did that as i understood from watching those meetings because the development of two office complexes on the other side would be an economic boon for the town of foxborough producing substantial revenue and so that board voted to want to assert and missed again what had it is goals and objectives for the year when i sat down to review mr gallo's goals and objective the results for the year  mr scott once i talked to india about it and said with his retirement we're going to lose all that knowledge that he had working with the state and working with others and so i asked that we put it on the agenda so that we could various people that know various people  and the other the other one is i believe eleven years old he's very old he is probably has about a year left and he doesn't really want her that much she doesn't want to live twenty he's very the the other ferry occurred when i was out of state somebody had opened the garage put the dogs in there and you know i don't know how long i wasn't there i got several problems with my neighborhood and especially with some of the younger you and this has to do with distance from her she had several instances driving down the street and on summer street where i've had racial epithets yelled at me and this is good so i mean it was basically libel and read the court i was threatening somebody his life which i did not do with an axe which i did not do because the next door neighbor is a very really does that necessarily concern the dr yes that is the issue but i really think there's a problem in the neighborhood too and i don't know i cannot point a finger i'm just mentioning something that the tell me need to address at some point and it's a very big problem and i'm literally being british really attacked i e time that happens you need to call the police station i have and i have if you don't get anything you need to speak i have no problem comply with that i just again i know i have not exactly reiterate that a lot of the problems are so outside of my control with the neighborhood and sometimes i mean you coming feeding them and prayed and then they were supposed to have taken them to the to truly facility where no one i purchased my my bird brain hammer in new orleans and what happened was they did countable for the fact that this is if this was the first time this has been going on since december and you come in tonight saying you didn't know what he would hear the sign for the letter says it doesn't feel right i would  this except i would say keep the dogs off the property until all this is done this to the fence and security work out the issues with your fans whatever issues you have with the police once it's all set then you bring the dogs back in fact that there's been within a day or two the in laws can stay there or do you think that as jen said it's best for the animals to be away until everything is quickly if it still require i make a motion accordance to the letter that was just submitted  but by the animal control officer the dog has to remain in the in the house for forty eight hours that's on a leash to go down from outside forty eight hours until this is implemented if it's not implemented the dog is taken off the premises what it's been a long day i am here this evening to update everyone on the town manager search process the just to go back very quickly to where we started after we reopen the search we received about seventy five resumes total and the quality fortunately went up but dramatically so we're very pleased about that we also just to refresh our memory brought in a search consult his name is tom groom he's a former town manager very experienced he knows everybody in the state the purpose of hiring him was to really network among the pool of candidates in town managers throughout the city because they were concerned about whether or not they would really be given an opportunity to compete for the job so that worked swimmingly well and we increase the quality really we were we were pleased about that so for the last two months we've been going through this process of reviewing resumes and to get to a point where we could identify finalists over the last three weeks we have interviewed ten candidates of interest i would call them and i think you know there are six members on the search committee  is very good community very pleased with the dedication to focus people when we're interviewing candidates we're doing it into the evening and everybody's been on board and focused so we just finished last night interviewing the last of the ten candidates and we're very pleased overall with where we are and that we have strong interest in the position and very qualified candidates at this point we're now contacting the candidates to inform them of five candidates to inform them that we are interested in moving forward with that we have assured them all of these candidates of complete confidentiality because most of them are employed and they would be given an opportunity to back out of the process at this stage so we're calling the five people candidates of interest to this point and letting them know that we want to go forward and would like to start reference checking and we're in that part that's going to take a couple days to get through we're hopeful that five will will agreed to keep going forward but we're not sure i would say that the quality of the candidates where we are are fairly impressive and you would be pleased we're hoping that we can get them to keep going in the right direction we'll see how that goes tony what's your concern for why they might not want to go forward they're concerned about the foxborough process can you be clear on that well the early in the process before the search committee was  formed as you may recall the subject of the in house candidate was discussed openly and the favor ability of that candidate was discussed openly by  the town manager fraternity in the state is a small fraternity and they all talk amongst themselves and they they discuss this openly and in fact many of the candidates have discussed it with us as we interview them and we give them an opportunity to talk to us and they would say i have a question i need any answer is this an objective process are you serious about giving us an opportunity so we assure them that it is because you've shared us the news and so we're hopeful that that's that's the issue larry to answer your question think the ultimate and only objective is to get the most qualified candidate in the chair of top manager for this time so we tried to assure them of that and we're going to do that want to want i'm calling some of the candidates myself and tom cruise calling candidates we'll know in a couple of days about their reaction to that so we're hopeful do you have any advice or suggestions to us to help you help them understand that it truly is an objective process and that we truly are looking for the best qualified candidate i really don't have any rocket science suggestions other then few to say publicly because i've talked to you all individually and i know that you've all said to me that that is your intention so i think you know for you to confirm that publicly i think is important and they they do pay attention i will confirm publicly that i am very interested in making sure i was from the very beginning that the process was done right it was done fairly we've had an individual for thirty years has done a great job but it's a new opportunity for foxborough to to look at the marketplace and find someone with the experience with the people skills with the leadership to come in with fresh set of eyes and take a look at where we are where we need to go and so i would asking you know if you heard about it they said they wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole because it was a done deal and that was before the town spent the money and got a consultant who did the second oh me i also recall it was also on resume i haven't spoken to him at all about this process and i haven't spoken to the other people so from my perspective from was on the board before coming into it know absolutely that the door is wide open and well look i think we do a disservice to the so they heard it once before and if you can take this back to them because you're at a crossroads people you may have good qualified people that don't that are working right now and they don't want their name out there because they're afraid that it's a waste of time so if you could just bring that back is this job is a very attractive position and if your career as it is as a town manager or town administrator in the region this is one of the plum jobs because we have a terrific mix of the right size we're not too big we're not too small we have enough complexity to challenge the best minds the most qualified people and there are people out there who want to be challenged and they want great jobs they just don't want to not really just sit by you know punch a clock and we're sound financially that is huge you know we're building things we're we're making the quality of life in this town better because we can and a lot of towns are not in that position so everybody who has had anything to do with that lives in this community should take pride in the fact that we're in this position we have the ability to track to attract great candidates for important positions and you know that's a good thing we don't have to go scrambling initially we did because the p r wasn't all that good you know we were we were able to get some pretty good people so what i call in business and hiring game changers people who can affect change people who have vision people who are focused on a vision and then are focused in executing that vision that's hard to do and hard to find people like that we're talking to some of again you know doesn't matter is what it is you know what's good here because they don't know that and they specific you know a handful them specifically asked us you know is this a real opportunity or am i wasting my time so you know we tweet this tony so we try to assure them as best we could and i think you're going to be very surprised if we can get the number to come in there's some really talented people there and i was pleasantly surprised going through the process because i was really concerned early on especially with the first round of applications we received but there are some really talented people and let me speak to that as well  i know that you know i mean the statement from the get go that you know i think that we jumped the gun a little bit you know we were all excited and you know this is something that we've never gone through before we kind of blew money on on a consultant to get those best of the best to come forward and you know take that back to them and let them know that you know we're serious you know and we want to tha make it public i've actually intentions and actual intentions and to get the best person for this job and i know that we have a great committee it's done a lot of work and we wouldn't have done that if we didn't have much trust in you in the in the doubts listen for yourself this is what all five members of the worst want to say as well as to members of the committee who express what a lot of passion a lot of energy the quality of the candidates and i think we're all looking for that person with vision and that person with passion and that person who can create the kind of change to get us to the next level to want to be at so i think of them actually having a piece of this to see it firsthand will hopefully they'll be able to judge for themselves the seriousness of each of us so that they will complexity in each of the candidates without getting into details but so we're talking to five we've gone from seventy five to ten to five our intention is to tell five that we're interested in moving further in the process with them and we'll we're hoping they will all say yes i'd like to keep going you may not end up seeing five we're going to do reference check yes and talk to them a little bit more and you know get get a so you may not see five you may see treaty of four or five but we're going to we're we're hopeful we can get the best of what we have to the song and then at some point we'll do you know we're doing the reference checks and then at some who wants to go forward it's probably going to take us several days to a week to do reference checks so we might have names for the board within a week or ten days to interview everything has to be done in public at this level i believe you can interview them until they bleed you know until the tired of interviewing as long as it's done in public and then you it you've got a negotiation process to go through my talk to you about that and hopefully we started thinking so that we're not doing that at the last minute the details of the contract are you know you have that in mind with what you want to do  hoping not too far into august and that this will go it will depend somewhat on how quickly this board moves in the interviewing process did you ask each of these candidates if they had i need your six month for factor in tony into the hiring process obviously we're interviewing candidates but at the same time out imagine the candidates we want to interview time and you if your committee going to handle that individual or different department heads or is  to come to us they as a subcommittee we're going to do some of that one on one but ultimately they're going to want to ask you that they're going to reporting they've done a little bit you know already  candidates we could tell in the interview views of that committee got quite good at it after all didn't take long to figure out stay and listen and at the end we would have a little longer conversation the details of this job there are some unique attributes to this position that don't exist in other towns and we can blame e n d for most of those attributes such as we have no h r director we have no assistant manager we have no procurement officer all of those details from one desk and this board is you know may want to think about that in the future about how best to organize that management team how many direct reports should indeed have i have my own opinion is that people probably want to start thinking about that they are going to want to talk to you know do you really think that a town manager ish should be able to do you expect what are your expectations of the top managers should they be doing all of these things and executing vision and trying to solve problems those are they're going to want to ask you th i think you should all be comfortable in the taxpayer should be comfortable that the money spent on the consultant was well spent was sure you know incredible to see where we were at the beginning the process and you know the names in the numbers of or it's a very credible low key understated but get it done kind of guy he's very well respected in the in the fraternity so i would if i were you i would lean on him as much as he'll offer to let you do that and he did offer to us that he would be happy to work with you on contract details because you can get really get tied up in a knot over that and do things that aren't necessary front and then it's a free for all with five questions coming through five different people and again and you don't want to skirt the open meeting law but you want to come up with some questions that are fine but not public so everyone's listening to the questions weeks in advance had the blue cross and that harvard government had m i a but there was also referenced g i c and there was going to be some material can you just explain to the board kind of what happened to the g i c quoted and why you chose not to pursue that but can you explain there are a lot of communities that have gone that route right and so can you just explain to the board why for instance you didn't think that was the appropriate route to continue to pursue there's a timeline far joined that plan for the most have a lot of financial difficulties with the coverages adverse selection really increased the premiums really force them into the decision on whe for those that are watching at home or those that might read about people health insurance is probably one of the most personal decisions or when he makes and when we went through the budget cycle last year we talked about the fact that  our employees paid a fair share of the premium for the most of the times but that when you look at the co pays and you look at the doctor bills and you look at the plan design that it's an archaic plan and that most private employers and most at the state level and this was an article in the boston globe this sunday talked about the fact that these fifteen and sixteen and eighteen in one thousand percent increase  year to year made health care a real budget busters for communities and so what you're proposing is just a baby step because you're not proposing any plan design changes so if the taxpayer homeless is looking  this this is just it's a baby step in that sense and and so we would still have to go back in and try to bargain with which each of these would change with each of the unions regarding plan design changes but could you just recap for us as i understand it on the school site most of the school employees voted to switch to the m r i m i i plan but put all the town on the green discipline side voted service an entire community because they only focused on school but if we were not to go with m r i and we had to then find five hundred thousand dollars in savings i can see that the school employees would say wait a minute we voted to do that why should we pay for seventy percent of the cox if we voted to go to the new program in order to save the town money and that would create an issue force as well because if we have to cut the budget we generally do it seventy thirty but they voted to go to the program that they're not going to be saying ok pick is the how decided not to go we should still buck up our seventy percent from that standpoint so have you talked to the superintendent and if you got his view or anybody from the school committee you remember last year we were short on number the school said that they did not they would cover there's just three management we went back to a special town meeting reducing line items to cover our number but since they only have to line items that gave them some flexibility you know what they didn't want to do if i recall they didn't want to actually make the cuts and then if money came in higher than they thought not of spent the money so they watched in a month to month basis so here if we're one hundred forty how meeting floor between different groups of people saying you know don't don't do me to someone else from that standpoint so if we were to if we were to transition to the m i a then the teach whatever they want to do to try to protest it or they could just accept you know we want to know what they what they'll do until they actually do it but either way we're short money both in both cases it's not all or nothing would be having make this decision fifty sixty percent twenty or is it up to the town manager on which direction to go to after getting input from all the different departments fire made it clear to us in the meetings that they need  selectmen can make this decision because it is not a change of plan design or anything it just played a ministry of yours right and that in addition to that you would you would use an additional factor whether more than fifty percent of it's i think it's going to be a lot of resentment going forward negotiations to go down to a cut copays or to a t so it's too late to say jim i would just as i've said to you before i agree with you the communication could have been better i agree but i think town of ministration brushed on it as a result not every idea dotted into your process and i think some people thought one thing and it turned out to be something else so absolutely on the other hand though what's frustrating to me as a member who were selected is we've tried to explain to the public into the unions under proposition two and a half we can raise taxes by two and a half percent a year and that's about eight hundred thousand dollars if you take just the insurance alone as we're going up at almost a half million dollars a year and then you take the unfunded liability that we have for health care it wipes out most of that and so what we're trying to do is to figure out without impacting compensation without impacting headcount you know some people would say some people have said the past well don't fill the positions and just give it to us but ultimately we're short staffed and lots of places and you certainly know that in the department you weren't and so it's it's not like we have an unlimited amount of money we're just cheap and don't want to spend it the point is under proposition two and a half there's a limit to how much we can spend in this particular case if we don't make the change then we've got to cut three hundred fifty thousand of real expenses between the schools in the town and you know as well as i do that's most of our eighty percent of our expenses are people so while you may be able to come up with a few pencils and you know selectman is travel expense in a few other things there's going to be people impacted in and i hope that the unions will understand that the hardest part for us is trying to balance all of that because we have to provide the services we have to be a good employer we have to balance where the money's going and you look at mansfield and so many of the other communities that have had layoffs because they haven't managed things properly and what we're trying to do is work in a positive cooperative way so i actually agree with you that the communication as an issue apologized publicly that you know that that's what happened to the unions if you that they felt that way i agree with them but i hope that they'll understand as we continue to talk and work together going forward there's a finite amount of money to it's not like we have extra if you know where there's extra money to be happy to kind of think about that but at the end of the day if we spend an extra two dollars here we have to take it from someplace else and that's that's the struggle that we have but it's like that the committee in the last two years i did not meet very often to deal with the issues and and you know i'm not here blame anybody just you know as you heard earlier tonight he's the injuries to b p of h r he's the v p purchasing and he's the town manager it's really tough doing all three jobs and one but the bottom line is that the committee that reviews insurance met relatively seldom in two years and it was only at the end of this may timeframe when the committee was brought together and he said i shouldn't be the one running this and he asked the committee to step up and take responsibility for driving this moving forward but had we done that a year ago or two years ago so i'm not trying to be critical of the town are critical of me and he put from the union standpoint the town didn't take in the sky and i know they were there were a couple of meetings but there were a lot of meetings and in fact some of the folks that were listed as its members one of them it would have died before it had been replaced so there are some issues that we could have done a better job it isn't a matter of finger pointing but ultimately i understand why they feel as though this is being rushed all of a sudden in the style and i mean what you have to be number that there is a certain time period that insurance companies will come in and in give you a quote on what on what you're you're you're trying to get from them to i mean when the vendors let's say can come in and say all right let me see what you've got let me get a and let me tell you we know what i breakdowns are going to be because it's it's it's the ever changing price tag on it and that's why peace and then told to us later that it wasn't so good so i just want to see mike and his you know also if you can i mean if you can step back and put in a little perspective i mean three years ago two years ago one year ago it wasn't even that this guy was falling in just about every other community around and there were very substantive changes in this i mean it's more it came down to some some dollars and you know what changed maybe we can look at this as a learning opportunity that said you know we're all together next year i concerned with you know because we have thought the distrust between the employees and the town when we say subject to meeting any party obligations that implies that we think this bargaining obligations and if we think this prior to the operations one of those operations if in fact we don't it's subject to any marketing obligations then we don't have that now that to me is different then being open being able to answer questions being able to get me here again if they want to look at doctors or co pays or any of the things you do with police and fire that to me i without the board's approval so he keeps coming to us without approval so if in fact we are basing your opinion on the fact that the board of selectmen has the right with the town manager to change plain administrators then i think the motion ought to be to just do that without subject to meeting any bargain obligations if we're subject to my meeting bargaining obligations and i want to know about that immediately which bargaining obligations they are and what the plan is to do it because if we go to me tomorrow and say ok the board of selectmen agreed to do it and they start moving forward and they said to us very clearly i need all your employees not just part of them and then if we get a my down the road and all of a sudden we've got some unions and where the union thinks they unions think they were told one thing and then a changed and they thought that they all had to agree and then it turns out they didn't all have to agree and then we get a ruling from later accounts of us says no in fact this is a change in plan to ministration but then says subject to meeting in the park getting obligations it goes it seems to say to the open steward of the unions that you need to continue to bargain with you before we before we actually do this and in fact that's not what i thought a town council labor so let me ask you this question and this is for the record are you saying based on your discussions with labor council we do not need those unions who voted against supporting the change to me or that we need a vote from them in order to do this under the authority to tell me to make the change right with it since he doesn't remember that document but we do i guess to try to read into the record so that there's no confusion with anybody just just curious want to make sure we do it right and then what you would do indeed before you would communicate if the board would support that before you would communicate to m i a that we made the switch you would get legals opinion either that day or n we still would like to put together a special meeting for the goals and objectives flat i don't know what's good for folks so we didn't really come up with what's good keep in mind that the the design for part of the mitigation money included all the design work and so when they did the first design and that was rejected then all that money kind of got thrown away and they had to do the read the second