issue very quickly is to talk about deficit spending for snow and ice just because it's it's timely the bottom line is that um currently the the salt and salt budget is um we're at the point where we were about about 18,000 and then it's actually 18 16393 um the highway surveyor uh place an order for he said about think it was about 28,000 additional after these numbers so we're somewhere 45 to 50,000 um in the red which is normally which is not atypical for for um this time of year so normally
we we um vote to deficit spend and in the past they would just vote to deficit spend I always like to put a number on it and knowing that we're about about uh 50k in um you know 50k would bring us to zero um I was gonna make a motion to authorize a spending up to another up to a another 100,000 of snow and ice I'm sorry for um for salt and calcium up to an additional 100,000 on top of the previous in other words and what was originally budgeted so we're already we know we're already about 50 whi
ch is allowable in that particular particular part of the budget so um if we voted 50 we just B basically bring us back to back to zero now there is now there is no question there is you know the salt shed's got salt in it so um you know we could come back and vote again if they have to may put another order in um or we can just assume that there's going to be potentially one more order so we can either table it until Wednesday or we can take a vote now whatever you'd like to do if nobody makes
a motion then I'm going to just table it till Wednesday yeah if we tabled to Wednesday I'd like to see year-over-year comparisons of orders usage cost just to make sure we understand uh how we're because I mean it we usually do it so to to Mike's point we usually go deficit spend it's by Design which is not a bad thing um but I think from a you know if you think about the DLS study and Bly reviews things like that this would be one of those things we would understand coming into it so I want to
see sort of where we are comp comparative to historical but I'm I'm okay with even making the motion I just would like that information yeah well I think I think that goes without saying and I had that conversation with the highway c this morning we need a historical um history because we're all I I I've been through this before likee you went a long time ago but none of the others really I mean last year was atypical last year was was atypical we want to avoid where we were last year where we s
aid our budget was we were de suspending but to an extreme we have to actually pull that back I believe right that's right that's why um right so let's let's make the motion because we have to do it um but then we need to look at the the followup you make the motion to for an additional 50 up to 100K I'll say so mood if you make all right well the motion is for for uh we're already at uh minus 50 so I'd like to um make a motion to allow the the salt and Calum calcium to be um to uh negative nega
tive 100,000 so moved second all those in favor I all right unanimous thank you all right um interview Town Administrator candidates um the plan is each one of these of these we have three to uh be interviewed um each one will be a total of about about an hour with uh I'll give an introduction welcome them ask a couple of couple of questions and then ask each one of you to to ask a question as we've designed and then we'll uh give them an opportunity to um to wrap it up and ask questions themsel
ves so who is the who's the first one Cody first the first if you could go down and get C C head add moved it will David be keeping an eye on the clock for us both of us since I have it kind of one of the things about sitting here yeah of there so I didn't have to look out the corner of my eye um yeah so we have one there we should back oh like a a screen a screen like a huge screen yeah like right that's a really that's a really good idea afternoon hi Cody take a seat welcome thank you thank yo
u for having me I'm Mike morali the the chair and uh we're gonna kind of jump into this we've all seen your your your cover letter and your and your resume um obviously this has been a long process and you know you've already been interviewed by act Greening committee so the goal today is for us to get to know you and ultimately we have to make a choice between the candidates the best fit fit for mendan so I'm gonna ask you a question you know we don't need you to give uh you you can I guess giv
e us a little bit of introduction in in the answer to this first question and then uh you'll give it have an opportunity to kind of wrap it up um and ask questions yourself very okay so um just to read here as you can imagine um you know many of us have probably done a Google search on your name um we've seen public interviews you did and read newspaper articles so I I'd ask you to um discuss your perspective on uh what you've seen in particular your background of leaving positions and um you kn
ow um you know whatever comments you might want to provide to US based on what's out there in the public about you yeah absolutely uh first thank you for having me Cody Hadad I'm currently the Town Administrator in the town of Halifax prior to that I was the assistant Town Administrator director of development grants in the town of Dartmouth um you know was to answer your question be very direct and I brought this up in the screening committee um you know I'm looking for a community collaboratio
n and one thing I hope that you learn about me today is I'm a collaborator through and through uh particularly in being a Town Administrator you you want to see things accomplished for the community and in order to do that you need to collaborate um you know and the reason really looking to potentially another community in particular menen um is I think it there's demonstrated collaboration and in the interview process initially you know David mentioned kind of the the intense collaboration that
's been occurring um the things that you've gotten done and in particular um the lack of collaboration can lead to you know not getting things done not getting things accomplished and so in my current Community you know I have a great relationship with my board um we've gotten things done but there is a sense of um a lack of collaboration and you know I think that's an open thing a fair thing to say it's it's well known throughout the community so it's hard to accomplish things um and I'm lookin
g to you know accomplish things want to better their Community when I look at mendan I look at it and I see I enjoy being in a small town so Dartmouth was a much larger Community 34,000 people um Halifax is much smaller 7,800 very similar to menend in budget size and I really enjoy the small town aspect of it um but then I see what Menan has done and you're Progressive in many different manners you you're changing your highway surveer to an appointed Highway director um Hala still has a an elect
ed Highway surveyor you have online licensing and permitting you just did a master plan these are all really good things Progressive things that allow for a community to Excel and things that Menan has done so it's really a I view as a fit for me to come in and help you further accomplish all of those goals is there anything else about uh your previous experience that you want us to know um I think it's you know it's been very broad um in that like I said is the Town Administrator in Halifax I o
versee day-to-day operations um HR you know we we don't have any sort of professional planning staff so again that's another thing you have some part-time professional planning staff here in menen um so you know but we've been very successful in my time there while it has been short and I do recognize that as a a concern that you rightfully uh have but um you know I think in order for I'm looking for a good fit and I see men as a good fit uh Halifax was my first Town Administrator role I had bee
n the assistant in Dartmouth but there's there's a difference there's certainly a difference in recognizing that um in Halifax we have an elected Treasurer collector um and there's just been a history that you you don't you can't necessarily get through an interview process that um departments like to operate independently in a silo uh and one of the things that I was able to and one of the things I really brought out during my interview process here um and some of the questions I asked the scre
ening committee was to to further get into that you know is that how Menan operates is it more of a collaborative process and what I got was it is a much more collaborative process and that's somewhere I see myself coming in and being much more successful okay thanks sure um so uh I'm Elena bugos I'm um Vice chair of the select board uh so how will you engage with residents to understand their needs and what strategies would you implement to maintain and improve the quality of life while preserv
ing the town's unique character absolutely that's a great question and it's one of the things really identified in your master plan as I went through it there's a need for further growth and development but how do you do that in a way of right smart growth or smart development where you keep those characteristics that the town really cherishes um and it it's exactly that getting out uh communicating with the public in my time in Dartmouth one of the things that I did was implemented an engagemen
t portal online so it was called engage Dartmouth it was a separate website um what you see a lot nowadays is you know people turn to social media and it can be a very powerful tool when used correctly um but a lot of misinformation gets out there so I identified the need in Dartmouth let's create a central place to get the information out there and so we created engaged Dartmouth and it was a place where if you were looking for the facts you could go get that information on that website we real
ly pushed it um big projects going on but also we had a um it's called what the fact uh page and it was uh you could go in and you could ask any sort of question and uh you were guaranteed to response within 24 hours and typically I would be the one responsible for responding certainly didn't know every single answer but I would reach out to the Departments to get that answer uh more recently in Halifax what I've done is I created a show called Cody's Corner U it's on YouTube if if you've seen i
t and it's really just um a way to keep the public informed because there's so many good things going on in towns but you a lot of times you only hear the bad um so it's important to keep the residents informed and and let them know yeah there are a lot of good things going on um and from that I've actually gotten a lot of feedback about several different things people oh I didn't even realize the time was working on this um and hey what about this have you guys thought about this so engaging th
at way and then also I try to attend various boards and committies um to get the feedback because you know that the residents that are involved um and and you're more connected then I get that information can try to bring it big picture Al together of with the goals of the community as a whole thank you uh this would be around budgeting and finance so what unique budget challenges does mendan have and how would you approach addressing them um the followup to how will you engage and collaborate w
ith the school district yes that's a very good question I think it's um a challenge that many municipalities across the state are facing in particular smaller towns um with new growth is you know there's some growth in mendan absolutely but um as we go into the economic there's some sort of economic slowdown um occurring we're seeing at the state level with the recent budget cuts uh the governor's budget so you have to be creative we have to make sure um not be relying on one particular um sourc
e of Revenue and making sure that we're diversifying our tax base where possible uh there may be opportunities to redel velop areas in particular um the master plan back to that I think it's important to try to implement some sort of um and you have the land use committee which is great but uh in Dartmouth we implemented I oversaw the master plan process and we implemented a master uh master plan committee that was there for the next 10 years to make sure we were making progress on it and identi
fying our top goals um that we would continue to work on so just exploring different opportunities really in particular that's a it's a challenge that menend we'll face um we limit prop two and a half is always a challenge municipalities with you know costs are increasing much uh at a much higher rate than two and a half percent and without you know much New Growth so three or $400,000 is what you guys have been averaging in the past few years um it's difficult to sustain budgets so efficiencies
it's one of the things I've done in Halifax and in Dartmouth is look for efficiencies in governmental operations um you did online licensing and permitting as I mentioned that's a great efficiency one of the other uh items that I asked our department heads to do in both communities was look at your operation you know your operation best go in and identify um if you were to make changes what would those changes be and so what we able to do um in Dartmouth was we combined a few positions what you
're seeing a trend in municipal government is um less overall staff but more qualified staff is what you're typically seeing so where can we make those efficiencies um there's technological things that we can change and back to your question uh the second part of the question with the schools it's so important right schools are 50 to 60% of your budget uh and a lot of communities want to operate in that Silo and you can't do it you need to be collaborative so we had a great relationship um in Da
rtmouth and when I got to Halifax their relationship wasn't the best there wasn't really that consistent meeting um Halifax as a Regional School District some lorda menden and immediately I went in I said well let's set up regular meetings myself superintendent uh our accountant in Halifax and then the assistant superintendent for finance uh of the school district and and sometimes those meetings are going to be digging into to you know budget concerns projections um or sometimes it's hey you kn
ow what's the school department up to this month um and but just creating that relationship and regularly communicating is is really important imperative um because they're such a large part of the budget and we're all one we're all one entity while maybe a Regional School District or the school department in the town we're all here for the betterment of the community which I think is very important uh to remember have any followup Mike um regarding efficiencies I'm just curious it whether it be
Dartmouth or Halifax any um examples of regionalization or shared services you could speak to or what are your thoughts on that yeah you definely in particularly in smaller communities um you have to look to shared services where it makes sense um in Halifax we were without a Building Commissioner uh for some time so we shared um worked with a a neighboring Community to share a Building Commissioner uh we ended up finding someone we brought on but since then we're working on a shared services a
greement for to to work on each other if one's out of town or unavailable uh so in that sense also in Halifax we've worked to regionalize our Public Health so the town actually serves as a um the host Community for it's called the public health Excellence Grant and what that is is you know there's set requirements so many inspections a health department has to do annually um food inspections so on and so forth but what the state has said is if you want to go above and beyond that we'll give you
some funding to do it um and we took advantage of it in Halifax I great uh Health director who was really taking the lead on it but I worked on intermunicipal agreement uh with five other communities so middleb Rainham Bridgewater West Bridgewater and East Bridgewater um and it's been great and the service is just expanded for all of us we're all benefiting as a result of it um which has been excellent um and really just the you know collaboration I have a good relationship with the uh neighbori
ng Town administrators in the in the community that I'm currently in um just bouncing ideas off of each other we have a landfill that uh in Halifax that actually sits on on partially Halifax partially Bridgewater so we're always collaborating on that um we have new there have some new permitting coming forward so we set up joint meetings myself their Town manager uh and the applicant just to work together so we're on the same page so definitely important to to collaborate where you can and if th
ere's um efficiencies that we can identify certainly Halifax is building a working on a new Council on Aging which again very applicable to you know what you guys are doing here uh and one of the things that we've talked about is maybe teaming up with a much smaller community of you know 2500 3,000 residents to our um next to us Plimpton and maybe regionalizing accounts on aging and the the end result is better services for everybody and much more uh financially effective so uh we're gonna go ri
ght into Communications so just follow up on the last set of comments there um please tell us uh a little bit about your communication skills and preferences how you'll engage with the select board the town boards the Committees and then the good one how are you going to ensure transparency across all of that yeah absolutely that's a great question so in particular um I'll take them kind of one by one with the board itself it's a very important relationship obviously and you know it would take m
e coming in and working with each of you on an individual level and a collective level to identify what are your preferred um communication methods now my goal is is you all receive the same information what I don't want is to give you know one more one less I want to provide you all with the information that you need but yeah that can be in various forms and so I would need to to learn how you like it uh currently I have one member who does never checks his email he doesn't you know want emails
so and he and he said to me look I I have no interest in kind of unless it's an emergency I don't want to know you know you can send it in an email and that's fine so I send out regular updates via email to the whole board and if there's something more time sensitive that's where I've gotten to kind of know each member what they look for um I have one member who prefers a text right he'll just can you text me if something comes up I'm not on email I have one who prefers a phone call so you know
it's it varies and you have to find that happy medium of um you know I can't call the board all five members every day all day every time something comes up but working with you on what are your expectations as far as you know the with various boards and committees like I said I think it's important to get out to those meetings attend those meetings um even if it's not necessarily something that you need to be there for just yeah the the way the role I view of the Town Administrator is you know
big picture to kind of accomplish the goals of the town of the community so it's important to go to those various boards and committees attend those uh meet with them meet with the chair meet with the the public um and that's and the transparency aspect of it you know that's one of the reasons I started the little local show in Halifax is because I felt there wasn't a ton of transparency um and you know it it's actually been the feedback has been very great and it's been very receptive so just
getting the information out there uh and doing the best that we can to provide the residents an opportunity to give the feedback back to us uh and that goes from the board that goes to department heads you know keeping the staff informed is so important too because the last thing you want is to um you know we're working on this but you the staff don't even know about it right so department head meetings it's something I have department head meetings monthly um in Halifax and it's an opportunity
for me to give everyone an update this is what we're working on you know this is kind of big picture of things but also um I have everyone go around and give a brief update on what are they working on uh I actually just implemented something a few months ago where I have each department provide a presentation brief you know 10 15 minute presentation on what are you doing what does your department do and it's been really eye openening because a lot of Department dep M have realized oh you know I
didn't realize the town clerk processed you know 5,000 ballots last year or I didn't know they had so many 1,600 dog licenses or whatever it may be but you get to understand oh that that's what the town clerk does or the the volume of libraries our library director recently went um and you know everyone thought of well libraries aren't utilized that much anymore and then she shares you know her numbers of just how utilized the library is and you say oh wow yeah libraries are utilized quite a bit
so just the the non-stop communication um I have an open door policy like anytime someone wants to speak whether it's a member of the public as long as I'm available yeah come on in have a seat and you know let's talk about it and that's how you get things done communicating and and talking about things so my followup to that would be one that I was asked I got slateboard member which is that's really it sounds like a lot so how you going to prevent yourself from burning out by going to all of
those things and listening to all of those people so it's not on a regular basis um you know there's no way I can attend every planning board meeting or every Conservation Commission meeting but it's important every once in a while um to stop and in particularly you know at first if I'm selected to get in and get to know the the key stakeholders of the community uh because while you know it's I'll certainly get to know all of you it's important there's so many other people as part of the communi
ty um that may be on a planning board or maybe not on a board committee at all all that are really key in the town and you know play play a role and play have influence so identifying those people talking to everybody um but yeah you have to it's it certainly wouldn't be like a regular thing it's as needed or if there's a big issue coming up you big issue in Halifax recently was uh we had a Starbucks right so Starbucks wanted to come into town and so just making myself available for that there w
as not much that I could necessarily offer right it was more in the hands of the engineers um the planning board but just hey you know I'm here if anything's needed to support you guys thanks very cool all right so my question kind of touches on some things that you've already talked about but uh for management and leadership style how will you bring departments together as a team and what is your philosophy and approach to Performance Management and evaluation yeah so uh back to that collaborat
ion it's it's so important there is no uh single department or uh effort that we take that doesn't touch almost every Department right within the town so um part of that is just making sure that everyone is aware right that this this is the impact maybe in your department this is what happens but this is big picture uh where things are and so that that's where the department had meetings I think come in but also creating teams um I'm big on teams for various projects so Financial team we created
uh when I got to Halifax in just regular meetings discussing things um and whatever project we're working on I try to bring a additional people in so you guys uh brought in Spring Brook the financial software I'm actually in the process of doing that in Halifax and we put together a team to you know an implementation team for that um and then also I just I like to expand it so maybe it seems like we're going to have um you know our treasure collector involved and our assistant treasure collecto
r but also I like to expand it open it up to other individuals who maybe aren't the the people you would say are needed to be involved but it's good to have different different perspective um and it's also good to you know to have employees show initiative uh so I try to expand our teams and really diversify them because with that you get a greater perspective and the end result is greater um as far as performance evaluations it's funny you say that it's something um I've been working on in Hali
fax so uh performance evaluations have historically been done but it's been more of checking a box and so there's in my opinion no value if you're not going to spend the time and effort to do per really put into it a performance valuation what what you should so um we're working on a new system right now with performance valuations and part of that is really just training our department heads uh and the staff completing these evaluations to to so they know how to complete them because it's a rea
lly great tool if you use it correctly and if you put the time and effort into it uh if you don't do that then you're just checking a box and there's really not much there's no not much of a value to it so um we did a compensation and classification study in Halifax um implemented that and one of the uh items that I'm really trying to push is because you hear this often in particularly in municipal government is there's no incentive to go above and beyond you know for an employee to go above and
beyond um because you maybe get your same step increase and your same same cost of living adjustment as everyone else so what I've tried to do and working on in Halifax is everyone is gets a cost of living adjustment whatever that's decided to be annually but a step increase from one step to another that that shouldn't be just a given you you should earn that that's in my mind that's a merit increase so what we're working to do is um is part of the evaluation it would be tied to that step incre
ase so if you get uh an evaluation ranking of uh above above satisfactory or higher then you would be entitled to that step increase so it's different different it's much different uh than what most people are used to and what a lot of municipalities are used to but it really puts in that incentive for employees to go above and beyond um and it also rewards it rewards your your employees that do go above meon which is very important so they're a very important tool when utilize correctly that's
really interesting so my follow-up question to to that would be so you're trying to make what's a pretty dramatic change to the pce structure uh what barriers have you faced and how are you overcoming them um well I think it's obviously the the past past practice of you know historically always just getting that so people you know uh there's a a sense of somewhat entitlement because that's just how it's been um but I think the the idea is is really getting the information out that this is a posi
tive thing because much of the feedback that I heard was well I don't think it's fair that soand so does the bare minimum every day and I go above and beyond and I don't get any sort of reward for it um and you usually have more employees that do go above and beyond and that you know will be eligible for that step increase so just trying to get the buyin um of it is is probably the biggest challenge and explaining it that this is a different it's definitely a change it's a big difference but it'
s not necessarily a bad thing um this is this is a good thing thank you you question on that is how would you evaluate your own performance that's a very good question um I think I am very hardworking very transparent um one of the things that I say to everybody and I my board actually just completed my evaluation with very high remarks um is that everyone has something to improve on that's that that's the reality and that's I get that to to our department heads in particular that if you're are
doing these performance evaluations correctly then you do have something to improve on um and that's not a bad thing right everyone can improve in different areas and so the important thing is being able to identify that um so I you know where I think I can improve is really just you know when I came into Halifax um in Dartmouth I had very strong department heads they really were so it was more of a hands off approach it was open door if you need something I'm available we check in regularly but
I'm going to let you do I respect your a professional um your professionalism and that you are the expert in your area whether it's assessing to whatever it may be um but I'm going to let you do your thing and so when I got to Halifax I initially took that same approach and quickly kind of learned okay everyone's different um so I've certainly looked to improve that where I meet with all of our department heads monthly um and and ask questions to to get an idea of what are they looking for from
me um during a recent department head meeting I did a little Anonymous survey where I asked all the department heads to fill it out you know what do you think I need to improve on or what are things that you think I'm doing well what do you what would you like to see differently and so that's where I kind of got that feedback and said okay I need to be a little bit more involved in some of the Departments um but you know one of the things I think that is a good attribute of mine is I'm I'm open
to that right I'm I understand and I want that feedback because without that feedback I'm not going to improve I I want to improve and I want that feedback let's talk about Economic Development I know you touched on that earlier but um how would you define Your Role uh to identify and execute Economic Development opportunities yeah so in Dartmouth that fell under my perview completely um as the Director of development that was community and economic development and also grants um and they're yo
u know variety of tools very different because they have a very strong uh commercial base so it's different there but just working with the businesses working with the business community is very important um being a partner to them and whether it's sending up regular meetings whatever it may be just being there to support them um in Halifax it's been similar you know primary responsibility of Economic Development falls on on my uh duties and it's different there like much smaller Community uh si
milar in menden so that's where we look at Redevelopment are there properties we can redeveloped we have one in town in particular um right kind of in the center of town it's an abandoned property um there's you know some long history about non-competes and things so it's sad abandon and you know one of the goals of the board is we we want to see this developed we want to whatever it may be but we want to see it cleaned up so utilizing some of those Economic Development ideas of um contacting th
e owner working with the owner in particular you know sitting down what can we do we want to be a partner here with you we want to see you be successful but we also there's a the town has a vested interest in this too being this up so we floated different ideas out like tiffs ta tax incremental financing um to give some sort of um you know there so there's a good reason for them to take advantage of it economical reason so you can utilize different uh things like that I did that in Dartmouth um
but you need to have you do have to have very good um basis for why you're going to do that because then you open it up well everyone will want some sort of tax break so you need to have defined um why you're going to grant that an application process it's something we worked in to implement um in Dartmouth you know malls across the the country have failed as you know we all know um and certainly Dartmouth didn't and they did very well and not because you know just of the efforts of the town but
there was certainly partly because our efforts because we constantly communicated um and we worked with them and said what can we do because we don't want to lose you right you're you're a huge draw to the community to the tax base um when people come to the mall they maybe go out to eat and so work that relationship uh with them your master plan is a great Tool uh that the fact that you have that you have an updated master plan it's certainly not going to be the exact framework of you know the
next 10 years but it gives you an idea of this is what the community wants so how do you implement that uh we did a local rapid recovery plan the state offered it and the town amend and actually did it uh during covid of you know what can we do to support our business Community one of the things that uh I did did in Dartmouth was we created our first ever vacant commercial property list and it was great because we became that one stop where if somebody wanted to locate a business in Dartmouth t
hey could contact us and we'd say yeah you know as of we tried to update it about every six months as of June 30th these were the vacant properties and we would do the the address whether it was you know industrial Light industrial commercial retail um the approximate square footage and then some sort of contact information and it was very helpful uh we shared that with the local Chamber of Commerce and then it was a tool to to Really Market the the community now was that something that that Kev
in kuros and the and the governor's Council or the governor's office reached out to you about is that something you came up with on your own no we actually um the idea of creating the vacant property was actually an idea that I came up with um we were I was looking at the data that we were being given as part of this local raid recovery plan and it was it was nice that we had that data but my thought was what can we do above and beyond with this um and so I asked our consultant at the time you k
now is would there be a way to extract this data it was in a GIS layer can we extract this data and you know create just a really an Excel sheet that we post um and they helped us really with that initial aspect of it and then we continued to update it um about every six months like I said so so that's Dartmouth but um how long how long have you been Ju Just for every body's edification how long have you been uh in Halifax a little over a year a little over a year so can you can you give me a sp
ecific example that uh from an economic development standpoint of something that you've grabbed a hold of pilotes and and you know where you're at with that within the community that you're working in right now yeah absolutely well the the property in the center of town is something we're actively working on is getting that cleaned up um the the landfill while it may not sound like Economic Development per se um it actually it is it's a in a small town there's not a lot of business in Halifax yo
u know um 20 30 businesses there it's you know there's not business um so the landfill is it's actually a large business and it's not um landfill in a traditional sense where they're not bringing Solid Waste in they're actually bringing contaminated soils um that are and they're they're putting them there um and so what I did was I worked with the uh operator there of you know the the town has approved this prior to me being here um but what can we do to benefit the town right because this again
this mutually beneficial relationship you are benefiting you're using our roads you know consistently 60 to 80 trucks a day coming in and so uh I was able to negotiate uh a fee a 1% fee ultimately so of all the soils that come in we get a 1% of of the revenue that they bring into the town so it's averaging about $10,000 a month um and then also the planning board I do assist the planning board like I said we don't have a professional planner so I've assisted the planning board with that Starbuc
ks um and Duncan not Dunkin Donut Starbucks in it's a um autoart store so assisting them with their review um as part of my role in Dartmouth I also assisted our zoning board of appeals so I have some you know knowledge on zoning um so assisting them with that and just trying to make it a more business friendly place um the permitting process streamlining the permitting process prior to me getting to Halifax it wasn't necessarily um if someone wanted to open a business you didn't know where to s
tart or where to end maybe one business would start with the Conservation Commission another one may start with the planning board so there was no clear and defined process which it really um it it created an issue for businesses that wanted to locate in town so brought all the Departments together to create more of a streamline process which certainly um helped with you know helps bringing in Economic Development so in preparation to come here in front of us and apply here I'm sure you looked i
nto you know men and you talked about reviewing our master plan and what would you um what are your thoughts about Economic Development menend how would you approach that well I think you're um one of the challenges and and things that I would recommend going after is water right water is an issue in mendan and so trying to get um some public water infrastructure expanded into the commercial areas because the reality is in order to get businesses um it's a lot easier to attract them if you have
the utilities to support them so getting the water in is something C certainly that you know we would look at and work with the neighboring communities um to try to expand that you have the um Route 16 I believe it was uh that there the M do will be working on in the next few years so being more involved in that process um you know are there ways to bring in the business Community to that process and I think they're they're pretty close to through the design phase but you can still kind of work
with them and maybe you know have the town's voice heard um to make it more development friendly in the places that the town has identified or that you know you would like to see so um yeah I think those are probably two two of the bigger things that I would go after okay have a followup mik sure um well it it could have been a followup and across maybe three or four of these questions but it might be more General now to say I'm just more Curious on your perspective on um use of data analytics a
nd information in running the town you have any thoughts on or either examples of what you do or what you would want to do in that sense it's um it's a very good idea and I think you need to UTI I'm very data driven um it's been one of the things that I've implemented budgeting in Halifax so prior to my arrival the town didn't have any sort of um Trends they didn't look really no official Trends monitoring system uh didn't forecast beyond the the next year and Department requests for operational
budgets um would really just be thrown out there not Based on data and so one of the things I've asked departments to do is is you know if there is a change in particular if there's a change in your budget and operation what is the data that supports that um it it whether it's the police department or Fire Department in call volume uh analyzing that data um it could be you know things that I touched on earlier with like the ballots and the election season you know reviewing that data and analyz
ing it um and then right looking at different opportunities is do we need you know staff is Staff the option do we need software um whatever it may be and really utilizing Consultants particular as a small town you have to utilize consultants in some um some areas you know we can't have all of the experts inous we utilize what we can in house but um not being afraid to go out to Consultants to bring them in to help us um you know identify Solutions uh so budgeting has been the main area that I'v
e used um data in order to um create budget requests and to be able to back that information up so uh but I think it's really expanding to even more and and it really it's a good it's a nice tool because it helps you when we get to when we get to the finance committee when we get to the select board justify you know what we're looking to do but also when we get to town meeting this is why we're looking to do it this we're not just throwing it out there because so and so thinks you know they they
they need additional hours or whatever it is but this is the data to back it up um and this is in comparable communities is very important too you know this is how you know such and such community and every Town's going to do it differently certainly um but you can look at different communities for ideas um and use that information thank you all right one more quick followup so you mentioned uh at your uh one of your previous roles you were responsible for grant writing and dark so what do you
see the role of the Town Administrator as uh in in terms of securing grants uh for the town moving forward yeah I think um it's a primary goal uh responsibility of the Town Administrator to to secure those grants and work with departments boards committees identify you know what grants do we want to go after right what grants make sense um one of the challenges that I see in particular in smaller communities and Halifax we have this challenge is we can grow and secure quite a few grants you know
we could there's a lot of grant funding out there right now but um do we need it right we want to go after things that align with what the town's looking to accomplish and who's going to manage the grant itself so I view my role is managing some of the projects and some of the grants um but there's some you know whether it's a highway department project who's going to manage that because there's limited Human Resources um in towns so being smart about what grants we go after and which projects
we're going to take on but it certainly would be a primary goal and responsibility um in Halifax I've secured two community compact grants one to do a human resources study one to do a compensation classification study I um I got a it Grant to implement online licensing and permitting um submitted a massw Works Grant to update uh to do some intersection upgrades at one of our main intersections over a million dollars I haven't heard back on that that period just opened um but yeah Grant experien
ce has been extensive uh so yeah definitely primary responsibility thank you all right so let's uh wrap this up with you give us a kind of a closing statement yeah gonna close this and we'll give you about three minutes to Sure up to three minutes to summarize very good thank you well thank you again for having me in um this is it's been a great process in the uh preliminary interviews I really enjoyed speaking with the uh Team you put together it made me excited for the possibility of this oppo
rtunity because I think you have a great team in place um the way that dve just spoke about the staff here and you know you had various board committee members on there um and it seems like the goals that you know they Envision of the community are really align with something that I think I could come in and be successful with um I enjoy being in a small town you know I I understand the question about only being in Halifax for the past year it's certainly a valid question but I do think um you k
now the what mendan has to offer would be an opportunity for me to come in and be here for the long term um I don't want to you know have to go through this process as you know this is a long process you don't want to have to go through it so I want to find a community where I I'm going to be there um and I think the things that you've done just really are are progressive in particular for a small town and something that you I want to be a part of and be be successful with um and so yeah look fo
rward to if you have any other questions for me even after this please reach out um and like I said just collaboration is very important to me um and that you know selected that's the really number one thing that you will notice I'm a very big collaborator um from head to toe all right any other questions for me do you have any questions for us yeah um so recently if yeah if you don't mind sure that's that's why I asked so you um you know the board in 2022 went from three to five members um have
any challenges that you guys have really identified with that as a board that you feel I know some of you you know are newer than others but um even just your perspective on things have been some of those challenges well I I can tell you as is I think the only one that was on the well no Mike and I both uh M Mike was uh was a was a member of the select board 10 10 years ago I think uh when it was a okay three member board um I had been I've lived here all my life and and watched the three membe
r board I was the chair of the fincom for about 10 years and then decided to to join the board um when it was a three- member board and was on the board when we transitioned from three to five and I would say to you that um from my experience I think it's been all positive okay um I think there were challenges with a with a three member board that uh and the five member board really uh made the whole situation better especially when you talk about being collaborative I think having uh five persp
ectives rather than just three um actually makes makes the situation much better that's my answer I mean have Echo that I think expanding right welcome uh Maggie Clark I'm Mike morali I'm the the chair of the select board thank you for applying and happy that you got to this to this last step so I want to welcome you to menen thank you for having me yeah so just want to kind of jump into this and what we're going to do is uh each of us have a have a question that we asked with maybe some follow-
up okay we'll give you a chance to summarize at the end okay but um just to to begin with and this is kind of a a boilerplate thing that we've created here but um just as a as a background question um you know as you can imagine uh uh some of us uh did a Google search in your name um and you know in public interviews that some public interviews you may have done or newspaper articles may be published so I just want to give the opportunity that kind of right up front um the way it reads here plea
se discuss your perspective on what we may have seen in particular the background of leaving positions uh and uh anything that might be in the you know kind of in in The Ether so to speak that you think that we might want to discuss this is just a general question um I can't think of anything really controversial in my background honestly that's fine I I if that's what we're trying to get to I don't it's not it's just the general okay yeah I don't think there's anything controversial I mean I am
on the select board in planville so obviously there's some some news coverage and other things related to that I'm on TV twice a month for that um so I mean I I think I am out there but I I don't think there's anything controversial or or negative really or anything that I'm ashamed of okay so you're uh so your background is your you're a select board member in your home Community correct and then you're as it as it says here you're the uh uh Clerk of committees in the city of Tom in the city o
f time correct okay well we've all read your resume so I guess um that's great then why don't we uh Elena why don't you jump right in sure hi I'm Elena brutos hi uh I'm gonna ask the first question uh which is has to do with residents so how will you engage with residents to understand their needs and what strategies would you implement to maintain and improve the quality of life while preserving the town's unique character um okay so two parts there interaction with the community um as a reside
nt I I have very much enjoyed being a part of my community and what I think has driven me is the feeling of being able to influence things very directly and so I think that on the flip side being the person as the Town Administrator I I think the goal is to empower residents to feel that they are making an impact on their community and so to answer the question a little bit more directly I think that what you want to do is to encourage participation on boards and committees and take the in input
from those boards and committees to heart um and let that drive the direction of the Town um and what was the second part of the question I guess what strategies would you implement to maintain and improve the quality of life while preserving the town's unique character right um so I think that's a tricky question I I do because I I think that I think planville is probably no different from Menon in the sense that we like our our C the character of our town we like that kind of homey feel the t
he rural spaces the the sense of community and what we're in Plainville what we're always looking for are ways to diversify the tax base in order to kind of take the the stress off of the the residential taxpayer because I think that is a way to improve the quality of life is to reduce the the pressure or on the flip side improve Services impove improve Services somehow you know there's a cost to that um that's a tricky question though because economic development that it do you really want Econ
omic Development and if so where and in order to drive that you know I would say you need to look at that very carefully personally I would in my own community and here I would as well because you don't want to jeopardize that sense of community that sense of of culture that is is your town um but if there's a chance of pursuing any Economic Development and if it's looked at carefully I think that is one way um and I've kind of thought about this I think there are probably three things that can
be done to influence Economic Development the first is zoning um taking a close look at what the zoning is and if it's set up in a way to encourage the types of economic development that you're looking for in the areas that you're looking for that won't really hurt or take away from the culture of the Town second I think is permitting and making it easy for developers to get the permits that they need through the planning board conservation zoning building making that easy and as streamlined as
possible without taking away any control but looking for ways to make that a little bit easier the third is Farm more complicated and we're not going to solve this today but it's it's infrastructure and and water and sewer and I know that's an issue here and that that's probably not an issue I shouldn't say that that's a challenge that's a challenge um so I I it's kind of a long-winded answer but to improve the quality of life it's either reduce the taxes or improve Services follow up to that al
l right Mike hi Mike Gard hi nice to meet you nice to meet you um I actually have as a preface to before the question can you explain to me Clerk of committees what what that role is and what it entails sure I know because I I wish they would change the title of it because I don't know that it really captures what my job is um I so Taunton is a city obviously and there's a nine member city council and so I kind of serve as their person in City Hall um and the way this the council is structured t
here's the the full Municipal Council which includes the nine the nine councilors plus the mayor but then a lot of the work goes on in their committees and there's many many committees um uh so I handle all of that I handle everything that gets referred to committee and then making sure it gets put on an agenda if they if they so choose and seeing that through making sure whatever motions they make are followed through with um preparing documents for them uh doing research for them I have someth
ing I'm supposed to should be doing come Tuesday just uh looking into other communities information that they'd like to gather prior to their meeting in order to help them um be the most effective okay Council they can be uh my question has to do with budgeting and finance okay um what unique budget challenges does mendan have and how would you approach addressing them how will you engage and collaborate uh with the school district okay um I I think I kind of touched upon it I think your challen
ges are no no different no offense but from from most towns I think that you have a small tax base a small residential primarily residential tax base and expanding that tax base is the challenge um I that's how how I see it that that's the primary challenge um just to give you a little background in my own personal experience with budgeting I I don't know that it really comes through through my resume because seems like it hasn't but I have kind of a an expansive experience in budgeting I back t
o when I was a Youngster and I worked in the technology area I would have to have budgets for my projects make sure that those projects came through on time I was on the school committee and had to you know oversaw the school committee's budget through the whole budget hearing process so on and so forth there I've done departmental budgets through the building planning zoning facility maintenance those departments in planville I'm in charge of my own budget in Taunton um I've done some project b
udgets I was involved in our building of the we had a new town hall and public safety building so and I was the chairman of that committee so we were in charge of the budget on for that came in under budget um and in Taunton I obviously I'm not in charge of the budget for the entire city of Taunton but I I I am in the room for all of the budget hearings and so I think that's given me a almost a really a college education if you will on budgeting on a large scale so um that being said the school
com the school budget is such a big part of the budget I think it's so important to set have the conversations going early I think that's part of the that's part of the way to success because I've seen it go both ways I've seen situations especially in planville where um we were in a really really really tough budget situation and the schools had some really big asks and it was really far apart early on and whereas what we should have been doing early on is having conversations about how it was
going to be a really tough budget process so that the schools would be kind of having their expectations set early set early um so in a Regional School District it makes it a little bit more complicated of course because you're not dealing directly with the schools per se and your control is limited so it does make it a little bit more challenging but I think the same Theory applies it early conversations early and often is the way to go just a quick followup sure have you in either planville or
Totton um had any uh engagement around shared services regionalization of town services and what what's your what's your thought around those around shared services I love the idea of shared services and I think though the way I look at it is not so much from a budget savings perspective as it is from a a service Improvement standard um I think that often times shared services doesn't save the money that that you think it's going to but you get a better you get more bang for your buck this way
um in planville we have a shared Animal control officer which we share with the town of rentham that's a that's that's big for us because it's really hard for us to afford that type of service a full you know and so we get much more for our money um we also have a shared veteran service agent who we share with North adbor again same kind of thing it's very difficult for us to afford those types of things but sharing it with another town goes a long way um I was on a committee in planville where
we looked at it's not EXA it's not the same as here in mendum but our K through well prek through six is a local school district and then 7 through 12 we they go to KP it's regional so we I was on a committee where we started looking at the possibility of regionalizing the entire school system um It's Complicated because there's a lot of moving parts and a lot of it's outside of our control but I'm a fan of it as a as a rule but it's it can be complicated thank you um we at we're uh this is Jaso
n by the wayas I got lost thinking about what my last question was for last person and how I was going to integrate it into this one so I apologize it's all right um I'm Jason Cooter yes and I'm one of the newest members of select um and so I'm going to ask you tell us a little bit about your communication skills and uh and your preferences and how you will uh engage with the select board Town boards and committees and while you're doing that how are you going to ensure transparency um so I I me
an if you my own personal preference for communication is I love email I I in Taunton I think they probably think I'm way over the top in that I send them everything um but I think it's important and I don't think it's my job to filter what gets to to the council I think it's my job just to serve as a conduit honestly I think that they're the ones in a in a decision-making position it's not me in in that job I'm simply acting as a conduit now I will say not all of them are great with checking th
eir email that's and that's fine everybody's got a personal style that that I I like email it works great for me it it doesn't work great for for all of them and so there are those who I need to reach out to with a personal phone call or with a personal text message um you know I usually give them a little time I I I've kind of felt them out now that I've been working there for a while and I kind of know what works for each of them um so the same Theory will would apply I would say to working wi
th the select board I I I think the same Theory would apply I do like email I will probably continue to like email but if that is not what works for all of you or one of you or a couple I think that that is my job to figure out what works for you because again I think as a Town Administrator it's important that I'm just providing you as much information as I can to assist you to make the best decisions that you can that that's how I see the see the role um as far as working with boards and commi
ttees I that's a little bit more complicated because the there there's more people involved and and you know I don't know that the Town Administrator would be personally sending information to a member of the Conservation Commission maybe maybe from time to time that would happen um but certainly with the chairman as needs as it applies I think email is great it really is um but there's there's always other methods it depending on the per person's preference as far as transparency I am I feel ve
ry strongly about transparency and this is going to sound really corny and it's fine part of the reason I really have enjoyed working in local government is that I love the fact that people can directly influence their Community I love that and I love a town meeting and I love the theory that someone can stand up and make a motion and change things in a different direction I love it however for that to work people need to know what's going on there's no that's that's the way I see it and so the
more that we do to make sure that everybody knows what's going on knows what we're discussing understands that the the facts of the case so to speak I think the better off that the town is I think that it's good for democracy in general I I think that it supports the whole town form of government and that's truthfully like a value that I hold and so I think that in the position of Town Administrator I think that it's important that we look for always improving the communication with the with the
town always improving our level of transparency always looking for ways to continue to put more information out there so that people who want to find it can find it easily um and there's no shortage of ways to do that now there's no shortage of ways it's there there's social media there's email there's the website there you know there there's no shortage of ways to do that so so many different ways to do all of that and given that there's such a high burden to communicate with so many different
people how do you prevent yourself from burning out well I don't think the Town Administrator is a oneperson show okay I I think that there are there's department heads right and I think that what's important is that there's a an understanding that that's the kind of the culture the culture is that we're open the culture is that we're putting things out there and and so I don't think the the onus is 100% on the Town Administrator I think it becomes a the way it's done that's the way it's done t
hrough and making sure that we're encouraging those boards and committees to share information um yeah c c can I just interject here and we talk about boards and committees but I'm also talking about um department heads as far as employees okay full-time employees that work within the town okay communicate and the whole issue of communication between you as the basically running the dayto day and all of the employees y okay yeah so that is a different right that's a that's a different that's a d
ifferent angle that is true that is a different angle um and I in that case yes the onus is on the Town Administrator no doubt about it um you mean in respect to communication I think in respect to setting a setting the expectation of communication and Comm and I think that there's probably um ways to do that I think that you know I don't know monthly staff meetings or monthly department head meetings um and I think that by me being open and transparent I hope that that would encourage that type
of give and take with other with the other department heads and and staff not just department heads um it's a small it's a small group of people right right so I don't see I I would expect that there would be plenty of communication because it's such a small group of people when I worked in planville it's a little bit bigger not much bigger a little bit bigger and that was the culture honestly everybody was always in communication and there's almost no other way because in a small group of peop
le I think it has to be all hands- on Deck I think that everybody has to be ready to pitch in every and there's no other way to do that without creating a team environment I don't think that's actually a really good segue onto my question so hi I'm Brendon I'm a select board member uh so my question is about management and leadership style so how will you bring departments together as a team and what are your thoughts and philosophy on approach to Performance Management and reviews yeah um okay
so team building a team is important I think that's I I I do think that's important my own the way that I have done things for Better or For Worse is I think that I try to set an expectation that I am willing to do whatever has to be done and I expect that from everybody else um I don't know this is just a like a little story for for fun um in Plainville we sold our old police and fire station and somehow that became my job was to get that ready to be sold um and it was it had been occupied for
many many many many years and was full of stuff it was like kind of gross and but anyway that's fine so it's it's really not a fabulous job but and I needed some help from the DPW they came to help me out they were kind of like not really that into it but my philosophy was I showed up I got on my jeans I got on my gloves we're gonna do it and you know what it went great I brought them mean it was your job to physically clean out no while I turned out but I'm not above that you know what I mean l
ike that's that's fine that's the way it sometimes goes and I think that if people see that they tend to respect that in my experience they tend to respect that um I feel like you had a second part to your question uh so yeah my the second part of my question was about uh basically performance review so managing an organization yeah that's a challenge because sometimes I almost think that if you have a high performing person and you have a performance review and in that performance review there'
s some piece of negative feedback that can almost be a demotivator and so I think that is a challenge and I think that um I think my Approach would be to do it in a way where I am looking at each person as an individual and making sure that whatever I'm doing is serving as a motivation and not a detraction um because I do think that's a challenge my follow-up question on about that is uh so how would you evaluate or measure your own success as you know in in the position like how would you imagi
ne in the future back yeah would you like yeah like what would I see as being successful how would you right you would measure this so I think it would change from year to year um if I'm telling you the truth because I think that in year one I think that my expect the expectations would be a little bit different as as I settle in and the goals become a little bit more clearly defined I I um my goals would be whatever the goals are that the board of Selectmen set for me and that would be how I wo
uld measure my success it would be my ability to succeed in Meeting those goals um but I do think that that would change from year to year as the needs of the Town change as the wishes of the select board change and as I develop as a Town Administrator I I want to touch on economic development um as the as the Town Administrator um what do you see your role to be in identifying and executing Economic Development opportunities maybe you can talk about in your in your current job how you did that
and how you see it in menen um yeah so in my current job I have very little impact on economic development it it I really don't there even the counselors frankly have very little impact on economic development it it it's really driven but that's not really an issue in time frankly they've it right that's not really an issue in planville what has worked for us and I don't know that everyone would say it's worked because some people would argue that we've become overdeveloped honestly I I think th
at there's there's two sides to that coin and why I'm I'm so cognizant of the fact that you you I would want to be cautious about protecting the the character of the town but what worked really nicely was we have well he's retired now but our director of Planning and Development was excellent and he had a really good way of looking to the Future and identifying areas where development was ripe he he was he was excellent but I think that the town administrator's job would be to support him suppor
t the direction um help to work towards those goals in terms of uh there were some votes at town meeting that needed to happen there were you know some zoning changes that needed to happen a along the way and the biggest thing that the Town Administrator did to contribute to his success was to support him frankly so is there a in and either you said do you really really in taunting the model of the government doesn't doesn't lend itself to that but maybe in planville um can you give an example o
f economic development plan bill that I'm that was um successful successful sure so um we we're we're we're fortunate that we have um it's Commerce Park that's a it's a little very small uh commercial industrial park um but we were very lucky to have Thermo Fisher come in and and take up residents there that's probably the the most in my opinion in my opinion the most successful economic development that we've had because the impacts there have been are are will be minimal to the town and what's
funny is that the first thing that came in for for that location was a trucking a trucking Depot and there was a huge amount of concern over that um but what the planning board did at that time I thought they did an excellent job actually was that they they crafted some conditions on that permitting and made it much more palatable for um the neighbors because there AR there are some residential neighbors that have bought that and there was there was a great deal of concern about the noise the p
ollution the everything um but again I I our director of Planning and Development who who was excellent worked some other with some other applicants who came in along the way there was some luck involved there was some luck involved but we're we're really really fortunate that the thermal Fisher setup shop there how about um in what you which you've seen and dug into in mending we we got a pretty good presence and information available online do you have any thoughts about Economic Development m
ended and and how you would approach that or how you would Aid that um you know what I thought was interesting is I was looking at your your open space plan and even your open space plan um pays homage to Economic Development so it's obviously important um I I I it's really difficult for me to sit here and and and suggest what I think would be the right thing to do I think that I I need to hear from the planning board I need to hear from all of you what you think the right thing is because it's
I would be here to serve as your your employee your you know certainly a leader in the town but a leader at your will and I I don't know that I would you know when the time is right I certainly am not afraid to give my my opinions but I I don't know that I'm I'm in a position to do that without hearing from all of you first well anybody have a followup to that or I this is my last question all right go ahead um e and either select board in planville or Taunton just sort of curious as your perspe
ctive on um use of data analytics information in in within the operations any examples of how it's being used and your perspective on how you might use it going forward um I don't know in Taunton we've done a some analysis on I mean this is a simple thing but we looked at they were looking to give themselves in the mayor arrays and we did some analysis on other communities and what their Council stiens were and what the mayor's salary was did some analysis on that we uh we recently well when we
say we I mean I I'm the one who's done the analysis for them that's um the way that's the way it's gone we did some analysis about the so I I said how they the way they function really is there the the full Council but then they have their committees and then all of their committees are various numbers of of members there's three members five members um and so they wanted to do some analysis on what other cities did in terms of membership for their com for their subcommittees did some analysis o
n that so sure it's valuable um I I can remember in planville doing some analysis on the numbers of building permits and the values of building permits in order to kind of project Trends um at one point I was doing the budgeting for the facilities Department which involved looking at the looking to budget for electricity and and gas which involved going back and looking at the trends and understanding where it's going in order to come up with a number for the budget so there's tons of ways to us
e data and data analysis um I was a math major so that that's kind of where I like to go because that's kind of my jam but um but certainly plenty plenty of ways to use data thank you anybody about uh grant writing right well that was that your question that was kind of my and I guess this is a follow Economic Development um in in both of your roles both on on the board in planville and and in your professional role in Taunton can you talk about uh grant writing securing grants and what your suc
cess was with that yeah I have limited experience with writing grants I I've assisted um in Plainville on a few here and there I I helped the police chief with one once just as a a random kind of a a thing because he needed some assistance and and I helped him with that there was one small Grant I applied for in planville and was successful it was really not a huge deal but that being said when budgets are tight every penny helps so I I was proud to have been able to do that at the time I think
in Taunton although I have I I'm not involved in any grant writing they actually have a grant person you know they have a person who's dedicated to that but it is exposed it has opened my mind to the number of grants available that are possible to apply for okay so let's let's ask you to go into a kind of a closing statement and just give us a pitch as to you know why you think you'd be the best fit okay just and any questions you might have yeah we'll do right and and okay after you do that we'
ll certainly open up for any questions we can answer for okay um so I I I'll give you my my elevator pitch for myself I grew up in Rhode Island I was a math major as I said after I graduated from college I went and I worked for a couple different software companies had a fabulous setup for a good career there and enjoyed what I did and then had my first baby and a little leave of absence led to four babies in total and more my my leave of absence became a retirement I guess um so as I was stay a
t home mom for for quite a long time which was great I was really happy to be able to do that and I feel lucky that I was able to do that and and as the kids were just a little bit older I applied for a job at the senior center in planville it was a little part-time job seemed like something nice to do and so I worked there for a little while and I loved it I loved the people there I really enjoyed it worked there for a Time the contacts I made there led me to another position at the Board of He
alth again just a little part-time job which I again enjoyed the part-time job at the Board of Health led me to a position in the in the plan in the building department again it was a part-time job a little bigger but still part-time job that job became a full-time job and they rolled in a vast array of different responsibilities planning zoning conservation um Economic Development working for him not not doing the economic development myself but working with him um when we moved into our new bu
ildings we for a Time didn't have a a facilities manager so that kind of fell on me um but really enjoyed it really enjoyed all of it kind of on a parallel path when around the time I worked in the Board of Health I ran for the school committee mainly because I had kids and I had a couple beefs at the time and I I thought you know what I'm going to run for school committee because I have ideas so I was elected to the school committee and served there for a time which is kind of a funny thing bec
ause my rationale for running had everything to do with my kids but it really set me up for a whole new career I gained experience with contracts and contract negotiations collective bargaining and the school committee appointed me to the permanent building committee and I had had no idea what I was getting into there but I came became the chair we uh built a brand new town hall in public safety building and gained experience I never would have otherwise gained and enjoyed every minute of it so
somewhere throughout all this I thought you know I'm not going back to be a software consultant let's be honest and um I think I'm gonna get my masters in public administration because I think this is what I want to do so I went and got my masters in public administration left planville to work in Taunton because I felt like I needed to and wanted to kind of expand a little bit and ended up running for select board and and here I am now so looking back I think what makes me a good candidate is t
hat I have a really broad set of experiences which have been gained through work in many departments in many different ways through work on projects work with departments work in departments I've I've gained a really solid understanding of how many departments works and the interconnectedness of it and kind of the value of public of the Public's participation in their government so I think that's I think that's about it I think i' I think I'd be a good Town Administrator tell you the truth I do
I think I would do a good job but you got to to pick the right person for you because I think that's important too you have to find the person who fits do you have any questions for us that we can answer for you about menen or a board or anything in general so I'd be curious what do you see as the biggest challenges in menden for the town New Town Administrator well I'll say as the chair I think in general it's it's the budget y um you know it's what what what was James Carvin said it's the econ
omy stupid right right yeah um the truth is that we all know we've been through an area a time of record inflation and because of the way that the budget cycle is um you know we've had a real uh escalating costs yep and now they're beginning to catch up and uh you know we've got a great financial team that um has really helped us to quantify that now and now we have to figure out a way to move forward um I I think and I think for a Town Administrator um like anything else you know we've got this
is a a small very parochial town it's been around for a long time it's part of a Regional School District but I think for any new employee particularly somebody who's coming in to be the boss um you know there's a there's a culture that you know you're going to have to acclimate yourself to and and actually um you know develop relationships with all of your employees you know and and yeah and um that's not always an easy thing to do you know so I don't know how anybody else feels about that but
I follow up to that one piece there is that I think the hardest part will be filling David shoes he's built a really positive culture amongst the employees here and um that transition is not going to be hard because you know like coming in here working with these employees is going to be hard it's going to be hard because David is been a rock for them for the last six months here and continuing that and building that trust is probably going to be difficult and you're gonna have to keep it cool
during that period I believe and that's anybody who takes this job y yeah from my perspective the budget's always difficult always going to be probably never not going to be difficult but this that initial coming in and The Human Experience feels to me like the most difficult part I mean I would that um in the last year we've had uh the state the Callin Center do come in and take a look at some of our operations um so from a change management standpoint the person taking this role will more than
likely be in a position where we're going to look to look at our overall organization and understand what's our future State need to be versus our current state and from a change of management standpoint that will be a huge I would say benefit but also a huge challenge to achieve that end State gotcha exciting though it's exciting agree anyone else thank you very much no thank you all I appreciate it thank you all right good luck have a great day thank you you too SS no I don't think we need to
still the open meeting yeah we still right take a break and next cidate they come in early iest gu we just bring them up yeah right that was a good idea to get here like 10 to 15 minutes early right just in case agree right around if there was a problem with that latch on this Invader thing yeah you said you left the I couldn't find to no no I know there's just that was the point there found a that Bron it's Dan I sent you a text can you just grab that third mic off the front table and put it b
ack in front of Elena sure I forgot we moved it for the water meeting side doesn't matter just yeah just put it right there it's not picking up her thanks say I don't need an extra I don't know what needs to is it right could be that well it could be when you want all online bearing with us when we uh just and it's to me like you see here no no and Lonnie said oh that the Link's broken and I was like that's not the link looks like got so that's good yeah so they build statue are you going to be
in the garden front W he's a good man yes he is we always call that the the early warning system sure but it's been you know what it is squeaked like that I can remember being a Cub Scout right and it right no I get that and what I what I what I find problematic for me is that I remember when you were at the beach and I was old then you know but um that what's what's now uh you know the select board admin's um office was the coat room because this is where we had our Cub Scout meetings and that
was where everybody stashed their coats and then we came in that other door which I don't know if yeah the other door there and it's just um oh that's where that door goes I always wondered about that there yeah it's such an odd thing to have a little office and then a door on both sides and then that addition you know the the the town hall used to stop after the the back of the stage right and then there was that piece that was added on that ultimately was built over the well shortsighted yeah
well I I think it was a matter of this is what choice do we have right you know we needed to and it was part of it was to make it handicap accessible and have the elevator and where do you put it where else can you put it it you know but that is a good point Jody that you couldn't be a CO scull but now now you can now you can you know did you was that was that right I never that's great yesterday and we're in a public place and they come over and they go I want to embarrass you in front of anybo
dy but you used to babysit me was like and I I don't know like something I was like Greg you got tall you know but we were only like a year apart right I was 12 you were 11 you know it's just funny when you bump into people and sometimes you remember names sometimes you don't um but yeah it's funny should be especially kids at the beach you know like in the grocery store you be running that's the beach lady I I had an aunt in in hopo matter of fact my my uncle's name Ben Phillips is you know on
that that um Stone sign in front of the the uh the sewer department you know where the in in Hopedale and his wife Alice my on Alice Phillips was her title was matron of the Beast Beach When Hope Dale had the beach that they don't use anymore for that but she was the one who kind of was in that building and you know admitted everybody in there and they had like little lockers with tags and you think about these days about that whole scenario you know talk about an ancient past if you were like a
guest and you were coming in and off you shouldn't be able to start it but if you're in the directory of your staff we should be start it unless turn that off M networks that's why you need a standard yeah yeah it's actually bring up was one that came out of the hotel yeah propos something that's that's hardest part right changes initial is the hardest part but inside driving on the highway particularly taking turns and things how sharp it turns because the re you know even changing weight so b
ecause if you think you know at higher speeds if you turn left right the rear wheels also turn left so the whole thing kind of moves over crab locks over it's it's um it's amazing I I you know I I mean well it's wider but of course it's also what's a m it's cavernous ins size I mean the you know the captain's chair is the bucket seats and then the and then the rear seat yeah is you for real fit three people back there oh for exactly obviously not cramped at all and then seems like the bed goes o
n forever you know and it's got that power tunnel cover that comes up um the the thing that is interesting is the you know the it's funny how many people kind of fixate on how small I mean the front it's it's longer yeah but it's not that deep and you want to say well you know how big is the front how how big was the front on my how big is was the Frank on my Chevy Colorado wait a minute I didn't have a frun on my Chevy Colorado right you know so it's but it was really it was actually was really
great like with my backpack and stuff I would normally throw that in the back seat it's got a power front put it in the front we both had our stuff in the frunk so when we went to go someplace you'd get out and you just it opens up and it's power and you know it's all right it was actually you didn't put a carrot in there to see if it would chop the carrot in a half I did I did not nor that I try to chop anything else you know yeah what are you keeping your frunk and your M wide I keep grocery
bags reusable grocery I do have I I think I you know what only because I'm always afraid with you know because they tell you how you need to close the frunk yeah I don't the only time I use that is if I'm going like to the beach or on a launch longer trip for additional storage yeah we even for dirty boots when we hike well that makes sense I I do what I do what I really find great in the model Y is you know under the cargo space is that space under that real deep one is just right it's cavernou
s yeah and I keep like tool sets and stuff yeah right and I do I do have the power um I do have the the uh you know the the backup power charger system in there yeah you I think the last time I used it I um I didn't even put it back in the in the bag oh it usually sits in the bottom so that's that's but but I mean you know I mean I barely put a thousand miles a month on it you know I keep it in the garage I'm about to hit 50 on my two-year-old I I did change the um um um change the settings on t
he on the solar panels yeah to PO to charge the car first yeah um change Chang a little bit I changed it back for the winter time just because especially with this this string of Cloudy weather we had yeah but I'm amazed now you know we I put it online in October right really when it when when the solar panel started now we're in February and I can't believe just this last week the amount of energy yeah it's really sunny this week right I'm generating but only for February you know I I Can Only
Imagine in June you know right be great yeah yeah my solar panels been paid off for a while but you you don't like after many many years you'd end up not really noticing more especially as the rates go up but I try to get my rate three years in advance so every three years I set it for another three years and that's been been good for me till we have a municipal agreement yeah right well I'm interested Ed to see what the um what's it called look at the virtual power plant yeah how that's going t
o affect everything well that new um the power wall three I saw it can do 30 kilowatts yeah I know absolutely insane you get a couple of those at your house and you are a right it really is I love the way that if the storm is coming it automatically switches the system right and it and it gets the make sure that your back batteries are yeah topped up and I like how quiet it is so when the when the power is out so when it switches over to the battery powered like I wasn't sure if the electricity
came on once in our neighborhood and so like I opened the front door and I heard all the neighbors generators I'm like oh okay it's it's it has not come back on yet never knew because it's just yeah so like there's like a little like a little beep if you happen to hear it when it switches over flips over um yeah and it made like that one night I guess it was in December where like the the batteries made it through till like 7:30 in the morning and then but with our internet was down so we could
no longer monitor how much energy there was so I'm like I made my morning tea I'm like you know what if you I'm GNA and then like yeah we ran out like probably pushed it over the edge with the tea kettle but then by like 8:30 the sun was up and they the power came back on and yeah so they they uh replenished so and that was when I wasn't sure if the power was back on I'm like is this our solar panels or I've been picking back and forth whether or not to add battery to get some quotes it looks li
ke it'll come out to really like 7K after all the rebates and and the connected s money well that's and the huge thing is the heat loan yeah because there's you get that for zero percent so yeah that's huge and and then on top of that I'm you know I'm I'm waiting because this you know I already did my taxes through Turbo Tax and I can't file it yet because there's one more form it just got released did yeah I just did did do it today okay I sto one for the charger and there that was just release
d uh if you get a 30% rebate on a on a charger um and then the uh car one is done now too so you can do the 7500 oh I didn't have a pro just put it in I didn't they didn't question it well I'm waiting for one for business there some I got the two this the one the one the car charger one especially got changed like three times it didn't change my rebate but yeah I know I just even if you pay for the $250 mobile device that's you can get a credit for that okay so I don't think is that is that for
I I know the one thing I noticed I didn't realize if you have a rental property yes you get you can get reimbursed for for each one yes and you don't have to have a obvious because you're a tent H landlord you don't have to have the car yeah to do it so I have to do that yeah bill yeah yeah then after the um the infrastructure Bill all the creds got really good and easy do amazing yeah now like remember there used to be you could only get a certain amount of credits like if you put your windows
in or whatever like it it would max out right never get them again and it's like well sometimes you put new energy things in your house every five to 10 years so right it's nice to get especially with technology changes exactly you know and it makes it economical your solar panels are probably you know 20% more efficient than mine because they're five years new or maybe even more you know just when did you get yours mine are about six years old so I can do like 240 watts per panel or something l
ike that I think they're up to late 320 350 now I mean what I think it's funny when my dad rebuilt the house that I'm in and he made the pitch of the front of the roof so Sho looking you know because Chris next door has the panels and he's got a more you know um not as aggressive a pitch so at some point you know the day after snowstorm I hear the noise when it all just kind of comes off and then it starts generating and his are still sitting there slowly melting yeah mine are not pitched very m
uch and so it does not pitched very much we have them on our barn they're s like you know the barn has the the yeah oh the gam yeah the Gamel so they're on the on the higher they I mean it's better for being higher above the trees but like the pitch is not great so when we when we have a snowstorm we usually lose like a day or so before Falls yeah found it's only if we just need to get the sun on there for about an hour yeah suddenly you hear yeah it's good and you you know and again in the back
there's a Dorma so those are more of a gradual and you can really see the difference yeah you know when those melt off and then just you know increases I have wished we had had like the equivalent of like windshield wipers there to like clear them off but they tell you not to touch them yeah I mean we're not going to but okay oh do you just one once a year I have my son did like window washing one summer so we have like all the kits fig all tools the snow scrubs them off every year yeah it's li
ke this just something I do when I clear the leaves I just problem it's not a bad idea and then you know and all the oak stuff Falls M get the sticky stuff off I can't this so sow I know I'm looking at it we have to structure our deliberation or is that just like our normal deliberation yeah it's not going to be structured accentuate the positive and see where it goes yeah I just got a message that you know because of this storm it switched it so now it'll take it from the grid orever to bring t
he batteries up to 100% so if you do lose leave' come you know and it has had happened a couple of times where you know I'll see something on you know it's like a contest on Facebook who can report the fastest that the power has been interrupted and everybody starts to give you a report from there you're gonna win that contest I I just know I know but it's just I didn't notice it and then I then you look at the app and you see that you know there's nothing coming from the Grid it's going you kno
w it's it's all coming you know from the batteries in the middle of the day and yeah I wish they would just let us power the house off the car you know what you have a big battery yeah but that's what that's what cybertruck do oh really yes and and actually what they've come up with is an auxiliary battery okay um that actually it it's obviously it's flat but it fits right in the bed oh wow so I'm like imagining like for the for the power tools you got your little battery you can move around you
got a larger scale one and it's going to plug right the problem is you know the batter's so heavy it's almost you know if so so the you know the you have a extra energy needed to pull the you know and I always be bad somebody was comment to well you know if you're going to when you tow an 11,000 lb trailer you know you're only going to be able to go 90 Miles when they say an 11,000 pound trip why would you want to tow it more RB big RB that's but again what you know that giant stainless steel A
ir Stream you bought to match your I know when we I had charged up to 100% to go to man happen and we drove there stayed there for the weekend and got all the way halfway back through Connecticut before even had to stop and I was only I think at the supercharger for 15 minutes and I still had like 40% left you know but a lot of it is I have the full self-driving so when you put in your you know your destination and you put FSD on you know it also is very um it's very good at conserving energy to
o you don't put it on Mad Max mode no I I don't even have M Ma and if you know if you did if you did what I do on a regular basis and you see that how many that's a real one okay it's for aggressive Lane changing yes okay call that seriously yeah yes okay I just um you know and the the um the acceleration is overwhelming just one you know the only the only other time I can remember being in a vehicle that had that kind of is one year we had this new um Ford Cruiser and it was a Taurus Oh that's
H Jo and it had yes what under and you know and it had like I'm not kidding it had like 42 miles on it was midnight and I had gotten a call and I out of the driveway here like I would always do and I would I put my foot in it like I would have with you know with a and it was just what is going on I almost ended up on the island in the middle acceleration rocket launch yeah that you know what there's a police officer doing donuts on Main Street yeah but but I mean it was just but just coming out
of the driveway was just so yeah overwhelming and then like I said and since then and then when I when I first went to work they gave me the acceleration they gave me the Y and this is the long range but they gave me the performance one yeah and the guy was laughing about it and I I was in Norwood right and I just went and did the U-turn and and I said oh I'm gonna I would get in trouble with this you just and then have an fsv just a whole another level of it's It's kind of the great thing about
it is you can dial down you know when you're when you're on the highway it was a little unnerving when you're going to get off the highway and it changes into the lane yeah just and it's like I'm going into the guard rail don't so I just started over the right thumb wheel I can just dial it down and slow it way down so I slow it way down before it does the change so I can yeah right should have probably ordered a pizza my snack yeah I brought one because I'm like I ate like an early but I don't
know I brought SNS yeah debating whether or not to you right now ah think I'll wait till the sky up be like if we had that TV over there just zoomed it in it's pretty far away but that size TV yeah it's I yeah I'm just thinking how we could improve this this is now that it's mentioned I'm GNA think about it all the time until I figure it out well it wouldn't be it wouldn't be the worst thing because if you had it there and you are sitting where you are you know when people come on the screen th
ere I mean I can see them on the screen hard for them to see us because we're kind of tile well yeah but some times you know when somebody doesn't realize that camera's on yeah you have to be careful not to laugh if you don't I don't know but that actually is a good point to have it there so you can see whoever you know I used to have one in front and behind on the old system that was when we yes it would swap I don't know did somebody have to run it or did it do it automatically I think somebod
y ran it from there right yeah it's pry I wonder if we can use those C I know that amp and speaker that's up on top of the cabinet is set up now for the for the um yeah to the audience so so it picks up these mics and amplifies people in back yeah we should look at getting somebody to come and use that system and film the meetings I left F I was in the other room sorry hi Dan I know that Co kind of put it we had the seniors doing it and then Co kind of ended it but because it it's a much higher
quality video the one the one in the back the cable Eight system yeah yeah it's just it's a little more Hands-On yeah that that'll be at the end of our it working group we we'll switch over to meeting room working the schools if we could partner with them it'd be really cool yeah would if I Elena brugos I proove your hairstyle for a long time it was pragmatic and now I just don't have as much hair left so T me going to Barber now so all right well welcome thank you um rather than ask for an intr
oduction we're gonna jump right into it um I'll ask you a couple of questions and then each one of us has a has a question and we'll do some follow-ups and then we'll let you uh kind of wrap up at the end and then also ask us any questions you might have for us sure okay so um you know what I what I'd say here and this we said this to everybody um as you can imagine um you know some of us some of may may have you know done a Google search on your name looked at uh public interviews and and uh Me
etings online and and read newspaper articles um so right up front um it the way this reads here is please discuss your perspective on what uh we may have seen in particular the background of leaving positions such as uh you know where you left the position uh why you left and and what your tenure was and anything you want to talk about that kind of UPF front we want to open with that and let you do that uh yeah well I mean the the I think the major issue that certainly in terms of the media was
my job in Killingly Connecticut and so in that particular instance um a school committee member um Lodge a complaint against um one of my employees who was the assessor at that the time um and was not long after that he was promoted to assistant Town manager um so the complaint read that um uh he was he was accused of sexual harassment I was accused of mishandling the complaint um it took about two years uh for the whole thing to get you know resolved through Connecticut's uh Commission on huma
n rights and OPP unities which is Connecticut's version of mcad Massachusetts has um and so once it finally sort of all play played out um you know the town no no Town employee nor the town was found to have have any fault there there was no particular VI violation um in terms of the way I handled it I was a town manager at the time um you know I reported the issue to Town Council uh Council told me I had handle it properly um the complainant had a bit of itical muscle behind her at the state le
vel uh which I think um because if you if you were to follow the thing throughout the media and read the final report that was laid out there just the complaint never met sort of the the primacia sort of you know the the the the threshold for filing the the complaint in the first place um so um ironically uh so what ended up sort of happening there is I think my town Council there basically kind of I would say abandoned me at this point it's been about six years or so right but um even in the fa
ce of uh sort of what was going on so I ended up leaving in October sorry August of 2018 um and when I left they appointed the gentleman who was under accusation right so even though the thing hadn't been resolved at that particular point in time um there I I think Folks at the Town level sort of realized there wasn't necessarily any substance to it but it was something that we had to go through so it wasn't didn't get resolved until I had moved on to my next position um and the other place I gu
ess is my most recent job would be Milbury so my contract was up in November of last year um and it didn't appear that you know we weren't getting anywhere in terms of uh you know negotiation in terms of a successor contract so when it appeared as though you know the contract was going to end um at the same time in August I had a family member who was undergoing some really really serious medical issues so basically I met with the chair I I requested to um to be able to jump out a couple of mont
hs early um I wasn't worried about a leadership void at the time because we had a year prior to that we had created the position of a deputy Town Town manager so I knew that there wasn't you know the town wasn't going to be sort of left in the Lurch for the three months uh you know between August 2nd which was my last day and November 2nd which was the last last day of my contract um so it it was a little abrupt especially from the P public perspective um but it just it it it made sense for me s
ort of personally um and you know there was just I I was I I had the ability I saw an opening and and an ability to be able to help out you know my family and this it turned out to be three months of you know doctor's visits surgeries lots and lots of back and forth so it was almost a full-time job at after I left um so um those are the sort of only two you know I I I got my first job in Uxbridge and I left Oxbridge to go for for the opportunity in Kill Killingly um and then one of the things th
at I sort of I Won't Say I'm the proudest of but I really enjoyed a lot actually was my time between killingley and Milbury because um I went to work for asme and asme represented was the union of most of my municipal employees ask me's got about 30,000 members in Connecticut so I had a great relationship with my employees as well as the unions as well so basically the union that I had been sitting across the table from for years negotiating contracts against uh wanted me as prior to their ranks
just because I was reasonable and easy to deal with so um so um so that that offered me a you know a great perspective so once I ended up back on the town side it was really interesting to sort of because you know when you're negotiating a contract you sort of never really know what the mindset or what's going on on the other side of the table so it was really sort of interesting to become part part of that group and uh I think the last thing I will say about that is in that two and a half year
s or so I had about 32 or 33 different bargaining units that I represented from small DPW administrative Municipal Employees up to you know state of Connecticut J judicial employees so I had two or two 2 2500 or 3,000 folks that I was that that I was representing and I negotiated 90 93 contracts in that two two and a half years so gave me give me a lot of practice so did I answer your question sir certainly did all right all right so each each one of us uh kind of has a question with some follow
-up so I start with my with my vice chair L BR gon okay hi uh so uh this question has to do with uh residents so how will you engage with residents to understand their needs and what strategies would you implement to maintain and improve the quality of life while preserving the town's unique character well I'm a small town Kid myself I grew up in Warren and West West Brookfield which are smaller towns than mendan right um so and I've only worked in small towns killing was sort of larger but it's
very you know Rural and sort of agrarian it's another right right right to farm community um so it it's all about showing up when when I'm at work it's about I've always had an open door policy whether it's employees whether it's residents you know there's always bad timing a resident comes in and wants to talk to me and I'm five minutes away from a meeting um but um you know I always try and have that o Open Door if I'm available if I just happen to be working if I can pull myself away I I I l
ike to meet with everybody I can um I tend to walk around town hall when I need to uh when I have questions for folks uh I I tend to sort of get up and walk down the hall and try and interact with folks I sort of pride myself on in every town that I've worked in even in departments that I didn't necessarily deal with very often I felt I was always happy that I could walk into pretty much any department and have at least like a two-minute conversation with just about anybody that worked there hey
how are the kids how are things going I knew a little bit about everybody um and also in terms of Citizen engagement I mean every town has um what towns have Spring Festival killing they had you know Tomato Festival spring festivals you know there's winter there's chain of lights all that kind of stuff a lot of towns the local groups Lions Clubs or whatever may run may put on 5Ks you know Recreation departments may put on 5Ks I run in all those races I show up at all those events um it was real
ly easy when I lived in Killingly because there was a residency requirement there which is why I live there um but yeah it's always it's mostly just about showing up and being willing to talk to people um and if you create I I created that expectation so people learn that they could come in and talk to me the expectation I didn't create was that I was going to be able to fix everyone's problem to their satisfaction you know what I mean so I I'm always willing to talk to people but I am and and I
'm willing to hold the town and um myself and my colleagues you know that I work with accountable for the things for the jobs and the services that we're supposed to provide but you know I'm also very honest with residents and I just sort of say okay now when we when we start start to stray into territory that maybe we have less control over um that's when you know oftentimes it can be really gratifying to sit down and almost engage in a civics lesson or whatever have kind of give and takes and
you sort of learn about the history of a town but there's a lot of folks out there who are well-meaning and want a lot of things to happen but don't actually sort of know the nuts and bolts and of of how government works and sometimes how long it takes for us to do things right our Pace can be glacial at times right but um so so yeah and at the end of every meeting that I have whether someone's happy or sad especially if they're unhappy I say what do you want to see happen when you walked in the
door what did you want to see happen and inevitably people don't want to see us spend a million dollars they don't want to see anybody fired they mostly just wanted to know that the town is listening and that and that someone is there to hear and understand that people out there have have concerns um and so so that's the pH philosophy that I've employed um from early days and it's worked for me so that's the philosophy that I plan to continue to employ thank you sure so this next one's gonna be
on budgeting and finance um what unique budget challenges does Menan have and how would you approach addressing them and how will you engage and collaborate with the school district um it every town is unique when it comes to budgeting and finance Town towns are unique but they're all very much the same as well right we all have our issues and the the biggest uh I think the largest issues confronting most towns are Capital impr Improvements infrastructure whether it's roads or municipal buildin
gs um and how we're going to pay for them because it costs a lot of money to PVE roads um you know and Killingly love to do chip seal on road which is kind of a cheap way of filling in some cracks and you know sort of repurposing some some of the millings or whatever but it's not a long-term solution so um I I I I think coming up with a capital plan has got to be very very important coming up with a capital plan is a double-edged sword Because by the same it it doesn't fix the problems right all
it does is make sure that the problems are right in our face all the all all all the time as if we can't you know as if we don't know well enough or think about them every day right um but I I think there's a lot of in institutional knowledge in the town in terms of folks um working to accomplish those Capital needs um you know free cash is always a source of funds but it's never enough we have to do um as much as we can in terms of looking to the state especially for Grants um Grant seeking wa
s up until a couple of years ago was often a you know a real challenge because the grants were all out there at the state level but you couldn't find them because they were spread out all over the place one the things the best things the state did a couple years ago was come up with with the onetop right and so now that's a central Clearing House for all the grants so it doesn't matter if you've got a you know a new Town Administrator a new planning director a new whatever everybody's kind of go
ing to the same place right so um so I I I think capital for sure is is the you know how how do we how do we provide the best roads possible how do we make sure that our bridges are fixed and you know dams are issued and that that our that that our municipal buildings are safe but how do we do it without ratcheting up the tax rate right because it one of the things that we like about mendan is it's a small town right um we don't have a lot of room for commercial or industrial growth um we don't
have a lot of room for residential growth and we don't necessarily want to be larger we don't want to be a larger town we don't want to be Bellingham we like it just the way it is but the challenge with that is if you don't encourage some kind of commercial um or in indust Industrial Development then most of that tax burden falls on the residents um so so those are challenges that exist in every town so I think coming up with a good solid uh you know five-year Capital plan to include what the is
sues are prioritizing them in terms of okay what are the critical needs here and what are the things that we can you know push off and then there's all on my Capital plans there's always a column in there for proposed funding source how are we going to do this and that's oftentimes what pushes Capital Improvements out is okay we put in for a grant the mass Works Grant this year but we didn't get it okay so then we got to wait till next year's cycle and that kind of keeps push pushing things down
um so again I have experience you know dealing with these you know op pressures there is no Silver Bullet that's going to make the problems go go go away um obviously we have to borrow money responsibly the town has has a good solid solid credit rating so we need to borrow money people don't always like that but just like a lot of us do when we're doing improvements on our homes or something like that sometimes we have to borrow money but we have to borrow responsibly um and as far as the schoo
ls go um I've always had a real positive relationship with the superintendent of schools um as a matter of fact because I've I have an education background a lot of time in most towns that I've gone in I've always you know I usually speak to students a couple times I'll go to Civics classes or history or political science classes or whatever and you know try try and talk to folks I've always had a positive relationship wherein I've had a sort of a monthly you know morning coffee meeting with the
superintendent and it's an hour maybe or something like that um and in May or June you know when things aren't quite as hot there's less to talk about but we sort of get to know each other personally but this time of year and of course November December when we're starting to put the budgets together that's when those those uh regular interactions pay off right because we've established a relationship we've established some some trust so when I go to the superintendent and I say hey this is a n
umber that I need to you know you guys to look at in order for us to submit something that's balanced um you know you've got a good sort of personal jumping off point to have those discussions with um Education costs a lot of money it's a huge percentage of our budget it's very very important right the kids that are being educated in our schools are the people that are going to be up up here in 20 years hope hopefully right um so it's very very important and uh one of the things that I have neve
r done and don't ever plan to do is I'm never the person who's going to get up and um shoot arrows or throw rocks at the school or the superintendent at town meeting um you know they have their portion of the budget they can defend it um and you know I I know what's behind those school school budget numbers so oftentimes in a lot of towns at town meeting that relationship can sort of be adversarial and I've known Town managers that have had more adversarial relationships with schools I've always
enjoyed a positive one and I think part of that is because uh any I I try and keep any disagreements be they philosophical Financial or whatever I I try and keep them behind closed doors we deal with that stuff so by the time we're standing in front of town meeting in front of everyone trying to get folks to jump on board with our budget we are a united front and one followup just any of your experience background thoughts and procon around regionalization and shared services I think it's a gre
at idea you have to pick and choose you know when I was in xxbridge we were looking at multi- toown sort of dispatch right for initially it was police and then they were and and then it was just fire and then it was kind of a you know multiple Public Safety um it we weren't sure if it was going to save us a lot of money it probably would have saved us a little bit but because what would have ended up happening is a handful of towns they would have they would have shut the lights off saying the p
olice department or whatever at 11:00 at night or something like that right and if anybody had an issue they'd have to go to say Douglas if they had an issue most towns don't like to give up that sort of level of autonomy autonomy especially when it comes to public uh to Public Safety um what was the time frame of that when you said when Ox looked at it 12 13 around I was in oxridge from 2011 years ago about 10 years ago right um and the most recent so we're always sort of looking around so the
one of the most recent uh foray I went to regionalization was looking to towards an animal control there's a gentleman who lives around here his name is Dan shovin he's been an animal control officer in the individual a lot of the individual towns around here Northbridge xbridge Milbury Douglas um for years and years and years a few years ago Chief mman and xbridge got you know a regionalized group together so now there's eight or nine towns I think in this group and uh the chief of police from
Northbridge and I went on a meeting uh you know a zoom with with all them because they were trying to trying to add us to the group uh the problem was is that I was paying Dan chovin $199,000 a year we didn't have any in infrastructure in mil Milbury but he he was handling when somebody called animal control he was handling it in order to join this particular group it would have cost us $660,000 it would have cost Milbury $60,000 so here's an example of regionalization not saving anybody any mon
ey at some point milbury's gonna have to jump in because Dan's going to retire and you know but I I couldn't couldn't justify it at the time so on paper it sounds great right because you've got a bunch of towns working together trying to accomplish the same Mission the problem is is now they have a building now there's multiple full-time employees that have benefits now there's vehicles um you know there's a dog pound there's all kinds of stuff so I think it's great when you when you can accompl
ish it I just I haven't found a lot of instances in my 10 or 12 years of doing this where it's where it has been C cause effective just as a as an aside Menan is part of metacomet and you know my background was law enforcement and you're right all over the all over the valley everybody was against it against regionalization until they weren't until they weren't right and uh it's been a very positive experience for us and our police chief has done a great job um negoti iting our position in that
and saving us a ton of money and improving our services so um I I I think you're right but I appreciate that input yeah I ironically you know Connecticut has Regional Health departments so there's no most of the towns don't have their own individual you know Departments of health and now what you're finding is people are actually abandoning the regional model because towns aren feeling like they're getting enough sort of service because you know so it's typically a regional asset like that is go
ing to charge a some arbitrary or hopefully you know it's arbitrary but there's you know numbers behind it some per capita rate for membership um but what the towns were finding is that they can they could actually do better by hiring their and even if it did sometimes you're willing to pay a little more if the service is going to be better because ultimately regionalization is not just about saving money right ideally your service level should be at very least level ideally you're gonna see an
increase you and you'll enhance service with regionalization so um I think it's great I'm always open to it um but it's it doesn't always work thank you sure um communication yeah so tell us a little bit about your communication skills and your preferences and um how uh you'll engage with the select board the um Town boards the Committees uh and uh how will you Ensure transparen across all those well I'm a transparent guy right so we do what we do the resources that we use in order to accomplish
the services that we provide are all by you and L residents right so one thing I always tell folks whether it's at department meetings or general staff meetings it's not about us it's about them it's about the folks that live in town so and there's very little that we do that those folks shouldn't shouldn't know about right there's reasons that we have executive session there are sometimes you know there are meetings that happen in planning and stuff that happens or whatever that isn't necessar
ily public but especially when it involves the expenditure of money that's just got to be and that's going to go in front of the board anyways as the Town Administrator I serve at the pleasure of the board so my job isn't to execute my vision for what what I think mending should be um my job is to execute the vision of the board now we are close-knit close working group so when we're having those discussions about that direction that we're taking um my job is to basically give you as much inform
ation as I can to prepare you to make your decision not necessarily a recommendation now if I'm asked for a recommendation I will I I'm happy to give an opinion or an educated uh sort of recommendation about this is the way I think we should go I hesitate to put myself in the position of the board just as I don't want the board to put themselves in you know in my shoes so communication's easy again it's in terms of the boards and the other boards it's about showing up certainly in that first six
months or a year I go to all the meetings I go to the planning board a cultural Council uh conservation all those meetings because they need those folks need to know who I just sit in the back and like can do work or whatever but it's just kind of you know figuring out what's going on figuring out sort of the dynamic of the other boards themselves and then um inevitably if I come across something an issue that I have some uh that either the board has demonstrated some in interest in or that I h
ave maybe some experience in that's when I might approach the chair and say hey do you want to sit and talk about this I might be able to give you guys my two cents if if that's wanted so my policy has always been I am willing to uh talk and give you what it is you want but I'm not going to necessar like I said offer my opinion or inject myself necess necessarily into conversations unless you know unless it's asked for unless I see somebody doing something illegal or unsafe or something like tha
t obviously right so um transparency is easy for me I don't have any desire our jobs are so public and that's one of the reasons I think you see people moving away from this job because um unfortunately um the especially in the last few years a lot of the public engagement that we've seen is fewer it's less people showing up to these meetings and having civil sort of discourse there's a lot of there's a lot of junk that goes on you know key keyboard Warriors and stuff and that's always kind of a
shame because those people in in some way they have an interest they are paying attention to what's going on which is good right that's and we never have enough of that because there's never enough people in the audience when boards meet there's never enough people showing up to town meeting there's never enough people showing up to Municipal elections right we all want more engagement because if we're here working for the people on behalf of the people right if the people don't show us show up
and tell you tell us what they want it's harder for us to give them what they want um because we're just sort of we're following our noses and doing what we believe is you know the best for these folks so um so yeah I would report to the board on whatever sort of you know what at whatever sort of interval you wanted whether you wanted a you know written report every meeting every two weeks whether you want it once a month um in Milbury I met on a monthly basis like had lunch with three of the f
ive five five board members so obviously I met with the chair quite often you know talking about agendas and stuff but I also just had lunch and coffee with a couple of the other ones just to kind of talk about what was going on and they were telling me things that they were hearing on the street and that's that's part of my job that that's how I hey it it it helps me establish a rapport in individually with you folks you know for one thing but um I think it makes um the board board members can
I think I've seen some can feel disconnected because maybe they're only in the building a couple times a month right and I know there's varing I'm sure there's varying levels of of Engagement in this room here right but um my my job is to make sure that you know as much of what's going on in the 30 hours a week whatever that you're not here so that you're not getting a lot of phone calls off hours and that you know you're not being so blindsided by by things so so my followup to that is if you'r
e running five pays and going to every committee meeting and teaching Civics classes how are you going to manage that without burning out well you know I don't have kids of my own I have a small family it's just my wife and my dog and my cat so I'm an energetic guy I have a lot of energy I haven't really experienced last time I really got burned out was in the Army and that was I'm going I'm almost 20 years removed from that and you know I had multiple deployments and stuff and that was just a c
ompletely different lifestyle so um no I mean I plan to work another 10 years at least right so um listen I'm not gonna spend let's say you offer me the job and we come to an agreement on a three-year contract I'm not going to sit here and tell you I'm going to go to every single one every single public body meeting over the course of those three years but I believe that that if I do a lot of heavy lifting early on because it's about FaceTime it's that first year is so important everybody out th
ere and you guys give the TA there's that you know the honeymoon period if you will because they're trying to get their feet under them or whatever right but um I need to I need to spend time working during that because that's when I'm going to establish those relationships so it's that year one where I get my feet under me the harder I work the more I learn the more people I get to know and then it makes those second two those last two years and hopefully you know the next contract or whatever
it makes it just makes business you know a lot easier because I've demonstrated my willingness to show up I've demonstrated my willingness to to engage but then also pragmatism kicks in at some point I say okay I don't have to go to Every planning board meeting I don't have to go to all these meetings and it's not gonna uh hurt anybody's feelings or it's not gonna you know be major news if I don't show show up to those meetings so I'm not worried about burnout um like I said I I have a lot of en
ergy um I love this work that's why I keep coming back to it in spite of in spite of you know the what whatever the obstacles that we all sort of see every every day in this work it's very very rewarding um and you I won't lie I think there's um one of the things I like of you know we talk about capital projects one of the things I like about that that I never knew really about myself was that it's kind of nice to be able to drive through a town that you worked in and say I had something to do w
ith that I had my name's not on anything but you know I I take my dog for a walk in a park near my house every day and there's a bridge over a a brook that wasn't there and we were able to put it in while I was a town manager there and it's my name's not anywhere but every just about like three four times a week I walk over that bridge and it's like it's a tangible uh it's just a reminder of sort of you know the efforts that I and other people have taken and and it's when I finally hang up my sp
urs whenever that is or whatever I'm going to be able to sit back and say I did stuff right and I I I don't think I ever knew realized that about myself that it was really important it's not like I'm gonna give somebody a who are the town of Killingly and say well I put up that and we put up that and we put up that it's just my own when we go to examine ourselves when we become old men and women or whatever and we look back and say what do we do with our lives I'm going to be able to say yeah th
ere's some stuff that's going to live on me right so sure so my uh question is about management and leadership style so how will you bring departments together as a team and follow up to that what is your philosophy and approach to Performance Management and evaluations um I'm a collaborative leader Town administrators boards we don't do anything in a vacuum we can't do anything on our own every single person that works here is important the the the from the if my administrative assistant is out
for the day or for the week on vacation or sick or something like that or whatever it is I'm not I'm limping a little bit right because this is this is a person I rely on for for a lot of stuff uh in theory if I'm you know when I'm on vacation or when I'm not around for a while or whatever people are limping a little bit so um I I value every single employee as as I mentioned I try and establish some kind of individual individual rapport with all the folks that I work with um I like I respect t
he department heads greatly and the institutional knowledge that's already here I don't need to be an expert in everything I don't need to be an expert in land use right I have a planning uh director I have a planning board um we have folks I don't have to be an expert in Economic Development I don't have to be an expert in Human Resources I think I'm pretty close to being an HR expert but um so we've got people that so what what I want to do is make sure though that I recognize the knowledge th
at those folks have Empower them to do their jobs to make decisions to make recommendations to me that um that you know most of the time you know I follow um because I don't always have the answers and again even if I do think I have the answer my answer isn't always either the right one or the best one um so so yeah it's it's really you know it's all about collaboration I definitely I have a monthly staff meeting a monthly department head meeting um and one of the things that I do is I make I s
ay I make I invite every department head to take five minutes and we kind of go around the room and everybody says kind of what's going on in their neck of the woods now the example I how uses the chief of police doesn't necessarily care or isn't on his radar what's going on at the library or going on at the senior center right but I think it's valuable for everybody to hear what's going on again not a half an hour not it's not a huge time suck but so everybody knows what's going on because in i
nevitably somebody's something's happening in some Department that somebody else in another department knows about or can help with right and so again if we're all you know the the parallel I draw I I I always characterize my military service as public service even though it isn't technically public service but in the sense that the military is just like municipal government in the sense that we're that we're a larger group of people we're a group of people all sort of pulling in the same direct
ion for sort of a common mission that really isn't about us it's about you know it's an external Mission and so the key to success in that is you know making sure we don't duplicate efforts making sure we're not inadvertently working against each other and the best way to make sure that individuals aren't working against each other is that that they that you know what I'm doing and you know what he's doing and vice versa right so um the second part of the question I sore I wasn't going to forget
it and I think about performance reviews performance reviews everyone's accountable the TA is accountable you are accountable at The Ballot Box right I'm I'm account account accountable to you um as much as I want to um Empower in employees we all have um we all have a job we have a job description so the first expectation I come in is that I want to make sure everybody knows a what their job is when was the last time you saw a job description let's look at it hasn't been looked at in 10 years
let's update this thing right and make sure this is what your job is right and then um so now the job description creates expectations for employees that gives me uh something to evaluate an employee on now I I prefer to characterize performance evaluations as professional development there opportunities for an employee for us to say here's what you're good at keep doing it here are the things you need work on and that's the same whether we're whether I'm talking to a department head or a line e
mployee or whether that's the board talking to me it's not about going in and sort of just we we we've all had jobs we had that annual sort of butt kicking or that thing that we didn't sort of look forward to whatever and what I've done in the last two towns that I worked in is we turned uh Performance Management into a more regular thing there was the formal annual evaluation but what the other thing that we did is we had uh either quarterly or trimester check-in so what I would have I would ha
ve every Department had schedule five minutes every three or four months each of their employees that initial meeting is really important make sure your job description is up to date uh they know what their job is so here's what you're good at here's what you need to work on let's create some goals instead of waiting a year to evaluate them because I don't know about you but I don't remember what I was doing February 15 of 2023 right so I I like to have the department heads check in and I like t
o check in with the department heads on those goals that we you know established on a more regular basis that way um we're in a constant state of evolution right and when one goal is accomplished or is adjusted or handled then we move on to the next one so I mean I have yeah my my follow-up question you you somewhat addressed it already but how would you measure your own success how would you evaluate your own performance like how do you imagine what would your be your process for evaluating you
r performance should you be in this position um well at some point the six of us would have to sit down and come up with some you know goals one of the things that I we did in Milbury um is that it turned into I I it was at my recommendation I'll always be you know um you know gratified that the board took this recommendation we went offsite just like a pizza place we had dinner together and we brought the butcher block or whatever and it was a joint goal setting meeting because I need I have my
personal goals or the goals that they want to see as a talent that are under my purview but the board also has things that it wants to do and the board works with the TA or the TM to accomplish those things right so so I think if we can as a group individually if I we can look every year once a year whenever it is and say okay I accomplished most of the most of the goals that we agreed would be good goals assuming they're measurable and attainable and all that kind of thing um but also maybe th
at we can look at the board and you you can look at yourselves and say hey these are the things that we wanted that we looked at that were important to us a year ago and we put down five things and hey we actually accomplished three of them or four of them or whatever that's not a bad year right so um yeah I think if I'm always getting phone calls or emails then I'm we're we're we're still interacting right and that relationship hasn't chilled for whatever reason um then I think that's always a
good sort of barometer um and in terms of employees you can usually tell when you know morale is you know good or bad and morale is a bit of a roller coaster at time just never no one's ever 100% happy to be here 100% C of the time right but um that's the real important stuff right because one of the things I always tell folks is we are a business we have a product now we're a monopoly we're not the Gap people you want to buy a pair of jeans you can go to a thousand different places you get crap
py service at one place you may go somewhere else well people can't pay their taxes they there's certain things they we give them they can't get anywhere else that doesn't give us license to act like a monopoly we still need to remember again it's about them it's not about us so I expect high levels of customer service and so that's another way that we judge our performance right is if if if we're getting if we're hearing more positive comments from folks um than negative comments and we're alwa
ys going to get negative comments unfortunately um then I I think that's always one barometer as to whether or not we're kind of giving the people what they want great so my my question has to do with economic development so I guess as a Town Administrator um what do you see your role in as far as uh identifying and executing Economic Development opportunities well we got a master plan It's relatively new right it's which is good right the master plan is one of those pardon me one of those docum
ents that's always on on my desk so it's kind of it's the everything that we do and that's one of the reason I think that of all the meetings that I I think that we tend to um you know attend oftentimes I think the one that reaches out into Economic Development the most is the planning board right and so while I'm fairly familiar with the master plan I would need to get very familiar with the zoning map identify those areas where um maybe we can do some economic development on the commercial or
industrial uh in the commercial industrial sector without impacting the residents and without impacting you know the quality of life you know we're we're working on a working on a Improvement whether it's a tip or whatever it ends up being you know improving Route 16 well if you're going to have a if you're going to if you're going to having a nice improved road going through your town um you want people on it right and that's a place for businesses to be um so in terms of larger Economic Develo
pment um yeah that's really just sort of looking for opportunities at the state level um and just sort of not just examining our zoning map but examining our permitting regulations we want to be known as sort of a friendly place to go come right people we we want to be open for business if you will um the other side to that is small business and that's what really small businesses are what give towns their character right um and so I've had a lot of luck working with the local Chambers of Commer
ce jeie Hebert at Blackstone Valley Chamber of Commerce really really good she's been around for so long I'm like you know dreading the day when she decides to kind of move move on but they're really really engaged with small businesses you know that's the kind of group we want to be in we want to encourage people make sure our permitting for small businesses isn't too onerous um and and make sure that we put people that want to come and do business here in touch with the Chamber of Commerce bec
ause ribbon cuttings don't seem like a big deal to us but there if you've been to a ribbon cutting and I'm sure you have think about not the way you reacted but think about the look on that business owner's face right they're so happy they're so that they couldn't they're honored that you show up they're honored that the TA shows up they're honored to do they're they're happy that we're happy that they're here right and so um um yeah you can't predict who wants to come into town but the thing yo
u can make sure that you do is that we know when someone walks in the door we've got a good updated map we can give people an idea of areas of town that may be suitable for what they want to do um and then then we go from there at the very least we've got to be uh have a reputation for being friendly doesn't mean every business is going to land here but if if we make it really difficult for businesses to come here a they're not going to come and others aren't gonna come because that's the kind o
f bad news that travels you know so that's for sure yeah so you've you've done this role in in Oxbridge killingley and and Milbury correct can you give a specific example of with I know you you talked about the bridge um that's nice that's not Economic Development I I don't think but can you give an example of one that you've done um I give you a good ex a positive example and a NE negative example so there is a natural gas fired power plant in Killingly now it's been there for 20 years or so ba
ck in 2017 or 16 or whatever a company from Florida came in and wanted to put another power plant in town now towns don't decide right whether they those power plants land there you can have public hearings and people can uh you know Express their opinions but ultimately the the citing responsibilities for those Public Utilities rest with the state um so this company was have to gonna have to go through a multi-year process in order to um in order to get the approvals but one of the things that
I did is I sat down uh with the principles of this company and we negotiated I called it a tax stabilization agreement because in Killingly they don't like tiffs there's some nomenclature that just doesn't go over well but basically you could call it tax increment financing you could just it it was basically we knew uh what we we could predict and they could predict what their tax obligation was going to be in year one out to year 20 so it was going to benefit to the town it was going to benefit
the town you know two $200 million over over 20 years um if the place landed there you know It ultimately did not but I always sort of look at that as you know I think we did a good job in trying to have some foresight because the the last thing we wanted I would want to do is like the time that we chose to negotiate was when we probably had the most leverage right and it was a good Fair agreement because as you know if you know anything about business the hard years of the business of the firs
t three to five years right that's when they're really uh looking hoping to get their most return on their their investment so and that's what we did we worked with them so their tax obligation was a relatively low or was lower if you will in those first five years but it ramped up over the final 15 years because we knew their Capital expenditures were going to be down their Roa Roi would have been behind them on a positive note there was a building two two two two doors two two two buildings do
wn from town hall right in the center of killingley and an older gentleman in town had owned it for years it had been unoccupied for five or six years the building was kind of getting uh dilapidated he was into he was he was he was into the town for about $100,000 in tax revenue the building needed some improvements um so right around that time we got a million dooll facade Grant um for the downtown for the historic district so we were going to spread that around to the local businesses some roo
fs and you know you know what the facade is right um well we took we ended up taking uh setting aside $200,000 of that million dollars for this building we basically negotiated a sale of the building so basically we forgave him his $100,000 um um in in taxes the town became the owner of the building which isn't necessarily what we want to do the towns don't want to be landlords right we don't want to we don't want to get into that but what it did allow us to do was turn around and sell the build
ing so we put it out an RFP to sell the building and it gave us the ability to kind of decide who was going to land there so what we so what we ended up doing is you know putting a couple hundred, doar into the building and then we ultimately sold that we ended up only having you know two or three responses to the RFP but we ended up choosing you know the business that we thought had the best business plan and it was going to be the most sustainable business and uh and I can I'm happy to say tha
t you know I drive down Main Street every time I go down there and the building is full the businesses are thriving and um so that that was kind of kind of kind of a unique project where it involved the use of public money um involved taking a little bit of a chance because there was a chance that the town was going to own this building that we weren't going to be able to sell right um but we had done you know we did our homework we did a lot of market research ahead of time and so but involved
a little bit of thinking outside of the box um and in terms terms of the power plant the power plant didn't land there but if it had we would have been set we and I wouldn't had to take a ton of my assessor time every year to go out and either evaluate all the personal property that was in there or we we didn't have to deal with the income we didn't have to deal with any approach and assessing it's a huge undertaking to assess a business of that nature just because of all the different equipment
in there whatever so um so I I like to think of those two examples so I guess the the third part to that question is when you when you obviously you've done some research here in town you know about our um master plan and do you have any any suggestions or ideas about how you would actually help spur Economic Development here in town well one of those one of the reasons that I like to use the Chamber of Commerce is because the other towns are members of Chambers of Commerce this is an area of r
egionalization that I believe and it's it's more esoteric in the sense that men's economic success is tied to Ox Bridge's to economic success which can be tied to Douglas's you which and uh Menin can be tied to uptons can be tied to milfords people drive through our town to get to other towns they drive through other towns to get here so um so those are always opportunities you sort of look at is there uh is there a niche is there you know a couple of breweries in one town or handful of brewerie
s or antiques dealers or um I can't even think of other you know just off the top top of my head so you can try and in individual town doesn't have to be a destination an area a region we are the Blackstone Valley right we know that DCR the state at the state level they have designated this Corridor they've they've booted it together in some fashion for some things specifically Rec Recreation for sure right and uh you know his historical you know visitor um visitation efforts that kind of thing
so um so without getting too specific it's it go it comes down to finding out what some of the other Town's goals are and that's not just meeting with the Chambers of Commerce but it's meeting with the other Tas and TMS it's meeting with those you know planners and finding out are there any sort of directions that we're all kind of trying to go in the same direction and we can oftentimes you that you can achieve economies of scale which gives you regionalization savings only in the short term ri
ght um so but in in general your Capital plan feeds into Economic Development too because the better off the more solid our infrastructure is the more the more welcoming Our Town looks just from an aesthetic level or whatever that you know it's little things think about when you go to buy a house or some something like that it's it's it's not just about square footage and not just about um you know it's got enough bedrooms or whatever you you look around and see you know what does the neighborho
od like look look look like right there's sort of intangibles there so um so again there's not necessarily any silver bullet but it's a lot of it's just kind of keeping your nose to the grindstone and listening hearing uh sort of what's going on and people aren't always going to come up to you directly but there are a lot of other folks out there that hear things as well and so I think it's just um and and sometimes you know making menend and business friendly let's say we know all of our you kn
ow we know that our zoning is solid our regulations are good our permits permitting process isn't too honorous maybe we spend a little bit of money and we publish uh you know a flyer you know a brochure whatever and that goes everywhere from worcester's Chamber of Commerce to Blackstone Valley to other town halls or whatever right because now developers and people that go into because people are in other towns and they go in those other municipal buildings to do business they pick up a brochure
and there's everything you need to know about doing business and mending right in one quick easy you know so and and I think that shows that a town is keeping an eye on it and we're not talking huge money here whatever right but if we just rely on people just to oh they can it's on the website they can find it right I think we can we can take more sort of not aggressive but be a little bit more proactive and making sure that folks know um that we we want to hear from them and that if they have t
he appropriate business uh and we have the you know the spot for them that we'd like them here sure go ahead here just a a followup question so in your previous response you mentioned receiving Grant so what's your what's your view on the role of the Town Administrator in grant writing uh as needed so that's part of getting to know staff right one of the things you do when you you know you get to know staff and you get to know you get to know whether you know pe people's strength strengths and w
eaknesses there are people that already work for the town that probably have some grant writing experience um maybe they're department heads may maybe they aren't um but I've written my share of Grants as well so I think it's more um I created an expectations with the department heads that okay I want you to be going to the every every monthly department head meeting okay go to the onetop be looking for grants for your particular area you know I want the highway super supervisor doing that I wan
t the planner doing I want the library director doing it but I have to do it myself and then uh and then so it's just always part of the com conversation in the town amongst employees and saying hey if you guys find something and you either having trouble writing the grant you're not sure how to go about it you don't have the time or whatever it is that's when you got to let me know and I'm here to help now if I find a grant that's more applicable to you know the ta's office it doesn't involve a
ny necessarily any uh you know specific sort of whatever special experience say like planning or conservation or some something like that um and I happen to have that knowledge then I'm I'm happy to do that stuff myself I try and absorb as much as I can because I know there's so there's so few people working in the building and they're all wearing multiple hats and nobody has a lot of bandwidth for anything more and so My Philosophy as sort of the leader of the crew um and and oftentimes you kno
w if not the one of the most one of the high highest paid employees in the town that if there's extra work to be done if it's at all possible for me to do it I'm the one that should do it so and sometimes that means you know I've clean I've cleaned toilets in town hall after someone's come in and had a tough time I change we had all before we did all the uh all the you know electoral improvements in town hall in xxbridge I was on a ladder changing you know ballasts or whatever in the old school
you know fluorescent lights or whatever like that so um just so that's the long answer the short answer is I do whatever I have to do just a quick followup and it has goes back to the discussion on burnout and um if I've misri misattributed this to you but I thought I read where you actually said a TA has a certain shelf life and when I read that I said makes sense but I I naturally went to burnout saying at some point you run down and it's time to move on so you burnouts not really an issue so
what do you was statistical shelf life in terms of if you look at the shelf life what how long Town managers uh serve it's three to five years right it's that that that and I think maybe it's starting whatever there have been times when it's been a little more it's starting to shorten now and I you know I'm right it more a reference to it was more a reference to the statistical life not I've done this for three years and I can't do it anymore okay yes right um so that last question the the unles
s there's in your previous stops just sort of what is your uh use of data data analytics information and and what's your you know how do you apply it how do you use it what how important is it to you it's it's I think it's becoming more and more important um particularly when it comes you know to budgeting you know and Staffing levels and of course you know we can't get we can't get much more much fewer staff than we do now right than than we have now but um the key to collecting data is a havin
g someone to do it and collecting the right data you know I mean you can you can there's thata out there say on building permits and you can say you can look and see how many permits were pulled and how many were granted but if what we really want to know is you know how how people were generally happy with the permitting process or how long they waited from when they submitted their application to when the inspection actually happened or something like that I think we have tools in place all al
ready to be able to chase down those kind of decisions um Community engagement it's easy enough um to have a little you know Sur survey whether it's online or even a paper one a card that people can put in a box when they come in to pay their taxes or we you know do an insert with the tax bill or something like that give people a you know one through five how how was your experience little things like that one of the things that we did in Milbury just before I left probably June or so we had jus
t started a contract with with invisio and this is a company that creates data collection platforms and they're customized for each town right so you know you're not going in saying I got to spend you know $20,000 on this thing and I'm only going to use a percent of it or whatever so I think it this would be one of the things that I would want to sit down with the board in the first six six months and say okay we we we we know data collection is good we know having metrics is good we know having
data behind our decisions is good we can't collect data on everything there are a thousand points of uh uh Municipal service that we could collect data on we you we as a group need to sit down and let's pick a half a dozen of them for this first year and say what's most important what do we really want to measure first and then we figure out a way to measure that and if we can do it internally we do it if we need a little bit of help uh and may may maybe we have a couple you know bucks to spend
on something that's gonna actually collect the data because again if we're going to collect data and analyze it we're going to be asking more of our employees we're not going to hire a person just to just to do metrics for us right and there's only so much individual admin folks can do within their own depart departments so I can answer that question better six months after I've had the job when I know exactly what sort of collection we have now what's important to you you're I'm gonna walk in
the door you're already gonna have an idea saying hey we don't really have a handle on this or I think it's taking it's taking and I don't want to throw anybody under the B it's taking the building inspector a little bit too people are saying they're having a a long time till their inspection comes or something like that right um so so yeah I I I I think and you start with the lwh hanging fruit the stuff that we know that we can address um you know that doesn't cost any money that just sort of t
akes attention that takes you know a little bit of focus um and and then we kind of move on from there and that's an evolution as well year one's six points that we want to evaluate become year 2's next six so and depending on how sophisticated we want want to get um but a lot of what we do is very esoteric it's hard if you ask the superintendent you know how do you actually measure whether or not our kids are being educated and of course the easy answer is well we have they have the mcast they
have standardized tests but we all know that's not the only indicator of whether a child is being educated or not right but it's very very difficult to uh to quantify the success or the level of success of a lot of decisions that you know curriculum decisions or whatever say that school committees make so um so I think when we we have to look at the existing programs and nowadays though whenever we when we Institute or we initiate a new program or something like that one of the things that we ha
ve to have in place with that as well is how are we going to evaluate whether this is whether this is a uh you know a smart expenditure of funds thank you so to wrap this up and certainly I'll give you time to we answer any questions that you might have but first just give us a three minute wrap up of uh why you'd be the best fit for us to hire you for this position well I've I've got the energy I've got experience um I enjoy the work I think that's I hope hope that's clear from you he um I even
if I stayed living where I am now I'm only like 45 minutes away my wife my wife is a teacher in Worcester by the way she teaches at South High um we are moving back to the Worcester area or whatever so I'm I'm planning to be a little little bit closer um but you know I've always worked in small towns I'm a small town kid I'm a small town guy myself I enjoy the life I enjoy enjoy the work um the thing that I'm really I think searching for is that is that fit because ideally even though I want to
work 10 years I this would be great if it was my last job if I never have to sit in front of a board again and sell myself uh it'll be I'm not going to be unhappy about that right so uh I think you can see by my track record you know I'm not uh it's not like you know I started in a town of 3,000 and kind of moved up this is my Niche this is where I want to be I know this area um and like I said I I think I've had success um I there's always stuff to learn um but yeah I just think you know I B I
've bought two vehicles at Imperial I've driven through menden come to menden for whether it's to eat or whatever you know I know a little bit about the town so it's um it's just a place I think I would be comfortable um and I think my style and my demeanor um I'll be honest with you I don't tend to wear a tile work every day um I'm less formal that's not to mean to say I wear jeans and a flannel shirt either but um which is believe me I would again no I think it's a balance between some people
expect a super buttoned up or look for a super buttoned up Town Administrator and some people and I'm some somewhere somewhere in the middle we have blue collar folks we have white collar folks in general I want people to feel comfortable walking in and talk talking to me and I think in general just walk up to us off the street people would be more AP to stop and ask Brendan for directions than they would me just because of it's just looks a little friendlier a little lower key if you will so um
yeah I'm never gonna say that I'm better than anyone else I don't know who else you're interviewing I know you know whatever this decision is not taken lightly um and Mr damont has done a great job Kim was here for a long time I actually knew her very very little but she she she was here for a long time so I look at that and say um that's what I want I I want a eight nine 10 year job um and and then I can say si Sanara and and then who knows maybe that turns into 13 or 15 or whatever but um I l
ike I said I think think I have a positive track record and I but but I'm by that same token I don't think uh you would probably be underserved um at this point you should be down to three candidates three or four candidates or whatever that you know whoever you picked you know the town and the board would be well served by so all right do you have any questions for us just kind of the process I know it's kind of been a long day for you all are you this process is so weird right it just takes fo
rever and ever and ever and in the end it's kind of like a Sprint so I'm sort of curious as to uh as to what you're sort of hoping and when you're sort of looking for Somebody To You Know jump in I'm sure David is like tomorrow get well the way well no actually it's it's today I mean our our agenda the next item is for us to uh deliberate and and choose from I saw that I wondered if you were actually that is exactly what um that that is that is the plan that's what we're going to do and then um
you know we'll we'll we have listed on the executive session to talk about a package and then we'll follow it up um once we pick somebody we'll reach out to them and then uh you know we have we actually have a board meeting um our regularly scheduled on Wednesday um when we would hopefully button it up so that would be our okay be our plan so the good thing about that the fact that I'm I mean I am doing some legal you know work on the side I am in a i s you know you saw that so I it's another so
rt of thing that I'm bring you to the table in a sense that and but I but I don't want people to worry while I am an attorney and I have specialized in in employment law town has councel I don't ever put myself in the position of being counsel that being said I can keep our bills low because the thing that I ask employee staff to do all the time is let's let let's see what we can do my analogy that I always make is we have a basketball siiz problem if we can cut it down to a softball size proble
m before we toss it to Town Council that's going to save the town money you know what I mean so um but um yeah so I mean that the nice thing about the fact that I'm not uh currently involved in a full-time e e is that I can pretty much start in a week or two you know so right kind of what you're looking for I think so um I guess the one question just do you feel um and I I don't even know if this is an appropriate question but um I I think the screen I have to say the SC screening committee was
really good they asked really really good you know questions um how are you feeling about the process any and all I guess you feeling ISC or you yes I'll tell you my my take on it was the plan from the beginning um when we had to we we had to find a new person was to do it professionally and we accomplished that we're very lucky here in town we've got a lot of uh great folks um you know we we were lucky to to get David um you know we're actually very lucky to to have uh Jim Purcell um who you kn
ow has been around here for a long time and actually did this this this role at one point you know in in the valley um earlier early on as a circuit Rider um both of their names are well known around they certainly are positively welln and uh we were able to leverage that and um I'm I'm very happy with the process and as you said you know we have a a great choice and you know um we're at a point where we we can't go wrong right so happy with it and that's I don't know if anybody else wants to sc
reening committee anybody listening to recording or online screening committee did a fantastic job this could have been a lot harder and um this day this day went as well as I could have imagined and you see it happening it happened in Bellingham it's happened in a couple other towns where they went through the professional process every went through and in the end the board said nope we're gonna start over we don't we don't like any of the three or whatever we're fortunate we're fortunate fact
that you're feeling this way this is no this is a good thing so um yeah I like I said I I I don't have a ton of other questions like I said I educated myself on the town I'm a little unclear in terms of um the accountant Finance director because I think Eric kiner is still mentioned on the website or whatever so is he Eric is Eric um provides accounting services for us the accountant side but um our actually Finance director is seated right behind you there right Jody Jody that's what but it was
sort of a little un so he's so pretty much so he's not on site obviously no no he's our account he his firm gotcha provides provides the the accounting just the accounting stuff yes okay corre that would be because that would that would be an additional challenge for sure not having a finance professional in the building because this again we do this job long enough we get to be pretty good at putting budgets together and all that but it's never anything that any I don't think any TA or TM real
ly wants to do 100% alone you know what I mean so Jo jod is definitely our our Finance director and our finance professional in the building great right all right right I really appreciate the time the opportunity thank you so much and I'm we'll we'll hear I'll hear from you yes you will okay excellent thank you sir have a great day thank you gotta shake hands again meet nice me Good Luck nice to meet you man all right take take a quick break it David you probably don't want to leave after all t
hose pades come on oh so they made that well Ken was like we have it on this is it on the agenda it was welln remember I you come and I said then it's like oh you come with it's like absolutely not to yeah going to Hollywood Beach that's sort of our our place you know we go to Florida used to be popping up Beach yeah I heard ready yeah no one's perfect Sunset is you know well after 5 now might actually be able to get another feels like accelerates after I wonder it feel like yeah it happens fast
er doesn't matter I mean it's being recorded and broadcast and whatever you want we'll do thank you thanks I had was going to ask Jen when she had asked if we needed employment applications or anything any plan is that whoever we choose um oh good Jen so in a in a perfect world we're gonna we're going to choose somebody um and then do you do you have the uh what I'll do is have you email them the employment application right and then we can have them turn that around and get that to do a the uh
at least to do a quy check and you know okay well that's that's fine that because well we're not going to we've already all we're gonna need is the the Corey check at this point we talked to did we talk about no one's done a background check right yeah what what um what it was suggested at the Colin Center at this point is that um the Corey check is all that's necessary do employment right yeah to I mean I guess Poli process guy here why would we not do the same background check we do on every o
ther employee we hire um one has not been done well we can certainly just we can certainly discuss it and decide that and obviously it's up it's up to the board as a whole so okay and I'm not gonna against it either way I just am telling you what what was suggested to me by the uh okay you know by chat company we hired to to do it so um but the the first step is definitely we pick somebody we need them to do an application and we need to start that process so agreed um I guess I would start by j
ust asking if anybody anybody wants to have a a comment of who they think stood out and I'll I'll start by saying I think I think um the general we just interviewed I think was terrific um and that would be my impression of the of the best of the three I'll just start there since somebody has to start so I I mean I I actually thought Cody was the strongest okay I yeah I yeah I guess if if I were to do rank Choice V voting Cody would be at the top of my list yeah my my opinion was he was the last
candidate there was much stronger than I anticipated in his energy and willingness to do the job at all costs that energy is difficult to deal with sometimes so like for me like I would I would love a person like that in charge if this whole place was filled with people like me and the first person Cody yeah he had SE seem to have the same willingness uh with a different tone and so that's I'm trying to pick who would be best here for the town as opposed like the emphasis on collaboration right
from the start so that that for me was a real strength he also is the best research he talked most about the things that we've done and the structure of the town and our issues in particular he definitely did spend time doing that I agree I think he did some innovation of things too I think the um uh to your question on the Performance Management and to take step change approach was like that's pretty inter pretty good aggressive and it's making it performance-based I mean that's that's a chall
enge to take that on is a pretty is showed no fear let me put it that way yeah another thing that kept getting me was that Sean used the word we the entire time as if he were speaking on behalf of the town as he was assuming the you know the the empathy from within the position already and that's always something it wasn't I and it wasn't you doing this it was he was talking about all of us at the same time and so that is another thing that keeps pulling me uh towards him is his willingness to j
ust sort of put himself in the position talk about it in that way um but again that's a little forward for our town sometimes it's interesting because the when when I I heard we too I felt I the vibe I got was a lot of I and some specific questions a little bit but just like I think I think he deferred on budget like the TA and the TM don't want to be the budget I think grant writing was as needed I think both other candidates were more he did end up saying I'll do what needs to be done but his
initial responses were sort of not me unless I have to where some other people were saying Absol I mean Cody C in the budget uh Grant space it said primary that's a thing that caught me um and and it's a role that we don't have right now so it's yeah and his and his position where he's working right now you know is very very much parallel to here sizewise sizewise right in the Regional School District so Rel yes also has that experience as well yeah the other thing though I heard from Sean was w
hat we like so much about David is his connections to these local communities and yeah that felt that was something that only comes with experience and CS a lot of it I I agree yeah Sean has the the most experience if I look if I look at my notes I have the most notes for uh you know things that he talked about doing um yeah so I was I was very impressed with with Sean's energy and experience also yeah that's true personal red flag for me when I read the Roses the the the short stin in each stop
so as a in my previous jobs when I interviewed that's definitely May it's more personal it's a red flag but it it's it's it's just a red flag to say and that's why he did talk about um shelf life and he said you know statistically three to five years I'm not I can't validate that is true or not um but I'm hoping um I think we went in more of like we I don't want to do this again in three years to be right but also to be on a on a positive note I think what he said was he said that statistically
from you look across the area that seems what's going on right now but he said personally he he'd love this to be his last stomp then he talked about 10 years or more right so I think on a positive note that's that was the way that came across to me that he was talk you actually asked about analytics he was actually talking about statistically and the way things are going right now uh you know it's a shorter stin than it has been in the past and actually I can tell you that that's the same thin
g that Jim Purcell told me about what's what what the trend is right now right now but you look at his history demonstrates that it must have been the trend back when he was in xxbridge so I understand what you're saying right now three to five years is's a lot of turnover I guess but I'm looking at a track record of basically three to four years in each stop which is what and what it had been here until until kill Kim it had been that kind of constant three to five years if even that in some ca
ses but yeah sure so I just want to highlight some more positives that I have noted down for Mr H so uh his comments on uh looking for operational efficiencies I I know that parallels a lot of the conversations that we've been having recently I also really liked his Outreach the fact that he you know had his own YouTube channel where he recorded uh information he had a um engaged Dartmouth website that he put out uh guaranteeing a response within 24 hours to public opinion what the fact yeah tha
t's I just think is really beneficial time yeah just depinning on that his knowledge of technology and modern Outreach techniques were above everybody else and I I think his I felt like I didn't have as many notes but I felt like his approach to data was he he had access to sort of more extracted a layer of GIS data well he he demonstrated applied use whereas right the other two candidates talked in more General arity right right yeah yes so I yeah and he I mean he also brought up a public water
like his own well right but that's but he had the fact research yeah he had the fact I you know they'll be really happy that so many people read the Tom PL to Mountain master so I was glad everybody had read that before well yeah I appreciated it that Sean said he you know kept keeps a copy of the master plan I'm like oh that's kind that's nice too yeah I thought it was interesting to get three different responses to shared services you Cody was positive and demonstrated doing it uh Maggie indi
cated pointed out that it's not about always cost savings but but and then Sean imately went through it doesn't save money as you might think and but he then he started to give examples later in in a different question of you know the Blackstone Valley um the Chamber of he said well that shared services I yes it is so it was interesting the three different perspectives there um so you so so what I'm hearing is I've got at least three of us that are saying that the Mr Hadad the first candidate is
was the one that you would that you thought was number one and then yeah sitting here thinking I will move him up on my list yeah I I feel like also um as far when we get to the part where we make an offer and whatnot that that might be a little easier for a younger person given our budget constraints for us to think about how we offer in a package versus somebody who's been in the system for a really long time I but I don't think that would weigh in on our current decision no it's just it's in
um what was the question budget budget financing question um I'm not sure I understood whether or not um Mr Hadad was going to uh like I was confused at what his general direction might be as it he seemed to really defer a lot over to what people wanted uh versus what his individual Direction might be like he didn't seem to take a personal approach to that and I feel like our town is so small that people really have to have a personal interest in how our finances go as a you know like be a stro
ng voice when talking to us and yeah he's he see seemed to have that when he talked about the schools but not necessarily with the internal finances yeah and and it there seemed to be some more experience there with our first candidate so or at least maybe in the toon of plan Bill they're more open about or sorry not plane bill um Halifax right Halifax sorry um they're more open about that type of discussion or they're smaller so they fit better with the types of discussions we would have that w
as another thing that I kind came out yeah I like the fact that Cody's implementing Springbrook oh right Springbrook and mostly what I heard was he's got an implementation team implementing Springbrook which I think will make that go a lot smoother right so yeah and doing it now versus a couple of years ago you know that presumably things have moved along although I'm not sure they have but um yeah and the uh yeah he was the one who also created the feedback system for public to come in and and
provide electronic feedback outside of social media which I thought was pretty good idea to move that content out of face Facebook and into a town managed system um so I mean yeah I gave him high marks on communication yeah and Outreach in general just because I mean honestly I watched one of his two of his Cody Corners I thought those were interesting I actually when I Googled him didn't believe it right at first and I had I kept like I went went to his LinkedIn page and then I came back then I
watched one I was like oh it really is him so let's focus on the the the interview that we did today well I think what I think what's interesting about that is as a Town Administrator he actually engaged it wasn't just his corner he actually brought Town Associates into the spotlight which I think when you think about what we've talked about morale and engagement right a leader um that's doing that in practice is is fairly important in terms of driving engagement and collaboration and making ev
erybody feel part of team I did I did appreciate with the the question about um self- evaluation that uh Cody said he would ask for feedback from department heads so like that that he said he had he had put a survey an anous survey yeah and that he had changed some things about how he communicated with some Town boards so I you know that's a little bit of self-actualization that's sometimes hard hard to have so I think the other thing that not only Cody so he's got Regional School District exper
ience with Silver Lake um I may be mistaken but I've made a note here that he's the only candidate that said sees the schools another department that's interesting which is my personal philosophy is like they they may be Regional they may have their own budget but the municipality has to look at them as just I look at them as just another department we've got a fund in our budget you know what I mean so I think for me that's a positive um you know knock down the wall of us them to the thing same
team the general consensus is to is to uh offer it to odad based on or or pending the outcome of a background they want us to follow the same process that we do within any other employee yeah that'd be my preference that be my preference as well because I wanted to start you know doing my own checking and I was yeah let's just that's that's a hard note yeah well I know I realize that but the rationale for that is oh someone else is going oh I get it I get it gotta do it is that does that change
for us they you know what does it change for us to do a full background check versus time time take some time that's all but presumably it can it can be done and it's not a deal breaker you know so I think I I think there's also there's also a a precedent that's been done before so when the same thing we do for every other employee um so does somebody want to make a motion sure I moved uh I moved to Point uh Cody hadada as pound administrator pending successful background [Music] Neti right for
yeah second Mo ma second any other discussion and if for some reason that process hit um has a hiccup then I guess we can deliberate for a second for second for for our second choice rather than going back and Reinventing the wheel and going through the process again right yeah right all right so motion been made in seconded to offer it to Cody Hadad pending um successful completion of a background check and uh negotiating a contract is that correct all right all those in favor I I all right un
animous give this to you this is yeah this is just if you can eventually will be lifted you have the application you want to just you want to just send it to him so we can we will have we'll have the our acting administrator send him all right why don't we do with that yeah all right pretty positive in terms of then done any other business I don't think so we gonna go executive session or no um I think we'll table that let's let's get the background check Wednesday or for post background check r
ight post background check right well we can prepare it and be ready to go so we're not I'd say we get our ducks in a row saying when we're good to formally offer we're not going into an executive session we've already done that you know what I mean yeah but I don't think wanted well do we have the do we have the numbers I don't have the numbers in well we know what we uh we have the original numbers that we put in the job description yeah right right all right um do needn't Noe oh but she left
anyways and she can't be in the exective session saying do we need to announce executive that's what I'm that's what I'm that's what I'm doing right so let's um no you can stay you can stay sure you you you can certainly stay for that but but um all right so I'm going to uh make a motion to uh move into executive session for purpose to Mass General Law chapter 3A section 2182 to conduct strategy sessions in preparation for negotiation with nonunion Personnel what to conduct conduct the bargainin
g sessions or contract negotiated with nonunion Personnel Town Administrator so I need a a Voice vote morale I you need a second yeah second I'm sorry okay I'll second okay second motion be made in second and now Voice vote moral I rugos I got it I cter I Chanel I all right let's uh are we gonna come back to adjourn or are we going to adjourn from executive uh we're just gonna we're just GNA um come back just to a juring Jody the finance worker could join could she could no but I'm just saying b
ut she left what about Laura well we got we need to keep Laura do do another or whatever yeah right we just have to keep breakout okay I don't know what's the plan is Jason has to do it you want to do a breakout room yeah we got to do a breakout room yeah you have Jen if you don't want me to stay I I'm fine with saying I don't have a problem with it at all I you should stay I think you should stay okay Mary is I didn't I see Mary is on Mary or card's on there as well just GNA she joined we never
for yeah I didn't see that she was I saw that she offered but gon see what happens it does automatically she's gonna be happy creating a room right now all right hi this is Mary I am here if you can hear mey Hello great job thanks you thanks happy to help in any way we appreciate that are we bringing Mary into that no I don't think that's necessary I don't need you don't need me at all nope I just wanted to say good luck thank you very much all right goodbye friends I do want to ask somebody sh
ould reach out to am am I reaching out to the people interviewed or is someone of you reaching out to them what do you suggest I mean I can certainly send each one of them an email I can ask David to do it or you can um I'm happy to do it and say and I will tell the selected candidate to expect an email from David how's that okay it's going to be this weekend or yeah um yeah I mean we we've we've made the made the selection at this point right pending of pending yeah and people are watching so I
I'm going to reach out to them all right now okay so just yeah and right and that was our choice and pending of background and sure yeah I don't think you no I don't think you do need to the the only email you need to send is you need to send him the import application which I just forwarded to you yeah so all you just for just congrat all right all right do we have a motion to adjourn I moved second all right motion been made in second to all those in favor I I thank you all very much have a g
ood long weekend
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