##VIDEO ID:fvsvTuycD64## e e e e e e e e e e e e reading is being recorded the listening of matters are those reasonably anticipated by the chair which may be discussed at the meeting not all items listed May in fact be discussed and other items not listed may also be brought for discussion to the extent permitted by law can we please have a call to order Nicole Melo present Mark Pico present Peter cam present and um we're going to do the Pledge of Allegiance I'm going to ask you to stand and can you just stay standing for a moment after that please we do have some people that we lost this week uh some friends and neighbors as well as it is uh 911 today and we want to just uh acknowledge that please I pledge aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for all thank you um we did obviously it is 911 and um there was a ceremony this morning at the fire station which unfortunately I wasn't informed about or we were not informed about in in a heck of a lot of time so I did not attend but um it's it's tightened way of honoring what happened on 911 and there were ceremonies throughout the country and um it's just I want to acknowledge that it happened and if we can just along with the names that I'm going to read give a moment of silence please uh we lost three uh four residents Priscilla d Lucille King KL srom and uh majer Yugo uh KL uh is a long time resident and he did a lot for the town a lot that he did was behind the scenes never public uh he would mow grass and and do events like that and uh it's it's sad that we we lost him the town uh as well as the other residents is is is is a void to fill thank you we're going to get right into announcements we don't have a a busy agenda uh it's it was kept very light the biggest thing is going to be the interviews which uh will happen in in a little while but uh in the meantime can we do the announcements please the annual MDA fil the boot event will take place on September 14th and 15th at the intersection of Route 138 in Center Street weather permitting the event hours will run from 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. rain dates will be September 21st and the 22nd a public forum will be held on September 16 2024 to discuss the budgetary impact of the Bristol um Plymouth Regional Technical School building project this meeting will be held at the dayon raob Regional High School auditorium 2700 Regional Road at 700 p.m. dton Council on Aging ribbon counting for the new um renovated entrance patio will be held on Thursday September 19th 2024 at 10:30 a.m. and the town of dayon food bank will be held next on September 21st located at Town Hall in the lower level thank you uh we have a section here for public input is there any hul just some news from school committee meeting last night one of the major contributors Alan Feinstein founder of the Feinstein Foundation uh passed away this week um although he is passed and we're saddened for that his loss his wife has promised to continue that Foundation has given thousands of dollars to both the dayon schools and the rova schools as well Lauren Howard was appointed as the new IT director for the district her father was Dave Howard who who was a science teacher at Dr for over 30 years Lauren has helped Dion with it issues in the past including this room and wanted me to let you know that if you need her help she would be willing to consult sure at no fee um even better with any IT issues like I said she was a big help with the sound system here what to buy and where to place it and and did it when she was the IT director at Bristol AGI so she developed a good relationship with us um longtime di band director athletic director Doug Kelly's retirement party is October 4th at the Venus deala restaurant uh see Shan Urban for tickets they're going fast and lastly um this will be coming up on your gender probably the next meeting the D Elementary building committee is drawing up language for a warrant article for the fall town meeting for money for a feasibility study as required by the Massachusetts school building assistance program this would be a capital outlay expenditure and we require a 23s vote at town meeting do you know how much the warrant they're asking at this point they're working on the number okay I know over the last two years fincom has been putting money in capital stabilization they have somewhere between 1.3 and 1.5 his ability was supposed to reach out to Peter roach and you Mr Karen is the chairman to talk about what's realistic from that St stabilization because obviously recommendations by fincom and board of selectman would be coming and it would be prudent for them to work with both of you rather than try a fight on Town floor sure okay great thank you thank you Mr H Mr chairman yeah oh yes Mr chairman on that while I'm not uh familiar with the uh uh the intimate details uh in your Capital stabilization fund you have something a little bit nor of of a million six most of that uh it's my understanding from I speaking to the school administration and uh and to the former Town Administrator uh uh came from Dr uh uh itself um uh I'm sure you're familiar with what an excess and deficiency account uh is it's a Regional Schools version of free cash uh they have a 5% cap um on that and the excess proceeds you know all that above the 5% end number um uh was deposited in capital stabilization in anticipation of this very study Mr chairman okay is I I've heard one figure I'm sorry go ahead no no I'm done I've heard one figure and um I I don't know if this is true that the state was supposed to reimburse us half of that uh at some point at some point okay thank you half it comes back yeah um I know I spoke with you earlier uh a couple days ago you said there would be no Town administrator's report tonight that is correct okay is there a selman's report from I don't have anything no no okay and then uh old business there is none new business this is a review discuss and act facilities request for Prince Henry Society Family Fair and car show I don't have any questions um they've done this before they have the appropriate paperwork caring yes they do um they will due to turn in their Certificate of Insurance today which they have here this is a nonprofit so um I believe they're looking for the funds to be waved um can I speak on funds sure I'd like to propose for a warrant article which I'll work on the language for us to review but you know based on some recent public input kind we have a revolving fund for when we use the facilities so at some point I can kind of Envision us taking in money even from nonprofits and right putting it towards things like the um the concrete um at Sprat field how it's eroding or any anything like that cuz sure money is so hard to come by so I think until we have something like that we should wave the fees okay all right so we need um a uh a motion on the floor to approve this and to wave the fees i' make a motion to approve a facilities request from Prince Henry Society Family Fair and car show and to wave fees I'll second that motion made in second any discussion all those in favor I I I uh now we have the same thing for uh Dion Lions Club annual yard sale uh this is going to be for the Town garage though you know they have all their paperwork and they usually do this is a nonprofit as well any questions no then is there a motion on the floor I'll make a motion to approve the facilities request for D Lions Club annual yard sale and to wave any fees I'll second that motion made in seconded any discussion all those in favor I I I another review discussion act recommendation to appoint Christi Blanchard as d as a dant Housing Authority board member is uh she's not here nobody's here to speak on her behalf or anything sir but they did reach out that they wouldn't be able to make it oh they did okay did say that so I think this is a longterm this has been a vacancy they've been trying to fill for a while and it's my understanding that the Housing Authority they used to all be elected officials and then there was recent changing to the the law that allows for a town appointed tenant seat so they're filling that vacancy and this is a fiveyear term okay so this is again a a review discussion act uh is there a motion on the floor to approve her um I'll make the motion to appoint Christine Blanchard as the d Housing Authority board member as presented I'll second that motion made and seconded any discussion uh the only thing I want to point out is we usually require that they be here uh I understand that they made uh uh notification to us that they could not make it which is fine um as long as we were aware of that and um so a motion made in second did all those in favor actually um I think the correspondence we got was from the Housing Authority director Robbie dusza couldn't be here I'm not sure about Christine okay yeah I don't know if that makes a difference uh it does we uh we've gone with the policy that they be here um for uh appointing positions uh if that's the case then um I would vote that we table it uh and so that she can be here uh keeping with what we've done in the past okay I'm going to resend my motion okay I'll make a motion that we table um this appointment until Christine can attend okay motion me second any discussion all those in favor I I I don't know that to be time sensitive Mr chairman so that's quite appropriate yeah sure uh this is a review discussion act Council on Aging Surplus items we don't have to go through the items because they are uh listed here in the agenda in in in the file uh so is there a motion to uh uh remove these uh Surplus items from our inventory I'll make that motion or I'll second it motion made and seconded any discussion all those in favor I I I Mr chairman I think you're going to have more Surplus uh uh properties uh a disposition requests on uh on your next probably two agendas okay or so great uh things have piled up enough we you know we got to get rid of some stuff sure that that's happened yeah all right we'll moving on to candidate interviews Mr Bernie how are you sir very well seats all I know good evening good evening so um chair and I spoke earlier and I think I I sent on some questions to the U to the board uh and I think the format that um we all talked about using uh with regards to the process is similar to the one we use in most of the communities that we we work with now um whereby um we serve as a or in this case I will serve as a facilitator to the interview uh asking the primary question basically the way that we worked this is uh we have uh the actual you know we try to work out the topics that are of uh interest to a community uh and then uh we ask a lead question to allow the candidate to respond to that uh topic uh and then uh allow for the board members to engage in a dialogue and discussion with the candidate around that topic with follow-up questions or um we've given you some probes here that are ideas for those types of follow-up questions but clearly uh you uh will probably have some of your own uh there may be overlap with some of the questions uh and so in that case I will try to uh again facilitate by um uh not necessarily asking the candidate to repeat what they've already said on a particular topic that they may have covered within another topic but at least I'll bring it up and ask if there's F additional questions or if you need additional questions and we can dig down into some of those areas as well uh so um any questions that I can ask that that you might have for me regarding the process we had a very good meeting yesterday with the department heads uh here uh uh in this room all three candidates were here and participated and uh Lively discussions good questions uh and I thought it I thought it went well I thought the uh uh all of the candidates seemed to be very well received uh by the by the department heads and um I think you have again as I said earlier I think you have three very good candidates for you to speak with tonight did uh a lot of the department heads show up you know I think we probably had um rough rough thinking here about how many people we had we probably had about 15 15 oh great awesome yeah that's that's about what we have okay we we had a full house then so right so wonderful all right um I'm sure everybody's full of opinions and um it all comes down to the interview exactly and how the slman field uh it will gel with the town right exactly great okay all right so your first candidate I will have her come to the hot seat up here is Maggie Clark uh and we will begin our discussion hi Maggie hi good evening my name is Peter this is Nicole and this is Mark and obviously with the selectman select board or whatever you want to call us and um don't be nervous I know it's so easy to say that but you're in an interview and everybody's nervous in interview uh we can repeat questions uh if necessary Bernie will he's going to ask the questions we can repeat them if you feel like you're getting in the weeds and want to start over again we can do that it it's whatever you feel comfortable doing okay okay all right thank you appreciate that uh we've all had your documentation so I think everybody is well vers on on uh on you and um Bernie if you can take it away please uh could I for one second I'm sorry I waited too long to talk um right I'm going to abstain from process um I have a what I perceive as a conflict where I couldn't give a impartial um have an impartial judgment for our Town's people and in the past when I abstained from votes I stayed up here and interfered with the process and that's not fair to my colleagues so I think it's best that I'm just going to step down and it is a very important issue so I apologize to our folks andian but I know we're in good hands and great so thank you that out you're going to be missed thank you I'll be right right in the audience okay okay okay um well you you actually stole one of my opening lines that that's all right uh that the board has seen your materials we've had a chance to review your resume your cover letter obviously that came with it uh the reference comments that we've received uh from the people that we've spoken to about uh the work that you've done in uh the various communities that you've been involved um and they've reviewed your writing sample so they have all of that uh most importantly they have your your resume so we don't need you to go through the entire uh background but if you could briefly talk about where you've been how what what has brought you to this point that you're applying for this job in Dion and uh why you think you would be successful here okay well first of all thank you so much for having me I'm I'm thrilled I'm thrilled to be here um so just I won't go on too long but but as a brief amount of background I grew up in rhod Island I went to Providence College I was a math major and after graduation I worked for a couple of different software companies first um primarily on the technical side and then I moved more into like the business Consulting kind of s of software and that was a good a good career at the time um but then I I ended up having my first baby and and then one two three four in kind of Rapid succession and was a stay-at-home mom for quite a long long time um that was great loved it I I was lucky to be able to do that and in some ways you know it's interesting how life plays out because had I stayed on the software track I I I would certainly not be sitting here today but some years ago when my children were still young but a little bit older I started a job at the senior center in planville it was a part-time job very minor position um but it was a lot of fun I really enjoyed it there were some great people and some great programming going on at the senior center in planville and that was kind of my first foray into public service if you will uh that job I ended up leaving that position for a variety of reasons the scheduling wasn't working out because my kids were still young but I I really loved it there and ended up staying on for a time as a volunteer and through my connections at the senior center I was able to uh get a different position later with the Board of Health another part-time position it was probably not even enough money to pay the cable bill at the time it was very small but um long story short that led to a different position a part-time position led to a full-time position and I really enjoyed them all I I enjoyed them all you can see from my resume the Departments I've worked in um but then also kind of on a parallel track if you will I when my children were young ran for school committee primarily because I was dissatisfied with something at the time and decided that yeah what the heck I'm not going to sit here and gripe I'm going to I'm going to fix it so I ran for school committee I was elected to school committee while I was on the school committee they appointed me to the permanent building committee and that probably was the experience that kind of changed my my thinking in terms of this isn't just something I'm doing at the moment this is something I think I'd really like to do um that was that was a great project we built a new town hall a new Public Safety facility I was involved in that project from Soup To Nuts from beginning to end and love almost every minute of it it was a it was a great experience um and so at some point I decided yeah this is what I want to do I decided to go and get my masters in public administration because I thought if I want to be serious about this I need to act serious about this I eventually left working in planville which was I loved working in planville to be I I loved it but I I was kind of stuck in a position where if I wanted to do certain things I couldn't be an employee there so I I had thought maybe I'd like to be on the finance committee or maybe I'd like to be a selectman and so those are things you couldn't do if you still work there so I left planville went to Taunton where I am as you can see the clerk of committees um that is I I keep saying I think the title is bad I think that it doesn't really capture the the essence of the job but I'm essentially the the point of contact for the city council in City Hall okay they're all you full they have full-time jobs and when they need something they they'll reach out to me and I also when you see Clerk of committees everything that's referred to committee comes through me I keep it organized keep it scheduled send out the documents organize the materials for the counselors um so on and so forth so I do however miss working in a town I I miss the the people I miss the connections with people that I feel that you have in a town and I'd like to work in a town and really I really do want to be a Town Administrator I I've I've seen what goes on and I feel that's something I could excel at um so here I am okay in a small town looking to be a Town Administrator sure okay great um what do you can you tell us a little bit about your sense of what do you know about dayon uh when you someone were to what's your sense of what D is so my sense and and I I I hope I don't offend anyone if I say something that's not accurate or if I've heard something that's not accurate I I don't want to offend you in any way um I sense that it's a small town with kind of a small town Vibe I I've heard that there's resistance to development although reading through the economic development plan that I was able to find online which was pretty recent it it does seem like there's there's a path forward for some development so certainly everything I've heard about the resistance to development didn't play out in what I read on in the economic development plan so um perhaps that's you know not entirely accurate what I've heard um I I think that the people here like their open space that's the sense I get they like their um their Community they like their sense of community that's that's the sense I get okay okay great in your discussing your Clerk of committee roles um the one aspect that I I think I'd like to hear a little bit more about is how much you get involved with um sort of doing the analytical work or the outside contact work for the council um you know which is somewhat when we talked in your preliminary interview with us we spent a little bit of time talking about uh that type of work and how comparable that is and you're in a position is you haven't you you I don't think you've really spoken too much about it but you you're a member of the board of Selectmen in planville so you know what a Town Administrator does and I'd be curious as to what you see kind of taking place over there with your administrator and what you okay so I think the parallel between what I do in Taunton and what I would be doing here is the um making sure that the board of Selectmen has all the information they need to make a decision and I feel that that's my job in Taunton is that as things come before the Committees it's important that all the information that I'm able to gather is presented to them each week and I think that that is the same exact thing that I would be doing here I think that's the parallel between the two positions um I think that this is a greater responsibility than the job in Taunton as much as it's an important job the really I'm not a decision maker in Taunton I'm more of a facilitator um whereas here I feel like there'd be a certainly you're the de ision makers but my role will be greater Your Role would be what greater greater okay sorry moving on to management and leadership style the board's ready talk to us about your leadership style I you know in terms of you know you you've got some you know in your reference comments people talk about your uh people skills your uh you know how you um and I think we'll be talking certainly about your some of your project management skills but could you talk talk to us about how if you were Town Administrator here in dayon how would you go about um building sense of Team managing that team and leading uh not only the town organization but becoming more of a but becoming a community leader as well so I was thinking about this question thinking this might be asked like what is your management style and I'm a doer there's no denying it and if I said differently I I'd be I'd be lying I I'm a doer by Nature however I I also recognize that a good team is made up of a lot of talented people and to hold people back from using their talents to the fullest is a mistake because if you want the team to succeed you want all of the players to succeed um I don't this is not even actually town government but I'll tell you the story because it's it's fresh in my mind I'm involved in this um organization in my town that we kind of just got off the ground and it's geared towards putting on community events and um I've been very involved very involved but there's this other woman who is fabulous with uh social media and marketing types of stuff and we put together this booklet with our sponsors and I certainly could have taken it and done it however she was so good and it would have been a mistake for me to step in and the timeline was getting a little crunched and I was like oh gosh is it going to happen is it going to happen but you know I made a conscious decision and I said no she's she's got it she knows what she's doing why am I even second guessing her that and as much as that it may be my impulse to step in as I get older as I get wiser I realize that you make a mistake by not capitalizing on the talents of other people um I'm not the best at everything and some people some people are um as far as building a team here in dton when we were here at the uh yesterday at the department head meeting one of the department heads whose name I will never remember said you know Michael Mullen had a habit of calling us all together periodically and is that something you would consider continuing and I was like absolutely that's fabulous why not that's a a great way to build a team that's so simple to have I don't know pizza or you know it's so simple but just Gathering goes a long way sometimes um I was really excited to see on your website that it's going to be your 250th anniversary like that's right up my alley I I love i l i got caught up probably more than I needed to in looking at the different things that they've been talking about I'm like that's fabulous what a great community that this is what they want to do and they're starting so far in advance you know I thought it was I thought it was great I think that um I think I would fit right in okay yeah it it's not at 250 it's um the American was celebrating America's 250 oh jeez I misunderstood that's that's okay one of the quick questions I have for you you said you were doing do you find yourself now doing more things because you just assum get it done because it's easier or you said something about delegating which is great uh and uh my my concern would be developing the people around you as much as getting things accomplished so being a doer is great but it's also a hindrance I agree I agree and I I recognize that about myself to be honest is that that's my my inclination to step in and do things but I I really do think as I get older and wiser I'm I'm more and more aware of the importance of capitalizing on other people's talents okay I I I I think that's really important and um you know I worked I worked in a small town and I was a very small position and I was very grateful to all the opportunities that I had to develop my skills and to work on things that were not necessarily my job and I think that's important and I think that not only does it develop the team when people have the opportunity to learn it makes them feel good about themselves and why would we not do that right you know I think that's important okay and I've benefited from that myself from having those types of opportunities great I didn't mean to interrupt your Burnie no you're not this is your interview I'm just I'm just facilitating so uh and we may come back actually we may come back to the that that topic I have a couple of questions along those lines but I do want to give you an opportunity to um sort of take what we one of the one of the um requests of the board to to us was that uh we put forth a question to the candidates to um gather information about their perspective on collaboration uh but also do it in a way that we could test out your communication skills so you wrote about um you know we as I asked you to do this in memo form so you wrote a memo that detailed out your experience as chair of the uh permanent building Committee in uh planville uh the result being the new town hall uh and why collaboration made that project successful so if you could um now we've seen it in writing if you could verbally communicate to us uh about that project and why collab how collaboration occurred and why it was important okay um very proud of what we did on this project to be honest with you very proud and I think most people in planville feel a sense of pride in that project and the reason a lot of people feel pride is probably because of the way we collaborated um from the very beginning we were very deliberate about making sure that we sought not just accepted feedback but sought feedback we met in various places various times um targeting different audiences the senior center the various meetings uh the schools the wherever we could take our show on the road we took our show on the road and what we would generally do once we got to a point was we would have a brief presentation um documents to hand out copies of plans and then as many questions as people had and why I think this was so important was that not only did people feel a sense of ownership in the project but frankly it made the project better because there were times where those questions led us to a different a different place than we were already headed um the one that I detailed in the memo was the situation with the library trustees who brought to our attention that the way the parking had been designed they didn't have any any dedicated parking and and we were kind of like yeah so what but you know the more we talked to them the more we realized the importance of that for they had you know moms with babies and strollers and and books and things to return quickly and and they really needed some dedicated parking and and so we were able to go back and forth and eventually change the plans it did was not a major change it was a slight change and you know I think everybody agreed it was a better design in the end and had we not been seeking that input or had we not been open to that input it would not have been as good of a design as it ended up so I feel pleased with that um I also wrote about the how we used M to build the table in town hall I'm very proud of that even though it's such a small thing thing we had gone looking everywhere for custom designers to make a big beautiful because it's a beautiful room our meeting room is a beautiful room and we thought it really needs a beautiful table in the front and the costs were exorbitant and we we you know that just wasn't something we could do and and somebody made this suggestion I I honestly don't remember who made the suggestion that you talk to mcore they can do this kind of I think they just make flags they they so they came out they worked with us they helped us design it and we ended it was Pennies on the dollar of what we were planning to spend and it's beautiful and I I feel really proud of that as well um you know I and then I think that when we went to town meeting the expectation was that this was a really large project for plan built we'd never done anything like this the expectation was that there would be a lot of discussion Heming and hawing concern with good reason it was a big project but I think because we had put so much time on the front end in having discussions and questions and and fleshing everything out when it came time for the vote people were already pretty satisfied that their questions had been answered and it I don't think it was unanimous there were a couple NOS out in the audience but I think we all felt good about the fact that we had done our job okay thank you uh the um another issue under leadership is in management that I that we have here and I just wanted to sort of you know being a Town Administrator being a selectman you the three of you are all a selectman so you can appreciate this is It's very rare you actually described one a case where there was no opposition but oftentimes there's conflict and one of your your references um referred to your um thick skin um because sometimes um the um Town administrators come under Fire can you describe to us a some a conflict that you have uh encountered that you feel uh sort of epitomizes your ability to work through and bring sides to a solution and build consensus yeah got to think of an exact example I I do think as I've gotten older I have gotten much more comfortable with conflict it's funny how I think you know as a younger adult that made me very uncomfortable the idea of conflict and I I'm as I get older I really think that there's value in Conflict there's value in a difference of opinions and I think if you can look at conflict as just a difference of opinions it's a positive thing it's not a negative thing really because many times a difference of opinion brings you to to see things a little bit differently and um I'm grateful for that I I um I so I worked in the building department I had oftentimes people who would come to the counter who were not happy with the zoning enforcement officer who had been to their house um or their project and I was always the first person there to talk to them I my generally not 100% but often people just want to be heard to be honest and listening to someone not and listening to them truly listening I I think goes a long way um you're never going to have everyone happy and I think being comfortable with that is is the right place to be to be honest okay all right all the soft skills stuff is well for now is over so now we get into the the technical uh aspects more technical aspects of the job uh nothing's more technical than numbers uh you're you were a math major so that's helpful in this regard um can you talk to us about your experience with or your and your understanding of Municipal Finance your experience with budgeting uh and uh there may be some follow-up questions that relate to that afterwards all right so obviously I've not been a Town Administrator before so I have not really created a town budget from Soup To Nuts I I've not done that I have been like you a selectman who so I'm in charge of the budget as a whole in charge you know oversee the bud budget as a whole but I've not been in a position to create an entire town budget um I've I've done departmental budgets I've done I I do the the budget now for the city council I create the budget and then oversee the budget I did that in planville for multiple departments I was involved in the budget process for um the school committee I've been involved in project in budgets for projects um but I do have a pretty good understanding of law the laws as they apply to Municipal Finance we were in an unfortunate position a few years ago in planville where we were looking for an override so I I think that a lot of us in planville quickly learned the ins and outs of proposition two and a half and what a dead exclusion and what an override mean and you know how you calculate the levy limit and how you calculate the levy ceiling and um the concept of new growth and how important that is to your bottom line um so I feel pretty comfortable with it but I I clearly have not not created a budget for an entire town to this point do you do you just um over in planville as a member of the board uh do you um has the board adopted Financial policies relative to okay relative to Yes um and that's something that was new to planville um we hadn't had Financial policies before and that I I you know I can't really take credit for that that was something that was pushed by by our our town administ administrator and I think one of the primary impetuses for that was to increase our bond rating um because that apparently is something that they do look for which I was not aware of that but so now we have a set of financial policies that have been adopted and and Our intention is to review them periodically to keep them up to date but um and I also and on top of just helping the bond rating it's certainly good practice to make sure that everybody's on the same page and there's a clear understanding of what what the expectations are tell wide okay okay do do you do fiscal planning over there uh you this is this is just interviewing you for Town Administrator here not necessarily you know but uh one of the another best practices uh forecasts and fiscal planning so um we have our first forecast that we that was just put forward to us just within the past gosh within the past six months I think um but what a great tool what a great tool because the way Julie our finan director in planville has laid it out is based on certain assumptions in terms of what the historical growth has been what the historical growth in permit fees has been every category imaginable and she's laid it out over um I think she's gone to 10 years actually I mean certainly there's there's assumptions built in there and it's not foolproof by any stretch of the imagination but it was really eye openening to see that over the next few years we're kind of not in the best shape as I would have expected so that I think it's a very valuable tool I think it's a very very valuable tool and I would I that's something I would enjoy digging into to be honest yeah okay great the um I was listening to someone appropo of nothing I was listening to someone the other day talking about retirement uh which I hope to do someday but uh the was talking about when you're doing a financial plan for your retirement the best thing is to actually run run a deficit if you will uh or put all of your hopes and dreams and plans in there and then what your money is so that then it forces you to prioritize and many communities don't necessarily do that Andes a lot ofense so yeah so anyway um any fiscal planning questions um we're faced with the situation of BP Bristol Plymouth coming on and um funding our of the debt the town uh our payment is around $900,000 a year that we just don't have um not that I'm looking for you here today for ideas of how to um but how how to accomplish that making that $900,000 up but we are going to have a uh a meeting on Monday an information meeting about the debt exclusion and uh we haven't talked about proposition two and a half override I don't think that's even going to be on the table what would your approach be to convincing the public from based on your experience with with with financial numbers uh to sway them one way or another as to um whether we should we should adopt that or not um it's a little difficult without having solid numbers in front of me from each department but I I think what I would probably do is actually run the numbers how the budget would look y if the debt exclusion fails and and and do it realistically because I think that was a mistake that happened in planville where it was kind of like a it was more of a threat than reality if that makes any sense no yes it does yeah and I I don't think that does anyone any I think that does I don't think that does you any good threatening people see right through that I I think that what I think would be the best way would be to really really really put real numbers to it and what does that mean so if the library is going to be cut by I don't know 17% whatever the number is then what does that mean is that a person is that a half a person is that is that supplies is that what does that what does that really mean and I I I think that would be the best way to do it is to really make it concrete y because it's true yeah you know I mean like if with without that money this is you know it's not pretend it's real money without it there has to be a consequence and what is what is the consequence okay that's you would take that approach of this is what the worst case scenario is going to be um after after making sure that I've really looked for every efficiency I can find yeah assuming you've done that yes assuming I'm assuming too much uh or not giving you enough information I guess uh no I'm more interested in how you would approach and you've answered it how you would would approach uh communicating with the public that we have some Financial constraints here and um this is the pro of of passing it and this is the con of passing it right um I think being as open and honest and truthful is the way to go um because there will there inevitably will be consequences right and what exactly are those consequences okay uh we've done that we we've laid it all out in it's difficult but um we we we're not going to go down that road right now so um okay thank you uh Nicole do you have any questions yet no okay related to uh finance and many and you probably heard it from the department heads yesterday they they actually had some questions about this um but the um many communities find that um the because money's t tight that they have a need for alternative uh revenues there's a couple different ways to create new revenues uh and we'll talk about a couple of those in a second but another couple of those in a second but um specifically the issue was raised yesterday and we have it as one of our questions uh of Grants of uh you know experience with um going out and finding identifying and finding money and how um whether you've done that in the past and if you have haven't done that in the past or you how you would go about uh identifying the money and um thoughts about how you would Pur that yeah it is funny because I did come up yesterday and I was thinking about it last night I'm like I don't think I gave myself enough credit on that one um so I've never had pursuing grants as a as a core part of my position that that's that's the truth there's no denying it um but I have had some involvement with various grant opportunities I and I don't know why I didn't think of this yesterday but even when I worked at the senior center I assisted the director in pursuing a grant there when I was in the building department unrelated to my job I assisted the police chief with a grant um I I pursued a small Grant on my own that which I was successful with during the co days which was a covid related Grant um but I was happy to be successful with that I was involved in a grant we received in planville to create an ADA transition plan um I don't know why I wasn't thinking of that either um I guess because it's never been a primary Ary focus of my position or it's never even really been my responsibility it's just something that I've had the opportunity luckily to get involved with for for a variety of reasons um and if you gave me another month or two I might have a nice success story because I'm involved right now in pursuing some grants for this other nonprofit I'm involved in so if you gave me a month or two I might have a good success story but not today how do you go about finding out what grants are available um I think that so for the the profit that was pretty clear to me that was through the cultural Council that really was was a a no-brainer you can that would some are easy sure yeah that was an easy one um I was looking actually because I'm like this is important to Titan and I I need to make sure that I can do this and there is information on the MMA website um that's a resource that I I would refer to I have a really good relationship with um the old director of Planning Development who was in planville and he's since retired but I have a really good relationship with him and he was very successful uccessful with um with pursuing grants I I frankly would pick his brain to be honest with you and um he was one of my references so it sounds like he said all nice things so I think he would help me out um but I I would you know lean on people I know who I know who have been successful I would look to resources like the MMA website right um you know I know the resources are there I I and I know it's important to the town I know that that's been part of the success story over the past past several years so I I I would want to continue that success story thank you I just want to clarify you haven't um had any grant writing experience solo um I did have one small Grant I did on my own okay yeah it was but I mean it was small doesn't matter how small it is it's a grant I guess yeah I know every penny counts right but yeah I did do that one on my own I pursued it on my own I I wrote it on my own and I was successful but was a it was not a budget you know wasn't going to fix the any budgets sure okay great um our next project is actually um or our next topic is project management and I'm g i if the board is comfortable with this I I'll probably skip over most of this because we've heard about your project management skills related to the town hall project but I am interested in in again one of your references does speak to your understanding of procurement and bidding uh so I'm interested in hearing um what you what aspects of that you were involved with you aren't mcppo certified there many managers that aren't but and it's easy to achieve that but I um when I was in planville I started the process I went through the first course and took the first test um there's really not any reason for me to be mcppo certified in Taunton so I kind of Let It Drop I don't know if that first test is still under the deadline you know if I'd have to take it again or not but I might I may have the first first test under my belt um so with the project obviously that was through the whole procurement process we we did that from Soup To Nuts um and I also feel like I've learned a lot about procurement working in Taunton to be honest um because they have a pretty developed procurement department and and I've been as much as I haven't done the job I've been able to um kind of gleam the importance of all the laws and understanding of all the laws of procurement from uh the procurement director and T and I think that it's a complicated topic it can be it can be difficult um you would be the procurement director yes yes um so I I I presume I would have to become mcppo certified and that's something I think I would need to start really almost day one that would have to be one of my top priorities coming in is that that's something I would need to do so that the town has someone on the books who who who is mCP certified so um I do have experience with procurement particularly through the building project and um and and a decent understanding of the laws there's a lot there's a lot to it though and sure there's more to learn how long is that process the mcppo process I was a manager for 30 years and I never became mcppo so I'm not a good one to ask I but I think I think it takes about uh under a year yeah I want to say that sounds about right I I know the first the first course was over I think it was maybe a week or two week I I'm gosh I'm not even sure the benefit is that they've now moved them they used to be all in Boston everyone had to hike into Boston they now move to online Okay um courses so um the other way that communities solve Financial gaps uh and you've touched upon it a little bit when you were talking about your knowledge of Dion is um uh building the tax base um through um Economic Development um the challenge of course of that is that um so I'm I think we're interested in hearing your your background in that area of how you would work to continue to improve the town's economic growth but as you've already pointed out in your description of dayon like many communities it wants growth it just doesn't want to change right it's a that's a challenge it's like retaining Community character becomes important so sort of how you how you your background with economic development but how you would um and maybe your experience in planville relates to this of of how you've been able to maintain Community character in certain areas in most of the town obviously there's going to be some areas so I think this is like the The NeverEnding challenge in towns it's exactly what every single town I think faces is that everybody loves their town because it is what it is it's not because you have shopping malls and and warehouses that's not what makes you love your town you love your town because of its character because of the people because of the community and and you hate to see that change I I I feel that myself I I so I I understand that um and so that is clearly The Challenge and I I think that you folks have done yourselves a good service though in laying out your economic development plan where it seems like a lot of these questions have kind of been fleshed out about areas of town that are agreeable for potential development um I say that with caution because you know they're not making any more land and I think that any development you've got to be really cautious about the location and the type um I always say that like there's really three things that are important when it comes to Economic Development there's the zoning which is touched upon in in the plan there's permitting I think that having an easy permitting process goes a long way I think that's important there's infrastructure which again is touched on in the plan and that's a challenge because water lines and Sewer lines are not cheap um that's a challenge and then the other thing that the plan kind of touch touches on which I really don't have much experience with is the dealing with the brown Fields that's um you know a challenge certainly um that I would have to dig into um but I think the most important thing really is making sure that we're cautious about keeping D and Dion but there's no question about the fact that commercial development takes some of the pressure off of the residents there there's no question about that um it grows the tax base without without sticking it to the the residents so that's the sure got to find the balance the scales on that okay and that you guys will have to lead me on that one yes that's Comm yeah that's a community value decision so okay um let's talk about personnel management um you know your your background in terms of um there's so much that goes into that right is there's the hiring terminating if necessary disciplining um holding people accountable motivating people um what's been your experience what's been your background and experience in those areas in the in your positions now or you know we haven't really talked too much about your private sector experience and I'm not sure whether you had that um those responsibilities there but how do you go about managing people and uh your experience in terms of hiring particularly in terms of hiring and holding people accountable and motivating yeah um so in my job now I don't hire or fire anyone I I guess that as a selectman I we review the Town Administrator he was on before I was a selectman so um I do have that experience as part of the school committee same thing we were in over we oversaw the uh the town the uh the superintendent as well as a couple other positions there um I probably do have more experience in the private sector to be honest even though I was a much younger woman um because I as I as I moved up the ranks there were certain PE I I was not hiring any one but I did oversee people and made sure that they followed through on their tasks um but as far as a a style for that which I think that's what you're looking for I personally like to lead by example I like to be a hard worker and I I find that people respond to that generally [Music] I I I think it would be very difficult to have determin someone and I would want to be sure that if it came to that I had crossed all my te and dotted all my eyes so that the town would not be in any sort of liability if someone was let go so I would be very cautious with that making sure that everything was documented well in advance and leading up to the to that point uh go ahead do you feel like you have an open door policy when it comes to Residents and town employees coming in or I well what what is your yeah policy as far as that would go yeah I um I mean I think there may be times when there are meetings and I don't think it could be 100% open door because you certainly need to have time to have one-on-one meetings and have but generally yes I want to hear from people I as Town Administrator I work for you I work for the people you're my employers okay and it's not the other way around you know you are my employer so I'm here for you sure a lot of this stuff is technical um which you can learn that's easy uh not that anybody can do it but it's it's easy um but we can't teach you to have a good disposition uh and we can't teach you to have a management style that's not authentic so uh I'm really concerned about your interaction uh your management style with with residents and with the employees of the Town um some managers uh opinion is go through the chain of command and when it gets to me I I'll handle it others it's I want to know right away and I'm going to intervene and get it done or whatever the situation might call for so I I guess what I'm asking is it's um it's important that you you interact with our residents in our uh uh the Town employees but to what extent do you follow the chain of command and feel like your door's going to be closed but if you're not going to be able to handle all the people that just want to come in and say hi to you right and I think I understand what you're asking right I and I I think that the the other question is I don't need to be stepping on anyone's toes if this is something that the police chief could handle just fine there's no reason for me to be involved and you know maybe that's the answer right you know because I don't want to be stepp I don't need to be stepping on anyone's toes I I I'm TR all plenty to do myself um and I also think that it's important to recognize that there are other people who are experts on topics not that I'm not going to be the expert on everything and I I don't think I am afraid to point someone to a different resource sure um but I would like to I I guess what I am I'm excited about is to get to know everyone and when I say I have an open door policy I think that's more what I'm thinking of is that I really am excited to get to know you to get to know the people who work in town hall I've heard fabulous things they great people um I'm I'm interested to get to know the people who make up the fabric of of Dayan right so we don't want you working 10 12 hours a day that's not good for the town and it's not good for you okay and um I see what you're saying yeah so time management comes in in big when when you're a Town Administrator uh as it is with with probably most jobs um and uh I'm I'm going to assume because of the positions that you've had you manage your time well uh it sounds like you've had a lot of success doing that uh and we we we come from a couple of uh Town administrators that have different work Styles so it's important that uh you you fit that balance of of what we're used to and and where our weaknesses are uh so I I I guess with your management style being the way it is uh is it hey let me work my 12 hours a day and I'm going to get this job done or is it striking a balance so that your your time is efficient in you know you say you work hard in that you're a doer uh th those has Pros pros and cons and the um I guess we don't want you to burn out is one of the points that I'm trying to make I yeah I think that's a fair point um and I don't want to burn out either I have a family I have you know I I have other things I'm involved in and I would like to be able to continue that I um so I think I'm going to have to look to be efficient yeah especially you know in the beginning I think there will be there'll be a a curve a learning curve and there may be some long hours to get started I kind of anticipate that until I really get a good solid feel for how this is going to go sure you know I I that's my kind of my expectation but but once I get past that that stage of finding my way I certainly need to have a balance I I I think anybody would I yeah so yes I but I am excited to meet everyone and I especially in the beginning I think that it's important yeah you're going to get a lot of different opinions when you first start yeah absolutely but I want to hear them and I one of the things about the residents of dayon is they're not afraid to give their opinions well um it's their Town yeah absolutely and uh they usually received well so um okay so just just to just I I think that in the beginning I really would like to have an open door policy yep because I really do want to get to know everyone I want to understand what the issues are I want to understand what your concerns are and your concerns are and um and there may be some long hours in the beginning but then once I settle in I think that it will be a lot easier to direct people to the different resources once I really understand what those resources resources are are exactly okay thank you uh Nicole how will you I didn't know if you were reading my notes though that's what I had just written when you asked it uh thank you uh Bernie it's up to you now yep just just a couple more I just wanted uh your background in collective bargaining uh yep so I I was fortunate on the school committee I was part of the collective bargaining team um so we negotiated contracts with the teachers the the custodians the power professionals everyone in the school basically um and then actually in planville for a time I was on the other side of the table negotiating for my for my union so I I have a fair amount of collective bargaining experience okay good okay the um the uh we've kind of touched upon this a little bit and and try to try to bring this um not to belabor any of these points but I guess we've talked about your the open door policy and interacting with citizens and um build and um so and you've talked about how you communicate with with citizens particularly with the example that you gave with the the town hall project that you worked on um but it's important I think dayon like many communities has really prioritized um building citizen trust and open government uh trans transparency um your any actions you've taken along those lines and then I guess an overriding question is you'd be new to dayon how would you immerse yourself and become part of the fabric of the community um um so the first part about transparency I feel very very strongly that the more information we can get out there the better and I I feel that as a citizen to be honest even more so than as a leader I think that you know town meeting is a fabulous fabulous thing I I love the fact that any person can come to town meeting and make a motion on the floor and in real time impact the outcome of that meeting and the next year of the town but I think it's important that if if we're going to put that kind of responsibility on people that they have all the information they need to um to make an informed decision and I I think that's really important um I'm proud of what I did in Taunton there where I I kind of changed the way that the meetings were posted so it was clearer what time the committee meeting started it may seem like a small thing but changes in a city can be difficult and I was able to do that I changed the way that they approved their minutes which I feel kind of proud about that too uh might seem small but it felt like a a real a little bit of a tweak that made it much clearer to the public what was going on um so I was happy to be able to do that I um there was a second part the second part was you know we we traditionally ask this is this is one of our traditional questions is um you know you how will you you'd be new to dayon yeah oh it's like how do you how do you sort of become a member of the community so that you people people know you without burning her without burning someone out how do we get people to know and have you how would you learn to interact and build relationships in the town so a aside from work I I think that if I could find some fun things to be involved in that goes a long way like volunteering at an event volunteering to help out with this that I think that's kind of an organic way to get to know people as a person and to feel a part of the community I know in my own Community that's what's made me feel the most part of my community the things that I'm involved in and I I I would like to look for ways that I could be involved here in dayon again that you know without being here every minute of the day um you know that I could meet people in that capacity I think I think that'll be valuable okay last question another relationship question um the most important relationship that you would have is with the board um how what do you envision as what that relationship would look like and how would you communicate with the board and um work hand inand with them so board are my bosses that's that's the relationship um I would work for you that's the relationship as far as you know I I'm say that kind of flippantly but that's the truth I mean all direction would need to come from the board and that's how I would that's how I would proceed um as far as communication I I think whatever works best for you is what I would like to do I have found that in working in Taunton I have nine counselors who I communicate with regularly and they all get the same emails and they they all but there's certain people who prefer a text message for something that's going to be quick there's certain people that like a phone call when it's and that took me a little time to kind of figure out the quirks of each person and what works best for them and and I feel like that's part of my job is to communicate with them whatever however it works for them they have full-time jobs they're busy people and it's my job to communicate how how they'd like to be communicated with so I don't know that answers the question sure we're a fairly young board um nobody's been here longer than one term uh and we rely on the Town Administrator a lot uh not to make the decisions for us but to give us all the information that that we could possibly need so there's going to be a period of uh of you not knowing and and us not knowing so because like I say we would normally look to you for an answer uh more of the technical questions that you know grants and anything budgets and and you can imagine what what I'm talking about um I I feel like it's more of a partnership than a boss subordinate relationship okay um it it's you to give us the pros and cons of something and us to to to make that decision okay uh what What's your your style like when it comes to not knowing answers and and finding out what those answers are going to be is it something that I'll take my list and and I'll let you know tomorrow or is it um I guess it depends on what it is and if it's something I can find out quickly then then I will if it's something that takes a little bit longer but I I think it I think my hope would be to set the expectations for how long I think it would take me to get that information um one of the things that um is complicated and being a select woman you know um you have to bounce from subject to subject your agenda doesn't flow with ease uh there's so many things on an agenda that you that you have to be aware of that you'd have to know the answers to so I guess what I'm looking for is you would come to these uh meetings prepared so an item on the agenda you're going to have an answer for us or anticipate what the questions are going to be in advance to have that information for us I guess I meant more that you're my bosses in the sense that you would provide to me your priorities sure and that would be come my priorities I certainly would expect that I would come to a meeting prepared with whatever I expect are there going to be questions that are going to be I mean I'm I'm sure I'm going to flub some it's going to happen but um I them all the time but I don't want to you know I would certainly want to come with whatever information I think I'm going to need that night um to provide that to you to provide it to the public um you know and as much as possible provide that to you in advance sure okay um Bernie are you set with everything I'm all set just any questions that you have and okay and if uh Maggie has any questions for you yeah pie how about uh questions for us like um what I had for dinner uh anything no I I think I'm pretty good actually um yeah but just thank you very much I really I really appreciate the opportunity very informative and you did a great job thank you um I'm glad you were relaxed maybe you weren't inside but uh it went nice well thank you for your time no thank you for having me it's great to meet you both very nice to meet you we do have some time if if any for we've set aside time if any members of the public want to say hello and um and then we'll move on to our next interview at 6:30 all right sounds good you thank you appreciate it to meet you thank you very much it's to meet you thank you nice to be [Applause] here thank you so good to meet you okay nice to meet you ni to me you game a so so um found cancer my intestines my small intestines um I don't know what it is yeah they gave it some long name that I can't even pronounce but um so I go to a surgeon on Tuesday this coming Tuesday up in uh bringham binghams in Boston and um looks like they're going to have to remove sections of the int ask um my question to you is and I'm going to ask them but Michelle asked me to ask you do they can they just remove one section at a time I believe I they don't have to take the whole thing is that your question no uh well I'm going to have to wear a bag for okay you are 6 months they said okay and um but it's like in four different parts of the intestines and it's m size from cancer had before so they're concerned about it spreading so they're going to go in and just take everything out um but they take all four sections out at one time or is it do all four sections have it yeah I'm not sure then I can't I would I wouldn't know yeah um so is it your all of your small yeah hey yes sir I realized that when I was in that we were did you go into closing it down is still live okay okay why don't we make that motion yeah um because we got another 10 minutes or so so uh motion the Flo I'll make a motion that we recess uh I'll sit down and second that all those in favor I I e e e e e e e e e e uh I'll sit down and second second that any discussion all those in favor I I all right we're back from recess back and uh you have your second candidate Joseph Lopes hi Joseph how are you good evening good how are you I'm doing great um I just pull this up well thank you for coming thank you for the and uh you're one of three so uh I hope you feel good about that I feel good thank you sir great um as I had said to the other applicant that um try not to be nervous I I know there's people here in an interview and it's like oh my gosh how can you say don't be nervous but um if you need a question asked again we'll just uh ask it ask and we repeat it uh Bernie is going to do the actual asking of the questions uh if you feel like you're in the weeds and need a little assistance again um start over or whatever you want to do but um we just we've had your paperwork now for a little while and I think uh we both know there is a third selectman who had to recuse himself um but we were very familiar with everything that you're about so uh bur whatever you ready sir absolutely yeah I should have mentioned Joe before we came in that I'll be serving as a facilitator uh the board members will have questions uh sort of built off of your responses to the questions that uh that I raise um as the chair has noted they've had an opportunity to review your cover letter your resume you the re report from the the references that we checks that we did uh and uh your writing sample uh we gave you a uh a paper to to write or memo to write regarding collaboration which is important here in the town and we're going to get to that a little bit later but um why don't we start with um you know sort of uh I guess the question of who are you and why are you here uh meaning you know without getting into extreme detail of your whole resume what has brought you to the point that you've applied for the position of Town Administrator here in dayon and um why do you think you'd be successful here uh so I just want to say thank you for the opportunity to present myself to you uh to the bu uh I have 14 years of Municipal experience um and I fell in love with politics at a young age and I made sure that what I was trying to do would always get me to an opportunity where I would be able to be in front of uh a committee like yourself to to be the town manager or the Town Administrator uh I went to school for political science because that's where my passion has always been um I worked in the finance field um as a means to get a greater understanding of the financial acument that you need to be not just a city counsel as the am new bford but to be a town manager and worked with a select board that are making sure that they have the tools that they need to successfully do the job for the constituents so I have spent the better part of my professional career always knowing that I wanted to be in this role and work within a community environment to provide the tools that the community needs and the select boards and the residents need sure so that's where I get to politics is a passion I know it it sounds crazy to some people not the two of you because you ran for office but it's uh it's something that I've always loved and knew that I wanted to spend my life doing in my my uh my passion and my professional career okay okay okay so why dayon uh I live uh in new bford you about 25 minutes away and I said I never wanted to move away from where um I called Home in the community that I love um and that's you know southeast of Massachusetts so I've always been mindful of where I wanted to hang my hat and this is an amazing town I've I've known a handful of people um that are graduated from Bristol Plymouth and that lived in Dion so it's an amazing town that has a characteristics that's un it's it's New England it has a unique characteristics behind it and I would love to be able to provide my institutional knowledge that I've gained working in in my city to the residents of Dian okay okay what's you if along those lines and maybe maybe you could just elaborate a little bit on it um you know we're asking all the candidates to sort of speak to this a little bit it's like you you have the the the benefit of having met people that have from dayon but how would you character i d well you just did it's New England but what's that mean to you uh or or what should it mean to the board when you say that so when you when you look at characteristics of the people that I know they're all hard workers they care about the community they care about their families they go to work for the betterment of their Community but also the betterment of their family to provide for their family and to stay within the community that some people have grown up in but others have moved to uh so when you look at and the people that I know that all live within the area they all say that it's it's Unique it's a family there's Community people know each other um and that's attractive you don't see that everywhere you go and I know as myself running for office you get to meet people and have relationships with people but it's always been something that people have told me that live um in and around Dian that there is a close connection between the community um that I just think is an amazing piece um when you ask the question why it's community community way people that want to be together that people want to work collectively for the better of the Town that's something that you know is near and dear to myself okay Bernie if you don't mind you you mentioned politics do you feel the position of a Town Administrator is political no um you work for the the select board and you work for all of the department heads in the community it's not a political position because it's not on the ballot the three of you well sorry you know the two are you but the three of you you're on the ballot you're the political piece associated with the town and and running the town okay thank you welcome the um this came up um well I'm I'm GNA I'm gonna let me skip down um how would you um as the Town Administrator you would be responsible for day-to-day operations here in the town uh and um play a primary role within the community as a whole how would you describe your leadership style one of the things that I Prim myself on is effective communication everybody needs to be on the same page everybody needs to know what's going on doesn't matter if it's the chairman of the board or the DPI director everybody needs to be on that same page and collectively working towards a common goal so when you talk about the management style it's a communication style um knowing that you the three of you need to be well versed on what's going on within all the departments in the city is important to myself and given the position I would make sure that each one of you were made aware of everything that was going on the last thing that anybody that wants in your shoes is to walk into a store and they see somebody and say I didn't know we were doing X Y and Z at the DPI department so making sure that you're all AB breast to it I know that as as an elected official myself the importance of communication between department heads and the municipality so understanding how it is a communication driven um environment sure in in managing your staff um how when we talk about your style with regards to staff um how does that work what do you how do you uh ensure that they're um on the same page and working and I would imagine you probably say communication again communication but but in terms of um uh you kind so go on one of the things that we that was brought up yesterday when I had the pleasure of meeting everyone was some people need to be coached and some people need questions asked so my management style has always been a a pseudo hybrid of trying to coach people but if somebody has a question not just giving them the answer but asking them questions so they can get to the answer themselves that way they feel comfortable and empowered as well that knowing that the job that they're doing they're extremely capable of doing and that they don't have to ask sure all the time that they know that they have the ability and the knowledge to do it so I've always prided myself on all the teams that I've managed to be a pseudo coach but to also ask the important questions if somebody left me with a question if I can come back to them with a question and they can get to the answer themselves then they're empowered to do their job and that's important how if how do you practice delegation I always look at it from a standpoint of how collectively do we work together delegating to people to have them do tasks is one thing but to work with them on that task is the is what's important um in my last role as executive director we wrote countless rfps and the RFP process for anybody that's written it can be cumbersome and and boring but we collectively did it together we were able to dissect all of the tools within the RFP process that had to be done and we collectively dispersed tools dispersed assignments out to the team members that were best suited to address the portion of the question of the RFP and then we collectively work together to make sure that that final submission hit you hope you know dot all the eyes and cross all the tees for submission I will say we were extremely lucky in my last position that for 95% of the grants that we applied for we received um and the ones that we didn't we were able to have the discussion with the agency that was um submitted that we submitted to and asked them what we needed to do to correct and we were able to make those Corrections and resubmit for you know a secondary review approval okay I'm going to come back to Grants in a little bit um but and I asked you at the very outset to sort of uh not go into great detail about your because we've all seen your paperwork uh but I did want to have an opportunity to particularly for the viewing public uh and the people in attendance here uh to talk a little bit about your um last position um sort of what it was what you did and how um um in the level of responsibility and sort of the the history of that brings us to where you how you got there and where you are where you are today so I was hired to be the interim executive director of a Workforce boort there was a gentleman that was at the time uh 68 or 70 um that was looking at retiring they had a candidate in mind to be the director but uh the individual was missing um a few key pieces that were needed to be a successful director uh I knew the director from uh a previous uh life and he asked me if I had any consideration of taking over and an interim role for him in working to Mentor the candidate that they chose um at first I said no a couple times and I finally made a decision yes uh that I would take over an interim role and and be uh an interim executive director executive director for a period of three years it was a three-year contract it was extended to a little over 40 months uh because the individual that was chosen was still learning um and at her behest she decided not to move forward um with the position um she realized there was a lot more that was entailed into the the job than what was uh originally thought when she was uh applying for previously um at the conclusion of my contract they posted the position out and I had made a decision that I wasn't interested in uh staying there because I wanted to work in the political field and and be a Town Administrator or a town manager and I knew if I was in that role I wouldn't leave because it would have been a three-year contract and I wouldn't want to leave somebody high and dry sure so as a Workforce could you talk a little bit about the uh the role of the Workforce Development uh so the workforce board in the com of Massachusetts is a ferally mandated um operations under the we act Workforce Innovation Opportunity Act um Governor can determine the number of Workforce boards in the Commonwealth they can consolidate or expand Massachusetts has 16 of them uh they oversee all the Career Centers and all the programming for municipalities I had 11 municipali within the zone that I was responsible for from Rochester wereham Rochester Mar and mapo at New Bedford Freetown um down in a kushit um we oversaw all of the associated fundings as well as um sending out an RFP for the operator of the of the career center the career center has a third party operator um and we contracted out with a company that was based out of Louisville Kentucky the original provider was based out of Connecticut there was some issues during their tenure one of the roles that I was assigned with as in my capacity was to send out an RFP for a new operator we did uh we went from the bottom third of operations to the top third of operations within 18 months of that new operator so we we chose the right operator but we also put the right people in place to manage everything in that time period okay we also grew our our reserves we had uh less than 45 50 days of reserves and when I left we were 210 or 218 days in reserves great and prior to that you served in a number of uh as you I think you noted uh in finance you served in capacities in different banks doing uh loan officers loan officer primarily business development for so I started out at Economic Development was offered a a job as a a business development officer became a vice president of uh commercial lending and then I became a uh lending consultant um for a period of almost eight years and then I went back in traditional lending as a VP of commercial lending um prior um before I left to take over the workforce board okay great as I noted in our um uh in our introduction tonight but also in a the uh once you were selected as a a finalist for this position um collaboration um and communication which you've spoken of but communication collaboration between departments boards committees uh is really considered to be crucial here in dayon uh the structure of government really necessitates it um and arguably that's the same in every Community but we ask you and the other finalists to prepare a written essay speaking to that issue an example that you've had in the past of promoting collaboration to solve a problem um we've seen your written um memo document the memo that we asked you to do uh tonight we'd like you to speak to it a little bit and talk about what you were able to achieve through collaboration and what lessons you may have learned from that it's really interesting so prior to building the public Public Safety Center we built uh an elementary school and when we were building the elementary school we were could can I back you up sure again for the um the board has an advantage here because they have all your documents and I know they're the ones that we're we're we're most interested in um getting the information to but for the public as well uh if you could explain your what the project is and how you are tied to it so I was the city council president I was also the city councelor for the ward where where we were building the First new Public Safety Center in 65 years um we were also building it the first combined public safety center but prior to that we built a an elementary school also in my ward and I was the city council president I served as city council president four times and during that tenure as a city council and city council president built two schools and a public safety center in my ward we were building a school we erected all the steel and there was a telephone poll in the middle of all the steel that we were ting because EV Source continued to say they were going to move the poll they were going to move the poll they were going to move the poll so we were always working with the onate project manager and EV source to make sure that we were going to get this poll removed um and it get to the point where we had to have a sitdown discussion with eversource the representative's boss from eversource as well as the on-site project manager and the construction company eversource agreed that it was their fault that they never moved the poll when we were asked them considerable times and they assumed the responsibility of bringing in a crane to basically pop it out of a 2 and a half story building so that collaboration where we were working with the onsite project manager we hired that same onsite project manager by chance uh to build a public safety center and as we were building the public safety center we came up with I believe it was a 100 questions that we asked the police chief the fire chief and the EMS director in regards that they were going to be housed in this facility and one of the department heads basically went through the 100 questions answered them all and said great one of the department heads was a little behind on getting it so while we were waiting for that information we were continuously having discussions with everybody else that was going to be using this public safety center and from that point on we were having a lot of one-on-one discussions we were also having collaborative discussions because we expanded the scope of it when we brought police and fire into it we also brought Animal Control when we brought the F prate we bought emergency services and Emergency Management all into the fold of those building so what started out as we had assumed a public safety center became a true Encompass Public Safety Center where we were always collectively trying to gather data to make sure that what we were building for the first time in 65 years would be the most St of the an up-to-date facility that would fit the needs of everyone not just for the short term but for the long term because when you're going to debt as you know as you all know when you go into debt you have to build past you have to build past the useful life so we were having all of those collaborations and discussions to make sure that we were keeping everybody on the same page and making sure that we were getting the information needed to give to the designer and the onsite project manner to make sure the project moved forward from design to implementation um it was a process but at the end of the day we built it on time under budget went through covid and and and completed the project and it's an it's an amazing Testament to people working together it's a beautiful Public Safety Center the fire department wanted to incorporate some of of the older um Mystique that's associated with a a fire station that the police officers were making sure it was publicly it was safe but public space and then we met all the guidelines that the the state and federal government required in regards to the facility and how it was constructed it's a it's an amazing building nice thank you um okay let's talk about um what's your what's your approach to um you know people think being in town of administrator is easy uh but the reality is um well it's already been pointed out every Community people have lots of opinions that can be conflict what's your the manner in which you address conflicts that come up in your communities so one of the things I walk in with you know almost 14 years of being a city councelor and understanding that some people are having a bad day and they just want a vent people want to be heard um so doesn't matter if you're the town manager or a selectman people want to vent to the person that they think was going to hear them out sometimes they're not looking for solution they're just looking for comfort and there are other people that are looking for comfort so it's being able to determine what somebody's looking for and how to continue that discussion a lot of times it might just be okay well you know what Peter I'm glad that you provided all that information to me let let me look back and see what we can find out and then follow up with them and and relay information to them or if they have a question that they're looking to to give to Nicole or Peter or Mark said okay let me take that information and relay it to the individual that they're looking to have that conversation with um so I understand the that difficulty of having those difficult conversations with people because they're coming to you on either a bad day or a bad opportunity where something's affecting them so you got to be able to to listen keep the mouth shut um and make sure you're able to take all that they want in and then provide them with a reasonable answer and if you're not able to give them an answer look for the information that they need and then provide it to them okay great uh okay that's going to we're going to move away from some of the soft skills stuff now and get more into the more technical nuts and bolts type of stuff I I had a conversation with a finance director today from another Community um that um uh and his um his comment to me was uh everyone to to do the job of a Town Administrator you really have to know the numbers uh within any organization you have to know the numbers so we're interested in hearing your uh experience with Municipal Finance with budget preparation uh we know that you were in banking so we assume you must know numbers uh but could you talk to us about your knowledge of Municipal finance and what you've done uh with regards to development of a municipal budget so during my tenure uh City council president four times chairman of the finance committee um at least five times chairman of the budget committee four times the audit committee uh three times and all of those roles were working with the uh the CFO and the administration to provide what is now over a half a billion dollar budget for the City of New Bedford uh we have a $251 million school budget and 249 $48 million Municipal budget all of those finances come in front of the council um We're The Entity that is responsible for U making sure that the budget is balanced that the budget is passed and we work directly with the administration on the drafting of the budget so between being the city council president four times and chairman of finance budget committee and the audit committee I have had my hands in the municipal budget of a half a million dollar entity from beginning to end from the first meeting where we're getting what are the needs and wants of the department heads to how do we put together a um a CIP budget where we're looking at what are going to be the future needs that we can you know look at debt servicing as we're retiring debt taking on debt to handle you know future needs of maintaining buildings buying squad cars I have been on the procurement of all of the purchases for fire engines and um police cruisers in the city of New Bedford uh so I have put my stamp on on that side as well as when we've built all of the facilities during my tenure been part of the finance associated with the financing for them either it be with the Massachusetts school building authority or with the municipality and then as my tenure as a as a banker I spent uh seven and a half years doing U financial consulting for small businesses between um 100,000 and 10 million finding financial consulting which allowed me to look into the finances of a business what was working well and what wasn't working well and sometimes business owners didn't see what wasn't working well because they were so far in the weeds that coming in and looking at okay what's the receivable what's the turn date all of those pieces would provide them with information that they would need to help turn around their business do you in your role as um so I assume in your role as a city council president uh and as a city counselor uh that you're well-versed if you will in uh I mean you actually haven't because New Bedford every city every Community is a little bit different in how this is done but um so you know do you actually put pen to paper in drafting up that budget or you rely upon the CFO to do that that but your knowledge of Levy limits prop two and a half um so we take in proposition two and a half all the levy limits um all of that so what happens was the CFO Works directly with the the mayor and city council president on putting that budget together we start in January and then we end um by June 30th and then we do tax reclassification um between December 10th and de December 20th to get it to do and on the tax reclassification as we were talking outside about you know there is a a means of looking at it especially new Beford is a lot like dyon in regards to that we have a heavily residential population where we're heavily focused on residents um paying the burden of the municipal finance and I have always been under the mindset that you can't raise more revenue from the tax payers than you need to operate the municipality it you have to be extremely mindful in looking at how do you take the tax levy and maximize what you need to minimize the impact on on the the residents because they're the largest payer of the taxes um dton is I think almost 80% residential in regards to the payment of it so you got to be extremely mindful um of that I think the average tax rate in Dion is $ 5,751 give or take the the finan that I've been looking at it it's big difference in budget and you're talking 300 million to pit to 28 million so um take away a few zeros is that going to be difficult for you to manage that kind of small budget compared to what you used to no as I said to uh somebody asked me that question yesterday and I said I've always explained to people that when you look at the numbers you got to compare to your household minus the commas we all have a household budget we all have what we have is our means coming in and the means going out all you do is you have an extra comma for the most part and you got to be mindful of that when you're having that conversation with people you tell people that the budget is X and they're not used to you know 20 30 $40 million but they're used to what they have to run their household on and if you just remove the commer you can have a better conversation with people because they're more at ease okay um I have a another question but I don't want to interrupt the flow of this particular topic so I'm going to try to remember to bring that back later that does relate to the size element but well why don't I put it in now there's the I I think that's great way of putting it about the Commerce um and you know it's all scaled but what's different is the resources that you H that you have in a city um you have in New Bedford a chief procurement off officer we do you have a director of procurement you have an HR Director you have uh a you know a number of other positions that don't exist in a town like dayon will that be an issue for you so I looked at your organizational charart in depth um for my own edification and I think when you're as Nimble as you can be in operations sometimes you'd run a better um ship so so as the executive director of the workforce board we had a $9.8 million budget and when I initially inherited the company we had um I want to say 61 employees and we were able to reduce some of the size of that Workforce as I said yesterday you know I looked at what the oper Cliff was going to look like look like prior to it happening so when I took over we built a three a five in an 8-year Financial projection and within that first three Financial projection I knew the oper Cliff was going to run out and that we needed to start making difficult decisions early and we became a more Nimble work for sport and we operated better when we were less bloated um so sometimes having all the tools doesn't make the ship run any better when you have to be able to manage what you have okay you answered my question about fiscal planning with that response so that's good uh I assume and I'm I'm quite sure I know that New Bedford uh does have a they do a fiscal forecasting we do we do a fiscal forecasting not as in depth as I would like um me personally um so when I ran the workforce Bo we did a a threee a fiveyear as I said in an eighty year we looked at all of the revenues that we had coming in through Grant dollars where those Grant dollars were associated um operated within pseudo silos that we knew The Apprentice was going to fund The Apprentice coordinator and the that was going to be working on The Apprentice side the youth was going to fund out of the youth programs we looked at it at a very holistic approach the city I always say we don't do enough forecasting past two years um oh okay you don't you don't do we do a three-year forecast but it's got so many question marks in it okay that it's it's not you know something that I would stake my my hat on the only future forecasting that I always look at and I focus on is the opep trust fund and the the pension obligations that we have to deal with because that's on a scale and we know what that scale is going to look like okay uh has uh has New Bedford uh have you been involved as as chair of the finance and budget committee and has the the council adopt Financial policies we do we we adopted Financial policies and we've made amendments to those policies some of the Amendments um I file through the ordinance that would look at things differently so one of the things that we did that I recommended that when we look at the the overall budget when we're going out to Debt Service new construction new buildings that we build into a within that a component to handle U maintenance of of that facility once it gets past its normal short-term useful life um the first thing in a budget that gets cut a lot is the maintenance piece so we we built into that how do we handle that additionally we have a meal stack and a hotel tax one of the things that I suggested was that we take part of that meals tax and hotel tax that we're collecting and that we take out a defined percentage to handle all of the funds associated with the marketing and the uh promoting promoting the city new bford before that was coming out of General government unclassified and one of the things that I made when CFO I sky was there that we looked at changing that and using a portion of the hotel tax and meals tax to fund that because we shouldn't be paying to market the city promoting the city based on on the back of the taxpayers when we had the residents that were coming into the hotel we utilize those funds differently okay great uh let's talk about grant writing you mentioned grant writing in your Workforce Development uh you know what's been your experience with grant writing Grant Administration um and um have you had an opportunity outside of the Workforce Development uh world to um do grant writing so most of my experience in grant writing has been um working in the workforce board I served on a handful of boards and commissions that we solicited funds from private agencies um where I was part of a team as well that worked on soliciting the grant but when it came to monitoring the grant that would all come down to my tenure during the workforce board where we most of our operation budget came from soliciting Grant dollars through different agencies and uh state and federal Partners um so if it was the department of apprentice standards Das at the Commonwealth we are the regional Hub in New Bedford for Brockton Taunton Far River uh new Bedford cape in the islands were the administrator for that entire Grant um for this part of the Commonwealth so we applied for the grant we administered the Grant and we managed the grant across almost 48 to 49 municipalities uh I was the entity responsible making sure that everything that was submitted to the Das Department of appren Standards met all the requirements within the Grant and we were able to check everything off on that and so I was the Grand administrator of all of our youth programming youth Centric dollars that go in to manage all the youth programming um that was also the my responsibility to oversee and manage all of the the grant dollars associated with that as well as the we're the healthcare Consortium hub for those same communities um Totton Bristol Brockton um Wham cape and the islands we're the administrator and the hub for all of those Healthcare dollars that are coming in for Healthcare Training so we were the administrating entity for it all did you physically write the grants or did you have a department that so we collectively worked on the grants together okay collectively y as a team yep um pieces were dissected and the individual that was best suited to handle that portion worked on that portion okay and where did you get your list of grants that were available so a lot of those were having contacts with the the state and looking at what the state was soliciting out for proposals okay and we would submit accordingly from that point um the D apprenticeship grant that was a brand new Grant three years ago that we sought to be the central hub for uh Bristol County we applied for it and we were successful in in getting it the the healthcare Consortium Grant same model um the Commonwealth of Massachusetts knew that there was going to be a shortage of CNAs dietitians and nursing assistants and they had made a public notice that if any of the workforce boards in the Commonwealth wanted to be the central hub for it for a region that they was going to a grant solicitation out um we went actually it was a zoom meeting uh we participated on the zoom call I realized that we had the capabilities of managing and overseeing it for a central region of the Commonwealth and we applied and were successful both on the initial application and on the renewal of the application great the um uh you've talked about your when we were talking about your collaboration you used the example of the public safety building um you what what's been your so I guess I think we've talked about your project management and certainly your the man the management you've done in the Workforce Development is a is a good example of of that as well albeit not Capital but it's what about procurement um here in dayon it's the um responsibility of Town Administrator to be the chief procurement officer uh what's your background with uh 30b chapter 149 um mCP posos certification Etc so we were actually on on a meeting last night we were talking about something very similar um so the city has a procurement director the city council as a Body Works directly with the procurement director for all of that understanding that within the Town Administrator I would assume all those duties and responsibilities and get certified for the procurement um we live um and work within 30b in the city of New Bedford on for most of the projects that we do if it was soliciting for our the internet service provider or different amenities that we're looking for in regards to buying Vehicles we have been able to successfully use 30b um for our last trash uh trash hauling contract um we're doing it now where we're locking up a three-year commitment with another entity to provide a service to the city Beford when utilizing uh a previously issued RFP that had a similar scope and we utilizing 30b to move forward without sending another RFP because the provider that we're utilizing within the first RFP has the capabilities and abilities to perform both jobs okay you mentioned your background in Economic Development um that's the way that many in addition to grant writing or grants that are available uh to assist a community uh economic development is the way that Community sort of help close the gap of uh the you know service needs of the residents uh and um available revenues that that are out there uh people like to see Economic Development so we're interested in what your background is in Economic Development people also don't NE necessarily like to see the results of that Economic Development so there there's always that challenge of how you do that can you give us your perspective on how uh you would balance that so back Economic Development and then how you would balance it with Community character so I started in Economic Development um I don't want to say how many years ago I'm going to age myself um I was responsible for a a few silos in the city of New Bedford uh business retention and expansion strategy um the one thing that we looked at it was easier to help a business grow and stay in New Bedford than recruit a new business to come to the city so we established a full business retention and expansion TR strategy additionally we looked at a vacant storefront and we effectively worked to see all of the vacant storefronts that were in the city of New Bedford we put together a database of property owners landlords and real estate agents that would be interested in working with people to um rent any of the storefronts that we had so we looked at all the storefronts across the entire city we broke it into uh segments in Industries what we thought would be best fitted and then the other piece that I was responsible for was um the Tiff portion of it um in the city new Beford I have been on the the Tiff review SL um voting member uh 7 out of my 13 years as a city counselor and I've made changes to how we Grant tiffs in the city of New Bedford so one of the changes that I I made and implemented by working with the New Economic Development Council was that any Tiff that we're providing to a business owner the amount that we're giving up can't be greater than the amount that we're collecting over the Val the length of the Tiff so make sure that the city is not giving up more than what it's getting even though we're getting development we still don't have to worry about tax base coming in to offset all the expenditures additionally when we when we did that we wanted to make sure that employers were providing livable wages to the individuals that we were hiring so we worked into the Tiff to work directly with the employers to make sure that they were providing for full-time employees you know health insurance or at meeting the minimum wage but the biggest piece that has played um dividends now moving forward is because we City be does give out a considerable amount of tips on a yearly basis is that the value of the Tiff can't be greater than what we're giving away so if we're giving an individual $810,000 in benefits over that life of the tip that we're going to make sure that we're collecting an equal amount in tax revenue I don't know if does ST use any tax increment financing tiffs um know okay okay it's a pretty evolved process it is a pretty involved profits um because there's tiffs there's H dips and there's stas and each one has a different mechanism which you can use an sta is only good for eight years or left and eight years or less and the structure has to be structured in a defined manner in which the state agrees to with a tiff um there's Tiff zones and the Zone has a useful life if the zone dies then you have to go back to the state and ask for that zone to be um brought back to light the largest individual the largest company in newa that utilizes the tips is on Titleist a Krishna company they have um at least eight different tips every time they build a facility or they put an additional on it they they qualify for a tiff um and then we have a lot of companies within the industrial park that we've built a very good BR strategy so we're trying to keep those companies within the business park and they're all applying for tiffs a lot of people are going to the STA now an sta has a shorter duration in the structure provides a greater benefit in The Upfront to the the business um than a traditional Tiff traditional Tiff can be structured over 20 years or the useful life of what's left in the zone what about in terms of infrastructure for economic development do you have any background in that area water waste water okay so Water waste water in the city beod is a $735 million um acquisition right now we're working with the DPI director on a $235 million Clean Water Act right now for the city Bedford that's going to alleviate some of the the uh the Water going into the CSO system so we are putting together a from the end of 140 on Route 6 um an entire um $235 million of infrastructure that's going to deviate water from going in to the CSO system and we're going to be putting in vets and water retention areas that'll feed as a desalinization before it gets into um the dam and the pond okay so yes I I had a a meeting a couple days ago just looking at how we were going to structure and working with the EPA and I have been at the table for the last eight years in our discussion um with the attorney that we have from DC in regards to all of our EPA related mandates the city city newett has gone a long time without addressing some of the the mandates and we're now being brought to catch up sure so we've been looking at all of the funds available both at the state level and the federal level and we're looking at one of the funds that's going to be hopefully going out for the Clean Water Act that will allow us to alleviate one of the damn issues that we're having in the city okay um I want to make sure that there's board members have questions on these areas but I want to get into personnel management um if we could and your uh experience with hiring employees motivating employees uh holding them accountable uh disciplining if needed uh and um um you know what's what's your experience managing people so at different times of my professional career I've managed small teams and large teams um smallest being five largest being at the workforce board and managing a team of almost 60 and we've brought that down we've had to hire layoff and on the rare occasion we've had to let a few people go and the process of letting go of somebody is U meticulous and detailed orientated which most things are but we've had to let go of a we let go of a few team members for a handful of reasons um we can't go into them um but we provided individuals with EAP services to make sure that they were getting the services that they needed outside of the traditional work hours um prior to doing anything um a lot comes down down to making sure that that employee file has all of the information in there if you're going to let go of somebody you want to make sure that you're protecting in this case the Town versus the agency from unwanted lawsuits what about um uh Collective barting have you had much uh experience with so sitting at the table sitting at the table on police fire um and Unit C contracts never the the um the educational ones at the schools for the teachers that PR professionals that that's handled by the school committee but I've been at the table for police fire and um em you know EMS but the unit c as well and the the CFO myself and the city solicitor you know we've I've been part of that discussion on the last fire contract and the previous Police contract as well as the current um EMS contract when when you say you you set in on them what what was exactly Your Role besides so as a city counselor we're we provide insci and guidance into the manner in which it's being done we have a discussion in regards to what the tax levy the council is the final authority to approve all contracts right so they would come down to us so what we what we do is we provide insight and guidance during that process to both the administration the solicitors the solicitor and the union that's in front of us at that that time and then we review all of the contracts and approve or deny them prior to them being implemented so you don't actually do any of the negotiating we I have been at the table but that is normally been handled by the city solicit yes sir okay um like most communities um uh Municipal uh governments have they sort of a an issue of um citizen trust and the need need for um transparency um and uh openness and dayon has made that a certainly a priority um what's your what's been what would you be able to bring to the town to sort of help that process along I've lived My Life by a rule that my father taught me when I was very young and got to realize when I was uh 16 years old honesty is the greatest policy um and it sounds corny and it sounds cliche you always remember the truth because the truth stays the same if I lie to somebody I have to remember a lie and I'm not going to lie about it I have to write everything down I don't have the capabilities to remember a lie I have to write everything down as I go throughout the day um being able to have a conversation with somebody and being able to provide them with an honest answer they might not like the answer but honesty is always going to be the best policy because at the end of the day they're going to be they can't say that the individual wasn't upfront and direct with them they provided them the truth even if they didn't didn't like the answer you you know you got the truth so for me it's always been a direct and honest approach um okay how do you how do you increase the level of uh information to that's going out to people because it isn't always necessarily that's a great approach that you've described but it isn't always necessarily just the the honesty part of it it's the fact that if people need information how do you make sure that they get information so one of the tools that I used as the workforce board was I had a board of 47 individuals uh they got a monthly report a quarterly assessment and a biannual operations review of how the workforce board was operating so they the work the board knew everything that was going on at all times um we shared a lot of that information on social media platforms to make sure that the communities that we were working with knew what was going on um in a in a city we have a lot of put information that we put on cable access we utilize our cable access for for everything to make sure that the residents know what's going on as an individual I've used social media myself to make sure people know what's going on in the war that I represent um but previously as the workforce board director we had um I provided an executive summary and a full report to my board that I directly worked for so they knew what was going on at all times at the workforce Port when we were seeking funds and Grant dollars they were made well aware if we weren't weren't going to seek a grant dollar I let them know why we weren't seeking it and the justification for the reason why I never wanted anybody to be in the dark because I wanted them to see as much late as I saw okay um that may tie in with what we're my next topic will be but one more question on this how would you go about um how do you think you would go about becoming more immersed in the community of Dion and um build relationships with the residents so building relationships with residents some of those that you gain is just by seeing them where they are coffee shops restaurants you know you name it having an open door policy um I can tell you as a city counselor I have an open door policy and I have office hours where people can come in and see me if they have question concerns it's not just an email or a phone call or a text message a lot of times people want to have a sit down conversation with you and I always tell people and I've done this during my my tenure City Hall closes at 4:30 in New Bedford um but I make sure that I'm there at extended hours so people can come and see me if they have a question about an issue that's going on and additionally I I have a monthly meeting outside of the community uh third Wednesday of every month 7 o'clock um Buttonwood house Buttonwood warming Center you can come in everything's on the table you can ask it any question you want and within that there are times that I'll say I'm going to bring in the DPI commissioner I'm going to bring in the police chief I'm going to bring in the fire chief so people can have those discussions not just with myself but if they there's an issue going on we're doing a water quality project we brought in DPI in the Water Commission the commission is responsible for Wastewater so the residents could ask um them the questions sometimes they're the expert not myself and it's always best to allow the experts to answer the questions and but I would facilitate the meetings okay last question for me um and you may have already answered it but uh how would you define a successful relationship between yourself and the board uh that's perhaps the most important relationship that is administrator has communication um having on constant dialogue I don't want to bombat you with information but I also want to keep you abast of everything that's going on within the town um as a fellow elected official I know how important communication is it's the Life part of what we do sure um you don't want to see a constituent at the grocery store you know getting gas and ask you a question that you can't answer because you don't know what's going on so understanding the importance of that and communicating that with you on a regular and consistent basis is extremely important the the better we build trust the better we can collectively work together but that goes with me making sure that you get all the information that you need within a timely manner what do you consider your relationship with the selectman to be and and as the town manager as the town managers I work for the selectman okay oversee all the Departments that are within the town but I work for the selectman yeah uh Do You Believe In following the chain of command yes sir and U about an open door policy how do you rule so to speak uh is you available uh operating hours to uh talk to a resident who has a concern or wants to voice their opinion or or do you believe in uh following with appointments and uh you're the last step on the uh complaint or whatever yeah so I believe in an open door policy um I think it's important that people know they can have time life doesn't always make it convenient for somebody to make an appointment that doesn't mean you know every 10 seconds you know somebody's coming in the office because you still have a job to do but you have to be mindful that people need to speak to you when they have concerns and obligations um you're working for the betterment of the community so making sure that that door is always open for them as much as it's open for you as well but make sure that door open is open for them to have that honest communication is important and sometimes it might be okay well that's a great question let me follow up I might be following up with one of use with a more detailed answer that I can get back to that constituent with um but yes an open door policy sure and what your work ethics like I mean obviously going to be honest and uh things like that but is it uh look I put in 12 hours a day or I manage my time I'm there eight hours a day uh obviously if there's an issue or a selman's meeting you're going to be there that night um what do you feel is a balance that you like to strike I haven't struck a balance really well yet in my life to be honest with you um so I had my left hip replaced on January 24th or 27th I was back in my office a week later MH um you're not supposed to be back in the office a week later after having hip surgery um but I thought it was important that I was back in office uh I've always been a driven person and I think being in the office and working directly with people and they can see your commitment is important important sometimes seeing somebody else's commitment to a job and to a task motivates other people to have that same commitment so yes I'm a little driven sure it sounds like it do you a little bit do you prefer to uh delegate uh your the things that come in or is it something that look I'm just going to to take care of it because I can do it easier and faster and uh I think it's a case-by case basis if you see that the people you're working with have a lot on their plate and you have a little more freedom and a little more availability to do something take care of yourself why delegate something to somebody else when they have enough on their plate but you have a you have a little more freedom or opportunity one of the things that I did a lot of as the workforce board is I would have conversations with my team members on a regular basis and we had weekly staff meetings and I was gauging everyone's temperature on a regular basis to see what I could take off their plates at time but what I could put on their plates as well um and I got all of my team members uh the 60c manager even for those that weren't managers I wanted them to have an understanding of the importance of that book and how that it's important to how we collectively all work together just because you take a task off your plate and put it on somebody else's plate doesn't mean that that task has been resolved of sure and but everybody got the the 60c manager and I think you've read it because you just looked at it so yes uh the can you talk to me about developing your your staff so to speak the department heads and their subordinates uh what What's your approach so I have always buildt relationships from everyone within the group um my grandfather retired and became a custodian and all his friends asked him why he became a custodian when he retired and I was an elementary school long time ago and I remember uh one of the judges in the court asked him a question and he said you know Joe why are you a custodian you know you retired and he's like well I don't want to stay home and do nothing but I saw how that judge interacted with him that judge interacted with him the same way he would interact with a bayith or somebody else and I was a very young kid and that has set a mindful approach to me the importance of working collectively with everyone um no one's better than anybody else everyone's going to work to do their job whatever his or her job is and for me um I was always mindful that I can't do my job without everybody else that's working with me sure I never say for me working with me yeah because when that becomes you overstepping them and you think you're greater than them you have turn over and that's never what anybody wants um I'm lucky that at the workforce board the only people that we let go of people that we needed to transition out we didn't have good team members transition out on their own as I said to somebody yesterday when they asked the question people leave good employers for Bad Bosses they don't leave good employers if they're happy at work and they love their boss sure and that's a mindset that I've always kept him kept you know front end Center and how I operate okay uh I I do have a few more questions but I got to ask Nicole I do you have anything my only thing is um and I one of the references had mentioned this um in regards that it would be a change for you coming over to a small town and you did touch on that in regards to the financial aspect but coming over and having a small town mindset how how will you do that I think in all honesty I bet you I know who said it too um I can almost guarantee it I have worked on the financial side of the banking side where it's a $100,000 transaction or an $18 million transaction if I'm financing a a small knot for profit or if I'm financing somebody that's building a brand new Aquatic Center um everyone gets the same atten pension it doesn't matter if it's an $18 million facility or $100,000 facility I was always grateful that I kept 98 almost 99% of my customers in the banking World excuse me and it didn't matter the size of the customer so the size of the budget is relevant to the municipality and the services that you're offering thank you you're welcome um I know we got spend some time walking with our residents here so I won't uh I won't take up any more of your time are you all set Bernie if you if if you have another question I'm comfortable yes thank you okay good sir it's been a pleasure please call me Joe hon Joe uh it's been a pleasure uh thank you for your time and um good luck with I think the residents might have a few questions for you okay um I'd like to motion that we recess uh I'm going to St down and second that um any discussion all those in favor I I e e e e e e e e e e e e e e recess uh step down and second that uh any discussion all those in favor I I all set uh what's Dal Dalton I going to call him brenon so how are you sir very good good um I can tell you like I told everybody else don't be nervous but that's not going to stop you from being nervous so um maybe part right it's part of the job right being a little nervous in this but thank iate so that's all that matters uh anyway um we have a series of questions that uh Mr Lynch is going to ask you and take your time responding to them you're our last candidate so we have about 12 minutes um and uh if you feel like you need a question repeated by all means he'll repeat it or if you feel like you're straying off course we can bring you put me back on track put you back on track I won't be insulted so so there you go uh so Mr Lynch whenever you're ready great thank you uh Ralph thanks for for joining us and thank you for coming out yesterday as well you and the other candidates were great about coming out meeting with the department heads um uh the board board has your cover letter your resume your the report from the references that were we spoke to um that uh provides them some feedback of how people have interacted with you in in Prior positions um and they also have your writing sample uh that we'll get to a little bit later so um they have a good sense of your background though and and what you've done uh so I don't want to belay that too much but maybe if you could just talk a little bit about how you get to this point of being interested in being Town Administrator what how is your career path work to get you to that point uh and um why dayon uh and why do you think you'd be successful here yeah uh Bernie thank you very much and again uh thank you thank you to the board uh of of dyon um I you know I want to start off U uh if as you saw my my resume it's kind of Taken different different turns uh I I grew up in in the Bronx New York very blue collar family and when you grow up in a blueco collar family you know what's the job you're supposed to have you're supposed to you know get a municipal job so what I did is I I um became a New York City police officer uh and you know I was successful at that unfortunately I was injured and I had to um and I had to move on uh so I had to do a career pivot and that's why I went to Parade Magazine uh so in Parade Magazine uh you know would sort of every career that I've had helped me build blocks to really bring me in front of you today um at you know at at a patrol level you know you learn relationship building at Parade Magazine I was in charge of a $75 million budget of of paper purchasing I had to do negotiations uh we were under time constraints as you could as you could imagine it it's a weekly paper so so you have those deadlines to meet um we decided to we've always vacationed uh in Massachusetts and Cape Cod so about 20ish years ago uh you know we we decided as a family to uh to move to Cap Cod um you know at that point um you I became a member uh uh an employee of a local bank I start off as a consumer uh service rep but I used the I really used the skills I had uh that I had started developing and growing from relationship building to an analytical skills that I had my previous careers and I worked my uh way up to be a vice president in the bank I was a a vice president I was handling uh commercial loans residential loans and Business Development uh while I was while I was uh working for the bank I was also a member of the planning board for the town of Sandwich and a a select member for the town of Sandwich and you know being in that world I saw that there were needs that had to be met by the town uh and in terms of banking needs so I took that skill set and I brought it you know and I brought it forward and I quickly developed the um the bank's sort of government government side um at the time uh Cooperative Bank of cape card had um seven $700 million in assets and you know I C quickly calculated it out and um I was responsible for 5% of of those assets so I was um very proud of the work I did there but it was a small Bank um and you know opportunities were few and I stayed in touch with uh the town manager the of uh the town of Sandwich and we were at lunch and he you know said to me you know we're looking for a planner more lamenting than asking or maybe he was quietly asking you know we just want someone who's smart who knows the town so you know I went home had a little discussion with my wife on Monday you know I I gave I gave him a call and said listen should I put in my resume he goes why not um you know at the time sandwich is a very good place to work but for some reason we just couldn't hold on to planners we had like four planners in seven years I've been a planner now uh uh for seven for seven years um but you know the skill sets that I I can translate from from the town of Sandwich to what I do there to what I can do for for the town of dayon is um um I developed uh um mcppo um and usually planners don't do that so I kind of looked at you know what skills can I develop uh I'm also uh a municipal hearing officer you know something else that the town of D is is looking for but but um I wanted to grow to grow my skill sets and and in addition to that uh I also um have a a certificate from MMA for uh Municipal Finance and um you know on on the outside just as continuous learning um I'm a I'm a graduate of the FBI Citizens Academy uh and uh currently I'm enrolled in Cornell University's certificate program for uh public sector leadership so I think with all those skill sets I mean I have I've had some um a lot of other successes in town hopefully I get an opportunity to to talk to you about it and how it you know and how I believe it relates uh to the town of dayon but I want I don't want to be too loquacious I know my uh I you know I know my writing sample is only supposed to be 500 Words I can't believe I went over that just my my you know my fourth grade teacher sister amart would be proud of me but let's we can move on all right great um so you also have a master's degree in public administration I yes and I'm curious as to because you got that when you were working at the bank uh why did you that yeah yeah I I actually I started my uh was a public administration when I was in the police department so so so I uh one of the top MPA schools in the country is John J University and which has a which has a specialty for criminal justice and and sort of um uh that uh public uh uh public administrator leadership for for policing uh I had a fair amount of credits and and when I came up here I was in um uh you know I said I want to I want to complete that so suffk University had a satellite program in um in Cape cot Community College um I had a talk with them they offered me scholarship money uh and so I decided to complete my uh my MPA it was kind of funny uh when I did that you know my kids my kids couldn't understand it I I you know I would put them to bed and I said Daddy has homework you know at the time they were little they said you're old why do you have homework I said well you know because I do but but um a lot a lot of the um uh you know and the bank was very gracious as well I have receed you know received some money from them because there's a lot of there's a lot of crossover when you take a master's program you know in human resources and planning and analytics it's not just uh you know crunching numbers and and you know understanding how policy Works before we go on to far Bernie uh can you go back to the first question which was um which I didn't answer is why do I want to be indicted correct okay uh what brings you here yeah Peter uh so so um I'm at the point in my career where you know I developed these skill sets and I want to use them to be a Town Administrator and when you look across the Horizon of of of of um southeas of Massachusetts you know what towns would fit the bill that I think I could be successful in uh you know and I saw dayon came up why do I like dayon it's it's a small community it's a rural community um it has a a budget that I believe I could manage and it also has challenges right challenges which I've uh which I've participated in you know you're looking at a new fire station um it's it's something I did uh in my in my role as both as a selectman and and a and a planning board member you know you're looking at uh a debt uh debt exclusions you know again something something that I've done uh you know you the Main Street project I work I work closely with the engineering department um so there's um um you know and I and and when I look at it and there's also a few opportunities here in dayon um that you know that may be missing you know because of you know maybe because of turnover but you know if you look at um you know you you need um your housing production plan that's something that's something every Community needs and it sort of helps you it helps the town guard against as I like to say unscrupulous developers good developers like to know towns that have housing production plans because you know if they want to move into a community then um you know then they know what the community wants open space I know you have a open space committee but when you have a certified open space plan it it opens up opportunities uh uh for for for grant money um the other thing is a master plan I just completed the town's uh you know we call it on the cape it's called the local comprehensive plan but it's a master plan and you know what is you know what is the purpose of that so you know one it helps get all the department heads together sort of rowing in the same direction understanding what the goals and and and action items are but I think more importantly for the town of dayon is that it gives it gives the select uh the select board and the administrative staff the opportunity to go out and really talk with the people of dyon to understand what what they want you know what they want to move the town forward um I when I was doing the LCP uh for sandwich there were any project there's three things that you need right you need time you need money and you need the will of the public so you know I I jokingly say money is the easiest and you know you say you know why do you say that there are ways to finance you find grants and and and this and that time's hard because time moves right but it the first two are easy when you have the will of the public because the will of the public will help you get the financing and the will of the public will will be tolerant o of time and and understand how it moves if you don't have the will of the public then you you you have nothing because then you're forcing stuff on people and it becomes extremely difficult so so yeah so and again you know and I see that and I see Titan you know I've watched a couple of you know in preparation for this you know you I watch the selectman meetings and and I'm sorry no no listen it's it's okay you know so it's uh uh I put it on one and a half speed and I get through it but but but the but the very good thing about it is you know this the people of this community care about this community and that's something that I I want to be a part of and when I look at you know when I look at at at dyon I said you know I I can help you lead the town than you thanks great segue talk to us about your leadership style uh with as it relates to the organization how would this organization function under your leadership style and um how would you see how would you see yourself as a um what's your style of leading within the community yeah um I think in internally definitely you have to be a collaborative leader you have to rely on the strengths of the of the department heads and the people and the people who and the people who work for you um and I'm just going to tell a a a quick story I'm not GNA go off track Bernie don't worry about me so so I you know I I and I learned this very very early in my career and I've I've carried this with me for for a long time uh when I was in the police department you know I had the opportunity to work for the police commissioner of in of the city of New York in the Office of Management and NIS and planning and you know I was just a cop and the person in charge of the UN was an inspector and if you know right in hierarchical Societies in organizations like inspectors up here a cop is down there you don't talk to them you don't look at them you don't you don't do any of that stuff but he was this great guy and he had and he recognized that the people who work for him had certain expertises which he didn't have he called me to his office once he had a plan we're going over it and he goes Ralph yes no you don't have to say yes and I found that the most empowering thing you know he this guy was a well-respected uh inspector in in in the city of New York and and he was asking me I could I had the power to tell him no that was a bad idea and I've carried that with me you know my entire life um you know I I I Ed that every opportunity I had when I had to uh when I work for the bank I you know I I had several direct reports I did my best to you know to to to to manage them up to make sure they get the education and the skill sets they need um I have that now with uh as the Director of planning uh planning e and economic development you know the people I I have under me who report to me you know I make sure that they have the skills the Education and Training that they need because when they have that when they're empowered they make my job easy they make my life easy so I'm a little selfish yes but uh but you know you know the reason for that is you know you want to be a collaborative leader and a democratic a democr leader you want to be able to listen to ideas because that you know that makes uh that gives a better solution uh to any any problem you have you know out in the community um you know I was you know I I sat in I sat in your seat you know but but even before that it's about relationship building it's about going out there and listening and listening to the uh to the people and you know what they want what you know what are the concerns you know what are they what are they happy about you know what are they not happy about and you want to be able to sort of listen bring that in how do you how do you fit that in in into policy how's that you know you're right so you're the chief policy makers for the town you know so we have to we would have to work collaboratively to sort of make sure that we put forward good policy that um you know that the people of the town of dayon want so it's a you know I learned early early on in in in my life that relationship building is everything um you know again you know whether it's getting right getting information um you know as a police officer or or making a sale or really uh adjusting Zoning for uh so you know so people's lives are better great you mentioned in your the first part of your um response to that this topic about uh collaboration um uh within the within the organization and um as you know for your uh assignment uh we asked you to draft up a memo that uh detailed out for the board uh to sort of get your uh an example of your uh use of collaboration because that's important here in the town of dayon and also obviously to test your writing skills right uh and um I hope you told you your children that you were doing your homework uh for this for this uh assignment uh but if you could um we want s have give you an opportunity to talk about that a little bit what was the example of collaboration that you presented to the board to us and um detail it out for us how it was collaborate and why why it was successful yeah thank you um well the um the example I used was the uh was the wing school and and and I have to be honest with you I'm I'm I'm very proud uh of the result of of the wing school um it it started the town of Sandwich had a uh declining student population and as a result of that the pretty much the first school that was built uh in the town of Sandwich first K through 12 School uh the uh School District decided to decommission so we had this we had this large building like 40,000 square foot building pretty much in the middle of town what you know what what do we do with it so you know when I was um a selectman we had a lot of uh uh public Outreach um but when I had the opportunity to become the director of of planning and economic development I said um you know I talked to the town manager I said listen we have to take this you know they saying what do we do with it I said we have to take this to the next step usually uh you know that that responsibility will fall on a Town manager the assistant Town manager but you know I was sort of eager to to use the skill sets that I had learned in the private sector let me see if I could let me see if I could move this forward so you know the first thing you know first things first from from the um uh you know what we learned from from public Outreach is you know people wanted to see housing or they wanted to see uh um or or you know it was too big for a museum but housing Museum or artists so um we we went forward and and changed the zoning and we did a zoning overlay so I had to make a presentation I had to make a presentation to town meeting and you know go on Public Access TV and just sort of explain explain the process so very successful we got that past you know zoning 2/3 majority was an overwhelming majority may have been unanimous that was the easy part the next part is um um How do you how do you sell this Behemoth of a building so um so what I had done is sort of you know for some reason you know we hadn't been uh too successful in the past doing rfps uh for the town of Sandwich and I think they sort of went the more the more traditional Municipal routes I had a conversation with the assistant Town manager at the time and they said oh we just put it in the Boston Globe and you know Cape Cod Times I said you know this is a building I mean we we should have a better outreach program so I called around I started calling around uh to see who sold school buildings you know who Who had who had that experience in the past and I had a great conversation um with you know with a fellow planner in the town of gron Connecticut and you know they had sold so he gave me some ideas so I used those I used those ideas so we did a we you know I laid out a marketing scheme and as a you know as a result of that marketing scheme we got two two very good rfps back um so you know you know and the successful uh RFP was for uh 40b project for um affordable housing you know now the collaboration really starts because you know you hear a 40b project people start getting nervous so you know start doing the public Outreach uh you know what kind of project is this going to be how is it going to affect the wing school this was a Beloved School I mean they had you well I was was going through the records to to set it up people used to send out postcards of their school I mean who does that that's crazy you know so so so so what we did was we had to put a restriction on on the older portion uh of the school to make sure people were happy uh with what was going to happen um with the uh with with the school and then you know as as 40 B's go um you know it did Outreach and we successful work with the developer close collaborate with the developer but but as you know you know there are other departments that you have to bring in so you make sure it all it all works together I had to bring in historic I had to bring in the engineering department I had to bring in the fire department just to make sure that that everything that was being proposed you know fits um uh fits in uh with with the with the town of Sandwich so you know it was um it was a long process it started in 2020 and we finally closed uh on conveyed the property to the developers this this past June but we didn't even get to the you know I I haven't even explained we got to the comprehensive permit uh part so again more public Outreach and and I was really happy when it went to the comprehensive permit the only you know the public came no one spoke out against the project everybody from the public spoke in favor of the project because they were informed that made sure that you know they were informed that they knew what was going on there was nothing to be you know there was nothing to be a afraid of you know then the next step is you know the financing the financing of the uh project so it was a it is uh a $52 million project so I work you know work with the developer they asked us uh um you you know to help them out to provide letters of support to reach out um so they received uh low Inc housing tax credits uh for they just received that um in in November so so as then we go on and then even you know the closing of it so the closing of it I don't include you know get in touch with uh the um you know Town Council with with the banks and and you know work with engineering you know some of the simple things that you that you don't think about uh you know what is the new address what is what's the new address going to be so we had to you know work and develop a new address and we had to go through uh the anr process to sub to subdivide out the land um and even to this day um actually uh yesterday I uh you know I was again working with the developer because I get so many calls in my office so many people are happy about this project they want to uh they want to be involved in it they want to you know they want to rent a unit in there so again worked you know worked with you know worked with the developer I said listen we have you have to have a web page you have to have something where people can go to so they could get more information on Boom they set up a web page you know I've been the point person giving it out uh giving it out to people and um you know just like two days ago this woman calls me up oh I I went on the web I haven't heard I haven't heard anything yet so I said okay you know and that's what I want to know that's what I I want to hear I want you know I've that an open door policy you know um with the people you know of the town of Sandwich they know they could reach out to me and so what I did is I reached out to the developer I said listen we're not getting you know people are starting to complain they're not getting any responses he was on it he was you know he reached out to to the management company and he goes okay we're going to have responses for everybody if if you put it in you're going to get a response in in 48 hours and I think you know and I and I think uh and if I could go back uh to to you know how I deal with the public I have that open door policy people you know you know people in the town knew me they knew me as their local Banker they knew uh they knew me as their selectman and now they know me as their Town planner and they knew you know I you know I've I uh developed a reputation you know of integrity and people could call me and and you know I will always give you an answer I may not give you an answer right away but I'll be honest I'll say listen I don't know um I will call you back in like 48 hours to either tell you what the answer is or to tell you I'm going to need some more time and that woman oops I'm sorry and the woman who called me up I said I I I didn't have an answer for her I said call me Friday so I'm expecting to speak to her in like two days to tell her to tell her the result uh of of what we did okay BR we're gonna move on to the next question sure the uh let's talk about your uh experience with budgeting yeah uh what's can you explain your uh understanding municipal finan and uh preparation of a town budget yeah um you know you know as I stated I have my certificate in in uh Municipal Finance from uh from MMA uh but also I have an understanding of the budget you know I participated in the budget uh as a selectman six years uh as a selectman and then also I have a um you know uh a a departmental budget which which flows into the larger budget but but we're you know the good thing about uh the way we do it in sandwiches and and I hope to to incorporate that in um in Dion is that you know each department gets to know what the whole budget is we get to know you know what it is we get to know uh if there's a shortfall if there's a plus what we expect free cash is what's going into opep what's going into the rainy day fund um so uh you know I have a good a very good understanding of that and also I have you know uh a financial Acumen you know based on my work at the bank you know um and and also being in charge of a $75 million budget when I was at uh when I was at Parade Magazine um you know uh it wasn't exactly Municipal budget but but there were expectations on that budget and they had Ser you know if I didn't meet certain numbers there were serious tax implications that uh you know that the company that the company faced um you know so much saw at at at one point um um I had developed a a spreadsheet uh an inventory spreadsheet which correlated with the budget to to uh to make sure that we met um that we met our our year end our year end numbers what was your budget in Sandwich our budget the town's budget $105 million do you know what Dayan is uh 2 27 yeah 28 yeah big difference a big difference a big difference and that's and honestly that's you know one of the things I I I looked at you know I think U it's a you know it's a number uh that I could be comfortable with but it's a number it has challenges you know the town of dayon as you well know you know has some challenges how do we meet that number one of the big challenges um you have is um uh you had had was you know you had an expectation for your um uh your Regional School District right right was about normally $850,000 all of a sudden you get a bill for like $1.2 million you know so you know so again um um understanding the budget also and I'm going to go back again to relationship building having a relationship building with the with the superintendent sort of sort of get a jump on it what is you know what is that going to be you know what is what's what's the number going to be you know don't you know don't spring you know don't spring it on us in like January March you know let me you know let me know what what's happening so so you could project and you could plan okay so you but you feel comfortable with the the basics of the municipal budget in terms of compliance with proposition two and a half understanding how free cash is generated and oh and the sh oh yeah AB you know absolutely and um and the budget calendar in terms of yeah no uh you know absolutely so you know there's right so there's a basic there's a basic Rhythm a basic Rhythm to you know to the budget and leading up to it and and I tell you I'm I'm really happy to see that the town of uh uh dyon really cified um like a financial team you know with the Town Administrator the accountant and uh Treasurer town clerk I mean it's it's it's really good to see that you know that that that team is that that team is in place uh but yeah no understand uh free cash um and and and the responsibilities of the budget I listen I know how to read a cherry sheet and you know what's coming in and you know Reven and expenditure so so uh I've been there the uh you know the use of U you have a philosophy or you know opinion on the use of uh fiscal forecasting to uh U multi-year fiscal forecasting yeah oh no that's um I I think that's a um uh a a a very good uh uh practice to get into um you know because I you know when I was uh looking it's good to have a five-year right fiveyear plan so you have to look at you know for fiscal forecasting you know what's the fiveyear plan what's a big what's a big part of that Five-Year Plan you know what do you you know what do you want to put in what do you want your reserve what do you want your reserves to be what do you want um to put into opep you know what your Capital what are your Capital expenses going to be you know um that's really important to have your fiveyear plan on that in addition to that it's good to have um to have a long range plan a fiveyear long range plan and it's good to write that down and it's good um you know in in in the town of Sandwich we have that in the annual warrant and and what it does it it sort of sets up expectations you know the the the select and development in coordination with the with the town uh with the town manager but it's good to know what's coming up and and and you know being a planner right you want you want to make sure you you you plan uh you plan for those for those events um you know um it's it's also good you know you have the town clerk why do you have the town clerk involved in these things so you know sometimes population means a lot what is the population going to be you know do you you know you have an aging population you have a declining uh uh student enrollment population you know know you know you have to look at the ambulance fund you have to look at you know what you know you make some projections on on on what your uh what your contributions uh to to the school committee um to the school district will be so um you know and you know then you kind of look at you know what you know make make forecasting you have to forecast and you have to look across the landscape of the employees of the town of Titan you know where are you at what's the average of the employees are you going to get you know are you going to have a lot of retirements in the next five years do you have to bring on new people so all that all that contributes to to budget forecasting okay great thank you uh grant writing what's been your experience with grant writing yeah i' I've had some uh successful grants writing grants administering grants the biggest Grant uh that I had done was really early in the career Mass Works Grant in in association uh with the 40b project it was $1.5 Million uh and that was for um roadway for roadway improvements uh you know outside of that written grants um uh you know a lot of Grants I written in my in my role as uh the director of planning was to get you know uh funding to do the housing production plan do the local comprehensive plan and I'm you know and we're talking about grants of $100,000 $50,000 you know in in in in that area so so um you know you have to look you have to see uh you know what's what's available out there how do you find out what's available you um you know something uh I stole your question I apologize yeah that's good well well the uh the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a great resource um and and you know how I would find out about the things I don't know I have a good I have a um a good network of individuals that um you know that I can rely on I you like I obviously have a good relationship with the town manager of sandwich have a good relationship with Rockland and middleb and I could lean on those individuals you know whenever uh whenever I need to to say Hey listen do you know of any grant opportunities that I don't know about sure okay good quick question about grants did you write those personally that the ones that you said that oh yes okay oh yeah and and I don't want to make it seem like so special but sometimes those grand so you know they ask you do you know do ABC D so you know if you follow it um you know a lot of times you know these if you hit right if you hit the criteria especially you know the com they want you know they want you to take advantage of the grants um um so you know I you know there was someone at at at at Mass works you know um she had moved on but you know you develop that relationship you know you know I had another Grant we I was trying to do a grant for the for the wing school but but the thing is we couldn't because it was a private entity uh the town couldn't do it so I put you know I put the uh the developer in touch with with the individual at at at at mass at Mass works and and they I didn't you know I didn't write the grant but they got the grant but I knew where to go and who to put people in touch with and and had to move that forward um you are I think your your example of collaboration was you know gave us a sense of your experience with project management uh and you are mcpo that is correct yep MC yep MC mcppo and twice now so I get i i i reup so as of January 2024 so it's I have another another three years on that so great if I don't forget the the uh you know one of our other questions and and you know your background is is such that I think we probably have a pretty good sense it it correct that one of my questions here was about uh Economic Development grants including Mass work so you you've already sort of addressed that for us um the have you been successful in um in Sandwich of bringing new businesses in and how do you balance that with the the other part of you know development is the um the community character aspect of how do you get the right developments uh how have you been able to do that in in Sandwich yeah um you know um I have uh you know when I when I was a business development officer for for the bank I was a member of the Chamber of Commerce and I I maintain that relationship with with the Chamber of Commerce so so a lot of times you know sandwich had the uh you know had a reputation of being business unfriendly so we you know uh you know I went out out I went out to the chamber to make sure people understood that the permitting process was not was not hard um you know case in point uh you know co co you know took a took a toll took a toll on a lot of restaurants but you know when the uh when the state allowed us to to um expand outside dining you know I was you know part of the team you know because there was some zoning issues to expand to expand um to expand outside Zone uh outside seating um you know most most places lost restaurants during covid you know we were um we were out there we were trying to be positive and we were up plus two uh plus two restaurants uh you know one of the big one of the big things that we brought in uh was um Treehouse Brewery so uh you know that's a a big economic uh driver in in the in the town of Sandwich uh you know they were looking for a place they wanted um a like a beach uh a uh a beach restaurant and you know there was one uh available and we work with them we work with zoning uh to develop parking and um you know it's a very popular place uh but but we have to balance right it's it's it's in it's in a it's in a Beach Community so we want we make sure we balance you know the crowds that come to Treehouse parking with the people who live there uh live there year round so we developed you know a um a a a good balance we have a relationship you know with the manager at treehouse uh if it gets a little too crowded you know make sure people move it uh mov it along we you know we developed a shuttle bus uh you know we told them that they had developed a shuttle bus so so doesn't you know adversely impact the people uh the people who live there okay great moving on to another matter uh another topic if you will uh that's U part of this nuts and bolts of town Administration uh personnel management and I was very pleased to hear you talk about uh succession planning he's thinking that through in the budgeting process uh and you you've indicated that you''ve uh uh managed a number of direct reports when you were at the bank and you have a number of direct reports now um so you know you you've had the opportunity to hire people and uh discipline people yes okay yeah uh so yeah uh um you don't have to give us names no no no um it was um uh you know more you know uh I'm I'm very fortunate where I I have three direct reports uh in the town of Sandwich and uh I hired two of them so um you know if I had disciplin you know that's on me but and and the third person was there she was there for a short time so so um and when when when I got the job they are you know they are excellent they are excellent workers um you know at the bank sometimes you know we had uh um uh quoters that that we had to meet so so as you know as a manager uh I always I never waited for someone's annual review to drop the hammer you know that's unfair it's un you know it's un it's unfair to that individual you know you as you go along you watch people you know um you know if they're struggling you know if they need help you want to give people the opportunity to um to reach their goals and reach their full potential in the job and then you know and then you know if the time comes where they're not and you bring bring them in to have a conversation it's not a surprise and they may come to the realization that maybe this job isn't was not uh was not for them you know and and it was you know kind of funny I had you know I had have fired one person and the funny thing about it is that you know nobody wanted to write the memo this guy wasn't my you know he wasn't my direct report but you know they gave me the information I wrote a memo I wrote a memo to him and they said okay now Ralph you have to fire this person I said I said okay you know so so it was hard but he understood um um you know what you know what was coming and it's difficult conversation and you you have to be forward and and upfront and and and honest with people and you got to be honest with people in in you know the Bad and the good you want to be honest with people say listen you have potential you know um you know if you do maybe if you do X we could get you to the next step are you willing to do that so um so you have to be able to recognize that as well it's you know and you have to be able to say all right maybe you're not there yet but why don't you try why you know so so it's it's a that is the hardest part of any job is managing people because it's managing right expectations managing relationships okay have you had any experience with collective bargaining uh very uh very limited and and the um the only really experience I had was at the very later stage of my job uh my role in the police department I was a a rep so I was at the right the initial stages of of actually being at the table um I understand Collective um I understand um collective bargaining um and just general negotiation you know negotiations in general because I you know I had to negotiate paper pricing you right so you know the things you know the the important thing about any negotiation is right you have to listen and you have to be open and you know both sides have to be you know trusting that you're you're there for you know for the same reason but you know and everybody has to understand what the ground rules are and if somebody breaks those ground rules you know you don't walk away from the negotiation you you you take you know you take a breath and you reset and then you start from the beginning let's talk a little bit about um sort of coming back to some of the relationship uh stuff again um the um town of dayon like every Community is is um you know dealing with the issue of um how to get information out to their residents uh how to build public trust how to ensure that people you know feel that they are dealing with a a government that uh is interested in what they um uh you know what they is happening in in the community um you you've given us some good examples of uh how you brought people into the process with the wing school um so but I'm interested in how you would build your relationships with the citizens um you know you'd be the person coming in and there'd be all these people here in Dien how would the people of dayon get to know Ralph attac yeah I I mean you know obviously the first the first you know usually what do you do the first what do you do the first 100 days right you go out you go out into the community and you go out to uh you know where people are you know I would I would even you know propose you know the good thing is you know where where you know town hall is closed on Fridays but you know maybe set up a coffee somewhere and I'd be happy you know to come in and and and and and and Avail myself you know because you kind of free of right the constraints of being in the office on a Friday so it' be good to you know like to sit down and and just be available for people to come in and talk to you and then we had this one great idea somebody brought it up when we were going through our our our LCP process and they said and we're kind of in in the work now in in in in instituting in Sandwich is like you know have an ambassador program and you know what does that mean you know I know there's about five people um um who come to every SEL it seems that about five people come to every selectman's meeting so use those you know use those people use those people to you know to to to to be the ambassadors you know not to you know not to uh uh um like you know plug a program or anything but Hey listen on this is happening on such and such a date you know all you have to do is tell five people and and commit those ambassadors to tell um you know another PE in another five people because you know it's there's nothing more discouraging in in municipal government when you if you have a town right you have a town meeting or you have you know you you go through you get your presentation ready and you're doing it and you know 10 people show up you know you're expecting you know you're expecting a lot more but you know why you know why don't they show up it's maybe they don't know about it you know maybe um maybe the time is wrong and it's good to have um it's good to have uh that ambassador program place to sort of start tweaking that if I could go back to the LCP uh um the LCP local comprehensive plan the the the the process to get that done um you know we did a public Outreach we did um we did online surveys and then um you know because it was right after covid you know October 21 you know we started doing public Outreach and to make sure we got as as many people as we could we held meetings on on Wednesday night and Saturday mornings so we had so we had uh um five categories we had two meetings for each category so I wanted to make sure this you know it's was it's an important plan people really should contribute to it so I you know I wanted to make sure that um if you want it to be face Toof face I would give everybody as much opportunity as they can you know whether you know they're working come on Saturday Child Care issues or or whatever so you know I want to make it as as open and as transparent as possible last relationship last question uh for me uh you've been a selectman uh so um uh and now you're looking to be a a Town Administrator um what would you how would you describe the relationship that you will have with the board of selectman here in dayon if you were appointed Town Administrator what would that relationship look like yeah I mean the uh I would say the the administrator and myself as an administrator would you know would carry out you know the policies and objectives set by the select by the select board you know um you um as elected officials you're out there you hear what the people want uh you know you know you bring it back you bring it back to the professional staff how do we create a policy uh that makes this happen I mean um my you know you know my my town manager you know calls the selectman there is bosses and that's how I would you know that's how would I would I would look at it the same way because that's um you know no one you know you know no one you don't get elected to the job of of of Town Administrator right you you get selected but you um you have to be out there in the community you know you're the ones who go in the grocery store you drop your kids off at school you know you you know and you hear it um and and as a result you have to you know take that back and and let's work together let's you know make sure we have you know policy that works a budget that works um you know anything um you know that you're that you're looking to do that that works to help advance advance titon okay um great I think that's all I have for questions for you do you have anything to call no I don't um you mentioned an open door policy and um are you the type of manager that when somebody comes in and wants to see you you drop what you're doing to talk to them if it be a resident or somebody from the town person uh staff I I I'm I'm going to say for the most part it depends what I'm doing and and you know if and you know I have you know I have that situation now and you know someone comes in and I'll say listen and you have to be respectful and let people know I I have this going on right now can we set an appointment I said be happy to talk to you and we could set an appointment so that works that I I never had that not work so um it's it's kind of funny uh uh sometimes when you know uh a lot of times where I have um you know if I'm at I'm at the desk at uh in Sandwich like three people come in at once nobody has an appointment and I'll say okay you know obviously this is what's going on um you know um Can can we set you know for another day how complicated I like to ask this how complicated is your question oh not complicated and when they I said that's complicated I said and I can't give you an answer uh a complete and full answer you if you you got to give me some background information for so it's it's not right so it's fair to you and it's fair and it's fair to me you have a um unique not unique I'm sorry um an experienced department heads and we have some that aren't so experienced it's a lot of different personalities yeah and you also have three select members who have have different personalities uh they're not going to always agree you're not going to always agree with them how do you go about developing your relationship with those department heads and how do you go about dealing with the three Selectmen who have three different opinions two questions there right yeah um you know that's that's probably the most difficult question of of the night because I I you know it's just I find relationship building intuitive you know um just having I've you know as you could well imagine i' I've dealt with very difficult people in in in the career in in the careers I've had but um but you know something the real basis of it is listening you know listening to to someone's concerns and and and where you know where are they coming from and and and what you know what that personality is I I can tell you this you know we had um I have an actual example you know I'm on the glown Cultural District in the town of Sandwich and I'm like the the the the uh Municipal rep and you know the person the the chair of it wants to do this project like you know light trees up and and I'm saying okay you know that's a that's a you know know a great idea but this costs money I said what you know what's the plan and she came to my office like intent that I was looking to squash this plan and then it kind of went it went like this she goes um I love the project I love the project I love the project and I was saying you got to give me a plan you got to give me a plan you got to give me a plan what she was hearing and I had to realize that she was hearing that I don't love the project a and and you know I had to take a step back and then you know you kind of learn this right you learned this in investigation school and you learn it in sales school and you and and you learn it like you start you know once you start you have to start mirroring the person to start understanding their perspective and once I said I said I said hold on a second I said I love the project I said I love it and to make sure continues we we need to get a plan in place so when we're asked by the selectman why are you spending this amount of money to do this you have you could spell it out to them and then you know but when you spell it out to them because what's going to happen you know the Selectmen are going to go out and they say why are you you know why are you spending money putting lights in trees and they could say well this is the plan and once she realized that you know we were on the same page you know that I loved it I changed my vocabulary so she could hear me and and once that happened you know within three days I got you know I got a plan we move forward we got lights in the trees so I mean that's that's how you do it all right thank you uh excellent job thank you for coming in this evening yeah thank you um do you have any questions for us um just um two questions they may or may not they may or may not be quick um where do you see Dian in the in the next five years you know where do you how do you the Selectmen see it and the towns folksy it and are is it parallel uh I don't know if it's parallel the uh logistic wise we have about 400 foret Lots left uh so it's going to be Li lied to how many more residents we can grow to right can I just put is are those connected to the Sewer or the title five do variety I I I don't know most of them are probably not connected to the sewer and the water uh my guess would be that so we're going to max out uh what that number is going to be nine 10,000 tops I don't even see it getting that high uh as far as business coming into town again we're Limited spacewise uh as well as it's a Transit Dian is a pass through uh would not a destination for a lot of people so um as far as growth residential in business will be will be slow uh financially we have as you mentioned the debt exclusion coming up uh this week and as well as the November election and uh that will determine pretty much how we're going to be financially for the next 5 years because if it doesn't pass there will be uh a little bit of pain yeah a little bit of pain and if it does pass there'll be pain with um with people paying out of their pockets yeah so as far as anything else uh we we I see our school system is getting better yeah it already is the the department heads are strong there's a couple of new ones that are are still a little weak but they're coming along it would be your job as a as a Town Administrator to help develop those with your day-to-day activities so it's it's a community that it's going to be a bedroom community of like it is it's a suburb of Boston right now right one time it was quiny then it became brain tree and now it's Dian and rovi and seok and Berkeley and I continue I I see that continuing okay and then and you and just quickly you you you spoke to it you know the professionalism of the staff came took a little bit um you know and you know that's what I've seen I was very impressed with our conversation yesterday but what is the um is is that how would you define the culture here in in in dyon the department heads um as far as Department uh heads go they are all very passionate and as well as the employees that that work with the department heads the so sticking with with that for a second before I get into the residence they work very hard uh the some of them are exceptional they each have weaknesses like we all do and uh whether it be budgeting or um uh management style or whatever but they've all made Leaps and Bounds over the years that they've been here and you have a lot of employees that have been here for a long time so it goes to show you that it's to some it's just not a career or a job it's it's it's a career right as far as the residents go very passionate as well uh they have opinions they like those opinions to be heard and they like to get results from from their their questions uh not not so much just questions but if they have concerns they they want them addressed right okay good um and and you know just um I think that's for uh it for questions but I just want to point that and and I hope in our in our conversations that it came across that you know I I do believe I have the skills and the temperament and the experience you know to help to help this board lead lead D I think you can thank you okay I I think a couple of our residents might have a couple of questions for you and uh thank you for your time oh thank you uh Mr Lynch do you have anything else no I was just going to say thank you Ralph and if people have any question on the way out you can mingle a bit and okay I'll get up Mark we have to continue with our meeting do you have more business uh just coule things my my last point then is uh for any of you uh on the board that want to talk before your meeting on Monday just feel free to email me or give me a call and uh set time and we'll talk about the candidates absolutely thank you thanks for your time thank you great job Peter thank you uh Mike uh Mark we have the approval of the warrants next please okay I'd like to make a motion to uh approve the warrants paid through August 29 2024 9 a-25 in the amount of $139,600 d25 in the amount of $155,700 paid by September 5th 24 10 a-25 in the amount of $118,500 10 B-25 in the amount of $ 32,40 and warrants paid by September 12 24 11 a-25 in the amount of 9,148 and lastly 11 B-25 and the amount of $2,278 129 I'll second that motion made seconded any discussion all those in favor I I okay uh public input any more anybody out there that on on zo that wants to be heard okay hearing none uh minutes I'll make a motion to approve the board of selectman regular meeting minutes of August 21st 2024 I'll second that motion made in second any discussion all those in favor I I I'll make a motion that we adjourn okay than you oh I'm sorry Mark uh motion May second any discussion all those in favor I I thank you thank you