##VIDEO ID:XTH_dHodfJU## [Music] all right 6 so we can bring this meeting to order just to uh remind everyone that this is being recorded by uh our local um cable TV area 58 so uh the only thing on our agenda tonight is uh the uh uh meetings with potential Town Council and we have a meeting uh here with Clifford and Kenny um so uh I think the best way to start would be to ask you folks to uh tell us a little bit about yourself and why you want to be Town Council for Halifax sure thank you very much um my name is John Clifford with me is my partner Jamie Kenny and Chris Kenny one of our Associates um we are a Southshore firm um my background was I was a Town Administrator for 13 years um 5 years in East Bridgewater and 8 years in Marshfield in 2007 I started the firm as a so practitioner um and we had I had don't know why it was we it was just me at the time I had five clients um in 2013 I went into a partnership with Jamie um I knew Jamie Jamie was a union attorney um who had really extensive litigation experience um and the thing the reason that we went into partnership right away is because we really had a shared vision of of what good Municipal Council service should look like um right now we have we're representing doing work regularly in in 30 cities and towns um we have six Associates in addition to Jamie and myself as as part as five other Associates in addition to Chris um we've been very careful very selective in how we grow um we are only Town Council in East Bridgewater in rock we very rarely bid to become Town Council we're labor councel that's really the bulk of our business um and we're selective in taking Town Council opportunities because candidly some of the Town Council firms that we work with get completely overb and completely stressed every the spring that's when you folks are at your bus and we never wanted to bid on Town Council services in a put ourselves in a position where we weren't taking care of new clients the way we should or we weren't taking care of existing clients the way we should so the labor Council work is generally much more spread out so it's much easier to manage um one of the challenges with taking on Town Council work is because you have to know a little bit or a fair amount about so many different subjects and that was one of the reasons that we were reluctant to take on New Towns as Town Council because we really wanted to develop the bench um Chris has been doing general counsel work in rock on Dan East Bridgewater now for many years Chris does all the land use work in East Bridgewater and we've also got other associates who have really come up to speed on some of the general Town Council issues but it was really a question of just developing the band with the capacity to take on General Town Council um the reason we went into partnership because Jamie and I did share a vision I mean there were a few things that we um really well as a Town Administrator you know can relate to what people in Cody's line of work deal with I felt like when you called attorneys either a they didn't get back to you quickly enough or B they gave you non answers that I found very frustrating when you call your Town Council or your labor Council what you're looking for is you know tell me what I should do work with me come up with a plan that we can Implement that will solve the issue um the thing I'll saying Jamie's going to speak to the Phil ophy in a little bit more detail the thing is in our clients whether they're labor or general Town Council we minimize litigation all right litigation is what drives your budget we can't prevent people from suing you folks all right but what we can do is really minimize the avoidable litigation and give you good advice UPF front work with your department heads to develop best practices and then that cuts weight down on the litigation and that's really and that's the experience that our other clients have found yeah and I will say this first of all we are a social firm as John said and we pride oursel on doing great work um in this area we represent almost a majority of the Plymouth County Towns at this point um for labor and as John said we're often asked in many of the towns that we are labor Council to do Town Council work and we've always taken this really very um limited approach to that because number one we wanted to make sure that we had the capacity to do it but also number two because we're just selective in general even with our labor Council work we're not looking for work and then that also goes to our philosophy with respect to our overall strategy we're not grinding cases we're not out there trying to make more billable work that is not how we approach things at all and that's really important for us what I saw on the union side of the table over and over and over again was a lack of understanding basic understanding about industrial relations Labor Relations 150e which is the statutory obligations um for public employees and then 151b which is the Discrimination harassment um pieces and we've prided ourselves on really having this approach to be of service and to train and Empower your leaders and be of service to all of you and be of service to them and get them to the point where they feel really comfortable and confident when they are dealing with any employee matters and support your support staff your Chiefs your you know police chief your fire chief your department heads Cody all of you in a way that really makes sense and is very proactive in terms of strategy so that you'll have those tools and talking points to when you're in the grocery store and someone comes up to you and they want to complain about working conditions in the town for example or they have some you know personal gripe at work how to redirect that conversation back to the agreed upon practices to get dispute resolution so how to help you all to understand your roles as select board members and help them understand their roles as union members because the majority of your employees are union employees so that's really the strategy I go to the table all the time when I was a union attorney I was a chief negotiator at 25 years old um and I would often find there would be a complaint at the table and I would be like that is a management problem that is not a union problem so I really wanted to make a difference and really help train the next generation of great leaders and enhance the leaders that we have in the municipal sector to really understand and know a lot of the basic concepts so that they're confident and comfortable and making those decisions um as John said Chris does the land use he's been with us now obviously since almost immediately after we partnered with which is coming up on 12 12 years very soon um but we are always new Council so we're we're we compete against firms that are over a hundred years old often times and we are always the New Kids on the Block right so we are going to have I know this is a transition time for you all we're going to support you in the way that makes sense for you and makes sense for us if you choose us to make sure that we have that smooth transition because we're always we're always new very rarely are we coming in um to some to to a brand new organization we are with the regional dispatches that we represent because they're new entities but every other time we're kind of taking on some of the existing practices or what's already been done by other prior town councils so um we've done it 32 times and will be able to hopefully work with your team to make sure that you have a seamless transition if that's one of your concerns Chris want to talk sure um so Chris Kenny Cliff Kenny I think is mentioned I've been with with the firm for over 10 years doing Town Council work for East bridgew water in Rockland and we also assist some of our other towns here and there that we have for employment law sometimes they reach out and ask for addition you know Town Council Service as well um prior to working the firm I was associate general counsel for the norfol county sheriff's office and I was also uh I live in Marshfield I was also on the Marshfield Conservation Commission um so I personally do a lot of the uh Town Council work and work directly with with the town administrators uh in East Bridgewater Charlie seig and uh in Rockland Douglas lap and obviously with all the town departments um we assist with everyday issues including but not includ including but not limited to PE curement contract review public records requests and appeals open meeting law issues Andor complaints zoning appeals in land court and Superior Court as well as appeals of other board decisions Street acceptances propos General and Zoning bylaw amendments any type of hearing and or litigation obviously also Town meetings um I think it might have been mentioned but we we do offer trainings as well um one of the um one of the big things we do is open meeting law and public records trainings we also off offer other trainings um but for everyone and I think that's especially important for a lot of these boards that you you get so many boards that are volunteer boards you have people you know you always I don't when I was in con conservation commissioner Marshville we could never you know we never had a full board ever it was just you know it's a volunteer board you know we had a lot of turnover um and you have constantly have new people coming in and out and you know most of them don't know the open meeting LW they don't know the public you know they don't know every one of their emails is a public record whether it's on their Town email or a person email if you're talking town business it's public record you got to turn that over you know if there's a request so um we do um that's you know especially for those type of you know I think it's important for obviously the whole town but especially for those types of boards I think it can be really helpful because a lot of times these people come in and go oh wow you know I didn't know that uh just to make them aware of of uh to make sure they're complying with the law um our approach is we're basically we're there for the town and various boards and departments whenever you need us and whatever you need us for um of course we're proactive with advisories and updates in the law and the trainings but I think as mentioned before we're not a firm that's going to come in and build a bunch of unnecessary hours for work that's you know some boards or departments can handle on their own um and I think this has been mentioned as well in terms of our availability even in non-emergencies we're always available our firms was mentioned we have eight attorneys so even if you know one even if some of us are out of the office or on vacation There's Always Somewhere someone at the office that can assist you and we're always OB obviously all always reachable via cell phone um in terms of some of the work we've done in the past with some of our clients um we've dealt with some very complicated land use and infrastructure issues in the past as well as currently just a few examples I'm not sure if you're all familiar with the Hansen land in East Bridgewater which was an old map from the 1880s it was over 100 acres of land and it was about 2,000 individuals tring Lots in East Bridgewater that um a long time we're collecting minimal of any property taxes and had been a problem for a great number of years the town later was sued via an adverse possession claim for majority of the land but we end up settling that matter and auctioning off the majority of that land which resulted in the town receiv receiving millions of dollars not only from the auction but from the eventual development and property taxes from the land that was sold by the town at auction um another current complicated uh ongoing project in East Bridge Waters is uh development of a sewer line for sewer capacity for to a portion of the town I just finalized all the easements and land Acquisitions needed to gain access for a landlock town parcel and also to put the sewer line in which would provide Sewer Service to the north section of town uh and provide potential commercial development and revenue for taxation for the town as well currently East Bridgewater just brought uh received a 40b application and um we've started the public hearings with that and of course assisting the zba and the town with the 40b process which as I'm sure you know is can be a very tedious and long process uh in Rockland we're dealing with a very Rockland has a large sewer system but it's an aging older much older system currently assisting them needs major renovation and reh Rehabilitation um we've been working with the town and EPA to stay in compliance with their sewage treatment permit and try to reduce their inflow and infiltration um and finally I think I mentioned this before about street acceptances I'm not sure if you've had issues in Halifax with old streets not being accepted as public ways but I know it's been problematic for some other towns um but when we took over Town Council in East Bridgewater the town had a large number of older streets and subdivisions that had basically stalled and the streets were never accepted in public ways these older streets began to fall into disarray and need significant repairs and the the residents were com into town hall like are my there's holes in my street and the town you know um and of course not being accepted as public ways they're still technically private ways and you know the only thing the town can do is do the temporary Band-Aids under some of the statutes you can accept to do the temporary Band-Aids but you can't redo the whole street so what we did we worked with the town and we drafted special legislation for the town which was passed by by the leg legislature which allow the town to accept streets from a recorded subdivision and Via town meeting just it get them accepted as a public way and uh we could use the old subdivision plan without having to get a whole new um rad as buil engineering plans which basically save the town hundreds of thousands of dollars um if you know without that special legislation um we have a really good relationship with East Bridgewater and Rockland select boards and the town administrators and certainly encourage you to reach out to uh to them about us if you haven't done so and we can certainly answer any questions that you all have yeah I mean that's the thing we always encourage our clients to talk to other folks who use us because we are different I I've said that since we started the firm we approach things differently in terms of how we try to be of service to our clients and really train and provide Clarity and guidance and take strategic approaches to a lot of these issues that you face as a municipality um so we always say please call our other clients we don't do any advertising our firm has grown literally just by Word of Mouth um and you know I think we've picked up two or three towns just already this year um so you know we are a growing firm and um you know we think you guys would be a good fit for us and we would like to be a good fit for you you know we really we're not going to give a long presentation we really this is really wrapping up we' we'd like to hear from you folks what you think think we need but I did want to follow up Chris talked about the Hansen Land Company and that's the property that was across the street from the r golf course and all the undeveloped land out behind that convenience store in the corner of Route 27 and it would go all the way up Central Street in East Bridgewater that was so many acres of good solid Upland that could not be developed and a number of firms worked on that over the course of decades and couldn't untangle what was really a pretty complicated mess and you know the bulk of the work was done by Chris a lot of the people the assessor in East Bridgewater but you know that was a real problem the town couldn't solve and if you drive by there now you see residential development going up Central Street you see commercial development going up on on Oak Street near written near the golf course you know that's a success um in we really do pride ourselves on responsiveness Mr seelig was put in touch with me several months ago when there was some issues here in town and the approach that that I think we used was sitting down with you and your team talking about what of the issues coming up with sound practical guidance to get you through the challenges to fix things and that's really what we like to do we take great pride in that so happy to answer any team is a team of one no we had some good help we were okay well I just curious um as far as being present in your communities how often are you in your communities as opposed to we're in a zoom world now how what's your percentage would you say to zoom in in person uh and and are those visits I mean we'd love to see our Council all the time but you know you have that feeling that the clock's running you know how are those visits handled with you guys both uh person zoom and I guess billing wise too so the good news is that because you're so close physically to our office you're not getting build for travel time as you would with other places where you're looking at 45 minutes to an hour on travel time we do like to come out and be in person when we can and it makes sense for everybody but if your legal budget is not supporting that then we can obviously pivot I personally feel with a lot of issues especially employee issues it's very important to be in the room and to be able to feel the feel the the emotions in the room potentially and really handle things face to face um but again it's going to depend on we're going to take our we're going to take our cues from you all and all as you can imagine with 32 cities and towns everybody has different approaches um but we do like to be in person to the degree that we're able because it's just much more effective you can have five Zoom meetings and half the people are on their phones they're not paying attention so really you're you're you're cutting down on travel at that time but to get get to an agreement to get to yes or to get to resolution it's that much longer a lot of the times so we prefer to be in person when it's practical when it makes sense but again we're never going to impose that on you we're going to take our cues from you all the well the the general Town Council work and it and it really you know it it it starts peaking in January and it and it doesn't tail off again until after you get through your town meeting and our experience in mainly in rock on Denise Bridge water you know candidly months will go by without them calling and saying we need you to go to a meeting that's fine all right but you know especially beginning in January they they want us there you know they're meeting with key people to talk about you know the warrant to talk about any pressing issues Chris has going has been at some meetings we're going to bring forward the W the MBTA zoning in in East Bridgewater and you know that that's when you need us but it's really driven by you but this the flat fee agreement the flat fee proposal that we have that's where this really comes in handy for Town Council so for the flat fee that we've quoted you you can call or email as much as you want and and and that means if it's a fairly simple procurement question that the Town Administrator has he picks up the phone and calls Chris David does a lot of work in our office on procurement you don't get build extra for it all right if it's a simple email question you send us an email we respond if there's something serious going on you know it and it doesn't happen that often but when there's a a crisis going on you know it's mainly Jamie and I will get calls from all the board members on a regular basis and that includes nights and weekends and you don't see charges for every phone call it's covered under the flat fee agreement but you know for the simple quick things in a lot of the Town Council stuff is that all right it's public record stuff Chris has developed a great set of templates for response to public records things which you know the public records law the legislature hasn't done us any favors with that um created a lot of Burden but we try to minimize it you know there are no public records questions that we haven't dealt with before so if one of your you know if your you know public records officer is is overwhelmed by something or the police department or whatever they call us we give them quick answer we send a template and that allows them to stay in compliance and take care of it fairly quickly we try to be really proactive though with just even the onboarding of new like like Chris said with onboarding new select board members and new committee members to make sure that they really understand their roles and responsibilities and legal obligations because again the idea is the more they know the more you can Empower them the easier it's going to be for them in their own minds to really be able to navigate some of this statutory um we have a really a very complicated statutory um scheme that we work under as a municipality and it's even more complicated when you become again Union and um and uh individual employee claims so you know no one ever calls Town Hall when things are going well no one's ever calling you and no one ever just picks up the phone and says you know what it's going great today right so we understand that you all are being pressed and challenged in a way and our job is to help support you and help support you and being able to serve the residents that's really how we see our job and I think a I think John hit on this too A lot of the Town Council work you don't you know like John said I'm not like I yeah there' be months that I don't go to East Bridgewater we have we sometimes especially we've been doing with the sewer line and other some of the other things that I you know kind of mentioned but yeah we'll do Zoom meetings if they want if they you know Charlie says or you know whoever DPW says I want you there of course I'm there but you know a lot of a lot of that kind of work can be you know you know public records or you know General stuff can be done over email over the phone and a lot of these meetings can be you know are fine you know it's a little bit different than the labor employment where you know sometimes you do want to be face to face but um but yeah a lot of that you know can be done via zoom and again we take you know our cues from from you all as to what you're you know what you feel you need us for and whether you need us to be a person or not I don't want to monopolize well I was going to ask you know based on U your prior experience when you take on a Town MH are there any difficulties you experience in taking on a Town any growing pains from you know what they're used to versus what we're seeing now any common threads there that you can elaborate on if not that's okay I'm just wondering if you see any commonalities between when you people switch over yeah hey this is how we used to do it like anything like that you want to touch on so I think it's really important and this is how we kind of try to help guide you with like any organizational or operational change we have a very low and slow approach so we understand that people don't like change and we know that as when we're getting hired we are change right so we really do try to go very low and slow in terms of gaining um trust and also confidence and we try to do that as as you know to the degree that we can through trainings through face to-face meetings through making sure that we are kind of getting out there and meeting folks and being respectful and that's the other thing too we're always going to take an approach that's trying to be respectful for what's been done but also guide you towards those best practices because there are best practices and they best practices for a reason and that's our job is to try to help align you with the best practices to cut down on your litigation and to cut down on the issues that you have to call us because we understand all of these municipalities are dealing with the same issues you're you're strapped in terms of your budget we're not Google or Amazon there's not unlimited funds for you to utilize for your operation so we're constantly having to make sure that we're meeting those challenges and to help you address those challenges but we work I always say this we play we we always play very nice in the sandbox with everybody because again we're always New Kids on the scene so every single time we're going to have to develop those relationships and really going to have to make sure that we're communicating in a way that's very respectful of what been done but to try to gain um access and come into um alignment with what the best practices are to to the degree there's ongoing litigation that's really up to you yeah if if you think it makes the most sense for your current firm to continue on a certain case that's fine and and and I'll be honest and as Jamie said you know we've we've done this a number of times we've never run into a contentious situation where there was a fight between the two firms or whatever I mean look every you know everybody wants the business everybody wants to hang on to it but at the end of the day the people that work in our field they're all Pros they understand the nature of it and the transitions aren't really painful they're not that difficult um on the client side um whatever apprehension people have is generally overcome by the fact that we really are so accessible that they can really get in touch with us and and work through their issues quickly uh just a random kind of I guess not minutia question but with your firm are you guys strictly you know I think something important to me is I would I like airm that that specializes in Municipal know do you guys have civil stuff as well or what's your what's your breakdown on that so we the majority of our work is civil litigation we do a lot of workplace um our private sector work is we do we have a lot of nonprofit organizations for labor and employment that we advise on and that we assist with and then we do do a lot of workplace investigations in our private sector but we don't have you know we're not in house counsel for um you know for any like if the majority is Municipal those not Municipal are strictly labor and employment specific got um and we're special councel in a lot of places that's how we usually a lot of the times we get hired a special counsel and then kind of you know it grows our area grows but we do have non-municipal clients okay and then just to follow up I guess um so I we we have all your cell phone numbers and so forth but our Point person would be Chris or Chris will be the point person for for the land use counil as well but one of the things that we know makes really frustrates people is not being able to get in touch with somebody when you need them um we really share information internally to a fall so that if Chris isn't available um you can you can call me Jamie's not available you can call me somebody's available to answer your question and somebody will get back to you that's the biggest thing that we I'm always like if you don't hear back from me in 24 hours you better call the police chief because something happened you know I'm like I mean to a fault I make sure that I get back to people just because I never want someone to say I couldn't get in touch with you and made this decision and I wanted to talk through it and I couldn't do that and I had to make a decision you know so we understand that this is a 24/7 operation um more than anyone I mean there are often mornings where it's like it starts at 6:00 a.m. when the DPW you know DPW starts you know heading to to the yard at 6:00 a.m. and we we get calls and emails and text messages at 6:00 a.m. and the nights as well I mean this is what we do for a living our government operations are 247 so we have to be 24/7 to a degree and you have the capacity to take us on I know you said you're selective but you have the capacity yes you're not stretching thin this is not something that we're taking a chance on capacity is well within belief so one of the questions I have to kind of follow up on that is um if you're uh Town Council now only for East Bridgewater and Rockland um why do you want to add us you're very selective are we that special or are we that easy to to uh fck or what that's well um number one you're hear in the Southshore all right um number two it was a pretty limited engagement I did work with Mr celing before and you know I I do having lived in E Bridgewater for many years we're familiar with the town but building that General Town Council capacity was a big thing internally MH um when we started um the general Town Council experience was me all right um because it can only be acquired over the course of time and now Chris has been doing it 10 years um David and our office does a lot of the public records and procurement stuff it's just work that you can only knowledge you can only acquire over a long period of time um we bring in a lot of Associates and bring them on to the labor and some of them have a background in that but there are so many different areas that you so many different questions types of questions you ask your Town Council it just takes a while to build that capacity so that's why we've been careful um we just turned down we just passed on another opportunity to bid for Town Council because candidly we thought it was going to be way too much work and again especially in the spring when everybody's taxed and we just didn't want to risk it what's like why why s now um it's you know speaking with with Mr C and and the Town Administrator it doesn't doesn't seem like there's you know you guys aren't going to want us here three nights a week every day all day it's it's a that's the the other issue for us is but we do we do manage to get into plenty of jams I'm sure you're aware of that hey everyone you're not alone why do you think they're here not so when you say you turn down opportunities there opportunities like this to appear to interview quote unquote for an opportunity that's what you're denying of course yeah we often get approached to do I mean it happens a lot and and you decl the opportunity if it's not a fit for whatever reason it's not a f yeah there's there's some bigger communities that have really major development issues that would require a lot of time and attention and we try to be really realistic about you know what can we re really handle it's easy to say let's take them on let's take everybody we can get but um you know I I I'm trying to be careful how I said say this but um well I'll I'll come right out and say this and Rockin when I started the practice in 2007 I was the interim Town Administrator there they hired me you know that's how I was making ends meet and their town meeting I was working with the town to get ready for town meeting and they had a big Municipal firm who had a partner that was assigned to them all the time and when their annual town meeting came they sent somebody else M who wasn't familiar with the town wasn't familiar with the issues and they asked me to put in a bid for Town Council so you know that's something that resonates with me we've been at Town meetings in in Rockland and East Bridgewater and even some other towns those rare occasions when they need labor councel and the firm sends somebody else they're not sending the lawyer who's been at your town meeting 10 years in a row that's an issue that's an issue so yeah so most most of what I hear is a lot of what your practice is is is labor or at least that on your end of it but on the um the general government side uh like Town somebody at town meeting um you who who which of you or how do you handle that with us it would not be me John I'll tell you that right now it would be one of these lovely gentlemen right here well the only reason I reason I say that is because again you know we end up with we end up with issues in the middle of a town meeting that can uh uh derail uh uh efficiency and so a lot of times uh we do need uh the lawyer to to say something not necessarily the correct thing frankly but at least say something to get things back on track and then we're worry about it later so Chris has been going um on the land use stuff to he Bridgewaters town meeting for a long time and he's he's he's been throughout Town meetings but um I haven't missed I've missed one town meeting in Rockland all right but I've never missed any in East Bridgewater all right because I'm their General Town counsel um you you guys are going to be well served by having chrisy a town meeting I think your town meeting is the same night as either Rock under one one of the communities seconday May East Bridgewater I think is the first and Rockland's the second and so when I say we're selective I wouldn't take a town on you know unless we we're sure that we could send somebody who's going to be you know town meeting and a lot of people I don't think appreciate it town meeting is governed a lot more by custom local custom than law mhm and having the same attorney there has tremendous value it really does and and that's really what we've brought to East Bridgewater that's what we've brought to Rockland you know that's that's what you want someone who's there all the time you know you have to understand custom you have to understand the personalities you have to understand really just how the town operates and and and I think that's really going to be critical but I'll also say this John because I think we do a lot of work in preparation for town meeting we do a lot of prep work with people to get them ready and fully confident and we you all often times can anticipate where it's going to go you know I'm I'm not a Town Council but I've been at many many Town meetings at this point in my career so I mean you can kind of we do do a lot of advanced work with people to make sure that we have a strategy and approach and we really assist with like messaging and talking points where if we know that there's going to be an issue to the degree that we can get ahead of issues and making sure that people have the right information and correct information and again to your point getting things back on track point of order Town Council will give an opinion worry about it later you know I think that is really important to be able to move things along our towns that we are Town counsel in we don't have these 10 12 Marathon nights that we do because generally we we do a lot of prep work ahead of time and and usually they're running pretty smoothly um so I think that's part of our approach as well just because you know I I have seen where you could tell that folks wen't preed just to change the subject I got one other point I wanted to make sure I asked and that is um so you mentioned on uh your your uh training of of our people one of the things that um we are trying to do is to make sure our volunteer boards are uh at least educated to a a certain competency level in their own Specialties and and generally speaking speaking the ones we're talking about would be like conservation uh zoning um that type of thing and so I know you talked about open meeting and public records that's all well and good I think we're pretty good with that although like you say new people come in they don't really understand that but I think where we really need a lot of work is is some sort of a program in those vins can you help us with that yeah absolutely you know I'm sort of firsted with the zoning act 4A and we protection act so yeah absolutely we can sit down with the boards and go over you know kind of their UH responsibilities and you know make sure they understand the law um and yeah we've certainly done that in the past with uh with some of the other boards as well and we develop specialized trainings on all different subjects so as you can imagine to your point like one of our jobs is training that's we have a lot a lot of training that we do in our office and we develop trainings in a very specific way that's supposed to be engaging and also to people to be able to hold people's attention in a training nobody just wants to look at a slide deck go up so really part of our job as trainers is to make sure that we're meeting people where they are and also being able to help help them understand the like the concepts and it's almost like learning a new subject in school where you have to sometimes spiral the approach and sometimes come back and come back around again and come back around again and so we're really strong in our trainings um we get hired to to train you know lots of different organizations lots of different um types of of issues so and we we help develop those trainings with you so if there's an area of concern or unclear that we want that you really want want to kind of put a point on we're happy to help you with that and we really want to make it engaging for people so that they don't just again they can show up to the training but whether or not they get anything out of the training is a separate question so is that um if we did the flat fee uh here is that part of that flat fee or is that something next to and when we you know when you talk about board specific training like when your planning board or your zba has you know very specific procedural questions I mean this is really I think Chris is strength you know he's not going to say it but going in and working in a very collaborative manner with the boards going in there but even more importantly we on board new members sitting down with new members look you know it's it's worth an hour or two to sit down with them and say you know here's here's how you know here's the limitations of your job we'll talk about indemnification here's here's what you do I mean you know someone said to me a long time ago a lot of people run for planning board because they weren't happy about a subdivision that went in near them so you know there's a lack of understanding coming in so we can do the onboarding but I think you know we we're always mindful the fact they're volunteers and people on these boards put in a ton of time for no compensation and not much thanks either but they can call us or email us if they have questions being able to call or email Chris and say this project coming up tonight what about that what about this aspect of it and getting an answer or having a phone call it it saves everybody that would all fall within our flat fee yes type of thing because that's an issue that uh existed for a while was uh members of various boards um deciding that they wanted to just make direct contact with with with Council right and uh of course it makes our legal budget go up off the rails so we we changed it Jonathan and I changed it and said no it all has to come through us first and so we want to control because we want to control it course but that so but I think that aspect like you say that that would be worthwhile I also what we've also tried to do or trying to do is on these volunteer boards especially uh we can't control the planning board but we can't offer them right but at least on the volunteer ones we're making it a a a uh uh requirement of their appointment that they do complete a certain amount of training to get at least and we and I think in in the beginning I'm probably do it to everybody just to get everybody on the same page then after that we probably do like if you say if there's a new appointment okay you're a new appointment even though you may know something or you may have been on or whatever you're going to talk to these folks and make sure you're up to date and we and and it's important to us as we see it now that not only does it um make the public better served uh but it also uh is a uh better serves our volunteers I mean we're right now we're kind of putting them out there so okay you're on the Conservation Commission knock yourself out right and think well what does that mean am I supposed to not allow trees to be cut down you know was it with water what are we conserving right even though that's nothing to do with it so that's the kind of thing that we really do need and it would be helpful to be able to have our Town Council uh kind of set up a program for for I can only think of those couple of regulatory boards but I'm sure there's other ones but I will say that I I I don't mean to tooot any ones our home but like places where we're not even Town Council they ask us to do the boards and committe trainings because I do think that we're so Adept at being able to train because that's such a large majority of what we do as an organization and focus on training and like I'm thinking of two or three right off the top of my head but we're not town ccil but we're doing the boards and committee trainings we're doing the open meeting La trainings we're doing all of those trainings about you know how to interact and intersect with employees and those issues that we do townwide for all Bo of me we're not even Town Council there and we do the trainings there because we're so effective at in my opinion we're so effective at training that one person goes to a training and then they want us to come back and kind of it grows from there so um I will say that we really do we do a lot of training we love to train o and that training is a good example when we say you know there's there's legal advice and then there's practical advice one of the things we do with the board and committee training is you know here's best practices for managing a meeting when does the public have the opportunity to speak when do they not have the opportunity to speak you know and and really what do you do if things get heated in a meeting um you know every time I do one of these trainings I I always joke here's the thing you never do you never call the police and have them pull somebody out never ever do that and there are people that say you can do that legally and it's like if there's a worse idea I don't know what it is but we give them practical advice like you know what if things are getting heated even among the board members let's adjourn for five minutes let's everybody go out in the hall cool off and come back in and see if we can deal with it and those deescalation techniques those are things that we train in the employment side of the house that we then bring those deescalation trainings to your board and committee trainings because that same deescalation technique that you learn with employees and with police and fire and with anyone that's dealing with high conflict situations they're the same deescalation techniques that we employ in a different way to help serve you so that's the piece where you can pivot a piece of information that might be an employment specific piece of information that actually helps everybody because understanding how to deescalate is half the battle of actually doing deescalation anybody else have any other comments questions I had one uh just walk us through your your typical prep for a town meeting for either Rockland or East Bridgewater um how how often are you meeting before that are you are you having you know training sessions with moderators you know how what's the what's the protocol they're probably different for each time but we we work with closely with the moderators most people become moderators because they have a pretty strong sense of how they think town meeting should go but we start off by we really encourage and Rockland East bridgew to do a good job of putting out a schedule ahead of time that the board endorses this is when articles are due all right this is when the budgets have to be done and all those things we want to see draft warrants as soon as possible Chris has done a lot of the warrants we flag issues all right this is going to be controversial you know have we really walked through and thought you know we're obviously reviewing it to make sure that it makes sense legally we put a lot of time and effort into the warrant explanations the artical explanations so that they're clear um and it's really just to minimize the questions the controversies that time me and you know if we also do so we'll talk to the Town Administrator It's usually the to administrator the finance people going through the specifics of the warrant um when you get close to the town meeting we'll have a meeting with the moderator to talk about you know what he or she what he expects to go what you know what we expect to be controversial what are the things that we want to bring to his attention we probably can expect questions on and we get a lot of that feedback from from the to administrator too um but it's really just going into the meeting as prepared as possible um the you know the thing I I learned in almost 30 years of this the the worst answer you can give at town meeting is I don't know so you know it's just being prepped knowing what the issues are having everything tight having all the budget issues locked down as quickly as as soon as you can um and identifying scope issues is half the battle right scope issues are half the battle at Tom meeting keeping it on track and once again like when and that's a deflection technique too right like the same thing when a conversation goes on track how to get that conversation back on Tack and within the scope of whatever the discussion should be to have a really good civil discussion even when people disagree we want to have them be respectful in communicating their disagreements and really keep it within the scope because that's half of the battle at town meeting is that it you'll start to see it turn we've all seen it right we start to see it go off the rails and being able to help guide folks back to what is the scope and what this means in terms of the vote that they're voting on and and if some if a scope issue comes up you know and we have to rule that this proposed amendment is beyond the scope we explain why we don't just give a couri answer look these people are all volunteering their time to come to so we we're always respectful of that fact okay um any other one last small and I and this I know I'm kind of throwing out here last minute and if you guys don't have an answer now and want to get back to us um if if the practice would ever consider I don't want to say allart but uh let's say we wanted to go um General counil but have Labor with another practice I mean are you guys flexible as far as What entity what role you guys would be filling for the town and again I don't want to put you on the spot there yeah absolutely not but we're I mean again if you went in a different direction for either of them we're happy to do whatever is of service to this town we're happy to work with you guys in the capacity that you want us to work with you and we're happy to assist in those ways um but I will say that you know for the Town Council work being here and being on the cell Shore and being available and accessible is very from what I can tell and again I I work in all these different towns and I hear feedback about lots of different town councils as you can imagine when you're a labor Council you're hearing about feedback from all of the firms I can say that the folks in our firm are so responsive and really do such a great job job with the Town Council work and that's because we're very selective so I I will just say that in terms of like bigger isn't always better for Town Council and I and I can from my experience that's been my my view um so and and I would call your counterparts and rock on Den e Bridgewater that's the best advice I can give you okay uh we'll give you the last word anything you want to add that we haven't talked about not asking for it but I never thought we'd fill 51 minutes I'm like thank you this is an important decision this but I think it's I think it's important that we did take as much time as we needed for follow up we appreciate your time we appreciate time it so we're uh still making up our minds and we'll we will'll certainly get back to you as soon as we do of course any other questions don't hesitate a lot so much pleasure all right don't we take a adj for 5 minute recess or until 7 o thanks guys thank you can uh come back into a public session uh we're meeting with um MTC me Talman and Costa LLC and uh so if uh if it's all right with you we just like to open the floor to you folks first tell tell us about yourselves and why you want to be Town Council in Halifax and then the board will have some questions sure so um uh Jay talerman uh Kate federov and Liz Leiden W with me um a little bit about us so we've been around doing Municipal stuff since about 2004 I was a partner at at KP law and I joined with Lisa me and another partner at the time named Mark babowski uh um to do a lot of land use work but pretty quickly we decided that to throw our hand in with uh some general Municipal stuff and we wanted to do it in a slightly different way Lisa was a former three-term mayor up in Newbury port and so she was used to having in-house city solicitor work and as a former partner at um at KP law and a town official in my own town in norfol just thought there was a better way to do it now we take you know no umbrage with the way anyone else does it where Trad but traditional legal services are call us when you have an issue and we'll answer it what we wanted to do was create a system where we were part of your team if you wanted someone who would be part of your team and find a way to do that without breaking the bank which can be sometimes difficult because if you pick up the phone a lot and call counsel then the bills go up so we developed a number of different fee proposals some of which are in your package and just our general overall approach to problem solve before real problems arise litigation is the biggest driver of Legal Services one case for a relatively small legal budget like your own could really kill you by like December MH so we try to figure out a way whether you go with an hourly package or with one of our flat fee arrangements to do some of this in a way that won't break the bank and some of that is through the flat fee work but some of it also is working with your boards train helping you train them issue spot doing the site visits doing whatever we can to get to know you and for you all to have a relationship with us so we can problems solve avoid problems in every town that we where we've used a flat fee Arrangement just everything's all in the litigation some exceptions to it but mostly everything's in where our competitor said they're going to kill you if you do this in every single one of those towns litigation has gone down demonstrably in every single one of those towns and for us personally when that happens we don't spend as much time either so we find a way to grow our firm grow our team be more productive all at the same time giving you the advice you need to do what you need to do now the the other benefit of doing something like that too is that when something happens where you really have to fight whether it's a tricky labor issue that Kate's handling a tricky contract dispute that Liz might be handling we give you the confidence and the wiggle room in your budget by doing this and taking care of this so you can fight without worried being worried again about breaking the bank so it's just kind of worked for us and as we've grown we've kind of developed other bits of expertise that come along the way but um we're now 30 something towns deep our clients seem to like it um I'll let Kate offer a few words Kate joined us a gosh now seven eight years ago something like that and is a partner with the firm yeah so I um prior to joining this firm I worked for the city of Brockton I was in-house uh counsel in the solicitor's office I was the senior assistant solicitor and I managed really um that department and in Brockton we self insured so we handle everything from someone slipping and falling to civil rights claims to negotiating Union contracts to Big imas right so and we handled that Soup To Nuts in my office um and I was very very happy there I loved working for the city of Brockton I still do work for the city of Brockton um and Jay Co cold called me and he said would you like to join our firm and I said no absolutely not I'm really happy um but I despite my um reservations met him for a cup of coffee and he told me about the firm just like he told you and the thing that was attractive to me was that in Brockton I really was part of the fabric of the city hall right so people my day would be mapped out in my mind and then inevitably at 8:35 some some would run down and say okay your day is changing right so you go up and run to a meeting or you go up and deal with an employee issue um but everyone knew to come to me I wasn't the lawyer I was Kate you know and um so when Jay described that to me about the practice it really felt very familiar and um so I did join the firm and I realized after working there for for several years that it wasn't you know just lip service that's really how it is so we forg these relationships with our clients so that we aren't the lawyers coming in and everyone's afraid of sometimes they're afraid but not always and um you know they trust you they can call you up they text me I get a text at 11 o' at night and it's like what do you think of this and I respond back because it doesn't have to be as formal as sometimes it evolves that way when you have an outside firm right so part one of the ways we try to build these relationships is through office hours where we come in and we sit with staff and we say what are you dealing with they bring you a list of issues we talk through those issues um we issue spot trying to thwart you know bad decisions which is really important also on the employment side please don't call me the day of the hearing and say by the way we're firing this person I want to know when you're starting to have problems because I'll map out for you what's the best way to either solve this problem by making the employee a better employee or solve this problem by starting documentation and starting Progressive discipline and doing all of those things so that when you do get to the end you're successful right and that applies on both the general mun side as well as the labor side so um you know with that what I what I'd say is that I think it would be really helpful for you to call our clients because despite the fact that we're growing and we're growing pretty pretty quickly um we've taken on new lawyers to you know help us with our clients but our our clients haven't suffered for that I think they've benefited from that because as we experience and we get more lawyers and we get more um collaborative input and a better product and we're not the kind of I mean a traditional Law Firm structure would be us hiring a bunch of really young people and tossing them at you and then trying to because we got a bigger Gap there it doesn't work like that so when we bring on K we bring in someone who's like TurnKey partner level we bring in someone like Liz who's got 10 years of experience doing contracts land use and other kinds of important things for this city of New Bedford so again we add when we add to the group we're adding folks that that can operate at that leadership level so you know these are huge additions for us to get someone like on day one I think Liz was handling half of our procurement and Contracting load and now our our entire cannabis practice runs through lizz's um uh office so when we when we grow we grow on up from the top and we we try and make sure that no one's Left Behind or given someone not that we don't have slightly younger Associates here and there but they're not covering your town meeting right right question speaking of town meeting what's your what's your general uh prep for town meeting how do you handle it who do you foresee being Halifax's town meeting representative uh if we were to go with MTC so um I'm the moderator in my town um one okay so I I have two um uh City gals here so you know they've learned town meeting but they both cover a a ton of town meetings so we handle that in the same kind of collaborative way that we would handle anything we want to see your warrant early we want to work with you through the year on drafting things so again examples like Liz is on top of like your cannabis if you have a cannabis bylaw or you're working on some kind of initiative there um if there's um Liz also is one of our leading folks on the new MBTA zoning so she's you know we're working constantly throughout the year now any number of us could handle your town meeting and there's always scheduling issues in the spring but what we try and do is make sure that we're choosing someone who is part of your leadership team so Kate is the primary contact that we've designated here all right ideally it would be Kate who's covering your town meeting Liz covers Town meetings too I cover Town meetings any of us that are active in your general Municipal side can cover your town meeting that's our goal our goal is always to have the primary contact cover obviously things happen everyone wants a town meeting in May but we try and identify these things early make sure your schedule syncs with uh our schedule and then we start but we don't view it as hey if you have a May 14th Town me meeting give me your warrant on May 1st sure we're working on that warrant we're helping you with budgetary questions on the on your that are going to come up on on the the warrant early we want to be involved in those discussions months before that and I think it's important to note that it it part of town meeting prep depends upon you all and what you would want and what your needs are so there have been times where one of my one of my towns a Town Administrator wasn't around for a town meeting and so I had to draft the first draft of the warrant so I started with you know prior fiscal uh year bills and then moved down to the budget and did did all of the worn articles that I was aware of but it could be I have another town where I made an edit and it was like I don't know a a typo one typo in the whole warrant cuz the thing was beautiful you know it was no problem so the level of our put depends upon you and what your needs are similarly there are some Town meetings where I say nothing I don't get a single question and there are other Town meetings where they get a question they're like Kate up to the podium I go up and talk I was at one town meeting where I talked for an hour and a half um just getting fed it was a representative town meeting getting fed questions questions questions and you know so for an hour and a half I just took questions so the range is huge but the one thing about being part of the team and having office hours and talking to staff is that when we get to town meeting we have a lot of the history about a lot of these Warren articles we know why a certain bylaw is being implemented or proposed or whatever um because we we know the ins and outs because we haven't sat on the sidelines and not spoken with you for the past 6 months and then we show up Suddenly on May 22nd or whenever it is um and say Here I Am what does your warrant look like so that's another aspect just a small logistic thing Kate um how how many Town meetings do you do and do you are do you have a conflict the second Monday of May or I think kind of off the top when we've looked on when you and I spoke I think it was free the night of the but we might have been looking at the special or did I look at the may I think it was the annual yeah so typically so around here um I go to Kingston I'm typically the lawyer in Kingston and Hansen um I go to raob um and then sometimes I cover up north and out west but we do work it out yeah I think I think especially in the first couple years we would want to make sure that the person you're most familiar with there is at town meeting I'm not going to say that there won't be a time when one of us that might otherwise do your town meeting might not get pulled away what we try and do is identify that months ahead of time the select board does have mechanisms to change the date on your own notwithstanding a bylaw or Charter provision so if you had your heart set on a single person then we can work with you but what we try and do is by November or so say hey here's our where our team's going to be and here's our priorities what do you think you have coming up if if you said we've got $125 million debt exclusion and an override and the most complicated bylaw we've ever had we're going to make sure you're going to get the person that's the most familiar if someone says hey there's a special town meeting coming up it's a sleeper it's just a couple of adjustments and there's a conflict elsewhere then we'll work with you on that you know one that's one of the problems of getting a little bit bigger is just trying to make sure you get everyone that that you want but that's why we're trying to right here we're trying to make sure you have a three-person team that's going to be very familiar but I will say sometimes you get the benefit of maybe two of us because you have one of us working on a b that's really important it's on the warrant and then you have the one who's running the show and so yeah often times that's I mean I was going to touch on you know the fact you have the capacity to take on a new client like Halifax and if so why Halifax but I think you've kind of touched on the first part of that seems like you have the capacity you do a lot of a lot of other municipalities around here Hansen so forth um I guess my question is twofold so you have the capacity why Halifax and number two is when you onboard a new town like we're proposing here as a possibility any specific challenges you see you know time after time is it pretty seamless is there frustrations here are there challenges there what sort of roadblocks might we encounter let me whether it's you or somebody else yeah so I think I think the why is it's actually an interesting question because we we've seen some growth and we've grown with it but we've actually had some soul searching within the firm is what kind of Town Council do we want to be what is the the town profile that suits us the best where we can be that counselor so we've taken on some bigger communities and even two small cities we are this is our sweet spot in a communities of any anywhere between like 7500 and 15 to 20,000 is like something where we can swoop in and really we understand the structure the staff needs generally and that we can really be at our at our best obviously we can handle a community that's even smaller we represent Alfred in the Burk sheers uh and much bigger we represent havil and and and Fitchburg but this is a sweet spot we also represent and I think we mentioned this in uh either when we SP spoke to Jonathan and Cody or otherwise we represent a lot of towns in this area we like this area we we understand the issues in this area it's a good fit for us we think it would be a good fit for you we obviously represent and know some of the regional issues and because we've got Hansen on one side and uh Kingston on the other so um that's why on transition we've done it a few times now right we've done it with most of the folks that have otherwise represented towns the um with electronic communication it's gotten a lot easier used to be boxes and boxes your outgoing counsil if you chose us is Duty bound to give you a summary and give us a summary of all pending matters there may be some matters that you want them to keep there may be some matters that you want to come to us so we do two things we do all that file review and then what we do whether you do it hourly or um which we wouldn't charge for or through the flat fee we'll come and meet your department heads we'll spend a half a day here and just bring everyone in a room whether it's your two chiefs your DPW your Building Commissioner if someone's working on planning with you all of that stuff obviously Cody's entire staff so we we try and meet with folks get to know them and help with the transition there we are somewhat of a known quantity especially on the land use side so we think we can get up to speed pretty quickly on all those things and we've had a pretty good success rate not you know I mean there's been some bumps in the road with a with a jilted former Town Council I suppose but most of the time it's gone really smoothly and we're a small bar Municipal lawyers right and so I think those those disgruntled former town councils are few and far between because we all know each other when we were in the uh parking lot we gave hug and kisses you know so little backstabbing too but no but it the transition generally has been really really good and to Jay's Point um one of the things I recently took over a town oh I don't know I want to say 6 months ago and they had a piece of litigation a single piece of litigation left and it was 6 years old right so the prior Town Council had really gotten his closet into it and I said I can take it you know I've done that before and you know you have to get up to speed and get up to speed quickly or you can leave it with them and he and I have been speaking routinely about what that case looks like what the potential other impacts are on this other piece of property all of those things it was very smooth no problem yeah one of the things that we're uh trying to do uh here uh is is to get our especially our volunteer boards uh educated um we think that um we we we've sort of changed our policy a little bit now we're requiring anybody that we appoint to uh take at least a minimum amount of Education in their specific area so the things that come to mind generally would be conservation zoning you know those things that are very highly technical legal issues and so on and so forth um and we're trying to put together some sort of a program for that it's new to us we haven't done it yet uh so we're still working on it is that something you folks could help us with absolutely yeah a million per yeah yeah even this this other town that I was telling you about um same kind of idea they had uh various land use boards that had been on the board for a long time but maybe weren't as familiar as they should be with the law so um we're doing special it's actually Brian witer from my office who's doing that training and he's a teacher at um he and I both yeah yeah he and J both are teachers at suffk for the town administrators program and he specializes in land use like Jay and he's doing a training on 4A what that means what do your hearings even simple things like how do you conduct a public hearing right that doesn't come to you naturally you have to learn through either observation or training right so how do you conduct a public hearing what what does a variance mean what does a special permit mean what's the standard right and it's not because you're friendly with the guy whose application it is right so all of those things but more broadly we and I do open meeting law trainings public records trainings for your staff we do discrimination trainings sexual harassment those kinds of things um so the more you educate your boards staff all of that stuff again avoids problems on the back end because they know what to do or at least they know to call right right so um along those lines so is your when you talk about training is this something that you have like a curriculum type thing set for yeah so it depends what it is so like for open meeting law public records and ethics we have like a training module so to speak okay a PowerPoint and we recommend so whether it's hourly or a flat fee it would be it would be no charge and what we like to do is once a year or once every other year sometimes is do two sessions in one day one would be for staff and one would be for board members in the evening and what we would do is go through our PowerPoint full presentation on open beating all public records and ethics is kind of a classic three-part module that we do and we go through that and we prepare folks and we answer questions we've done it a number of times times and then we do a repeat for folks that couldn't make it during the the day and we do that and we've kind of whittel it down into kind of this set of slides that hopefully doesn't it keeps things moving but it's still thorough and comprehensive and how about on the uh on the more specific ones like uh zoning board or conservation yeah so I think frankly frankly not to interrupt I apologize but you know the open meeting stuff is important um and and I I haven't seen that we've had a lot of issues on that for the most part because most of the time somebody on that board has been around long enough to know right sure or or the Town Administrator gets involved or something like that where we really running into problems I think uh is uh having uh volunteers uh with good Hearts uh that are been appointed to boards that are now as opposed to maybe 20 to 30 years ago especially extremely Technical and extremely involved like zoning conservation that kind of stuff and it's un I think it's unfair to our appointees to kind of drop them in there and say okay you're on your own uh and it's also uh beneficial for the town itself just to make sure we're following all the rules and that's the kind so you have curriculum yeah we do all of that now sometimes it doesn't require curriculum as much as it does like let's get around the table and talk about it kind of thing but for Zoning for example so that would be could be planning board and Zoning Board I actually teach all the various I do a yearly seminar for all of the building official um groups there's a Southeastern Mass one there's a Central Mass one a Northshore and a western Mass one and I do a zoning module on every year on uh like do Amendment uh pre-existing non-conforming what does it take you know how do you read a special permit the new MBTA zoning uh things like that that we go through and it's a lot of repeat stuff be with the case update and but we can be as specific we and as long winded as possible with a full module or like what kind of issues are you're facing let's get in a small group and start talking about it invariably with any of these when we we can prepare a module and a PowerPoint and have the backup and we do the best way to conduct these is like in a smallish room where people then say well this is what H is happening to us and then we can we can understand that because we've met them already and meet them where they are and and help with that so it's less just preachy and teachy and more just having that conversation with them and weaving in the cases the statutes and it gets pretty complicated we do things even at for different groups on procurement issues on the harassment issues where we have more specific stuff but it still works best when we get in those rooms and have those conversations invion we have and we we made a policy about this a couple months ago is that when we make your appointment we're expecting you to be uh attending a certain level of education so that we don't we know for certain that you've at least been exposed to this whatever that is that's that's really where we are we're not any more further advancing that we have problems of course that fits model that's the model cuz the better educated and the smarter and the more comfortable your groups are your boards are with their enabling legislation the better off the town is from a problem solving standpoint and from a business perspective that front end expenditure of resources by us ends up paying off ultimately on the back end and the other side of that is we also offer we if you request an opinion from us on a zoning issue we'll provide you either a written or informal opinion and then to back that up we will also review your decisions before they go to your board so that they know that the decision is sound and based on the facts review the decision of the board or so if if your planner say puts together a draft decision based on the content of the filing and the hearings that have taken place and they send it to us for review um we'll review that decision and make sure that it's sound and so again to prevent an appeal or litigation coming out of that okay um can I well just to ductail on what John said so would you envision any sort of onboarding is that what we're kind of talking about here would you guys be willing if we want with you folks to um on board new board and committee members just to kind of nip things in the butt before we get down the road certainly yeah yeah the other thing too I wanted to talk about was um we live in a zoom world uh how often are you guys actually physically in your municipalities compared to on a screen whatever works for you all I mean for C few decades now I've been getting in the car and and doing it there are some real benefits to the zoom Revolution where I spend a little more time at home the downside is I might be stacking two or three of those so yeah whatever media you use in person and sometimes we will recommend even if you exist in more of a zoom ecosphere just like hey this is we want to come out whatever media you want to use is fine with us we have no recommend that's a style question that is not whatever works for you some towns are just and boards are stubbornly and strictly in person hey it's working for you it'll work for us some Town boards haven't met face to face in now 4 and years then if that works then that's okay sure but to your point there's something to be said for sitting in the room sometimes especially like an exact session on in Kate's world yeah my world a lot at I'm exclusively on the road so my world there's a little bit of the intangible that you have to deal with labor and employment matters for sure well a ductail that question I think you asked it previously or maybe separately um your your labor I labor and general I mean I manage the entire so for all of our towns that have labor and employment and that's a good portion of them probably 30 40% of them in yeah yeah if we if we kept labor separate yep you would still be our Appo person as a municipality even if we excluded labor from your scope yes that's no problem yeah no problem no problem like I said in Brockton and all with all my town so in Brockton we have huge infrastructure right we have imas with surrounding communities for a water for sewer um I deal with all that stuff um I deal with contracts some of them as sental is just because they're not so exciting to me but I deal with um town meeting Finance all of that stuff is no problem okay so Kate and I are kind of co-primary AR in Kingston she's the primary in Hansen we kind of share um rith a little bit so she's doing a ton of General work in addition I we all have our areas of expertise but we all are making sure that we can answer all those open meeting law things all that Municipal governance all that Municipal Finance stuff all all of the rules and rs that you need a primary to uh understand I don't think our um world at least right now involves a whole lot of Labor work I mean that's very un we don't get that many in the at least not right now grievances grievances our contracts have all just been negotiated so it's not labor is not our our big issue our bigger issue is uh probably zoning of land use uh some general government stuff yeah uh making sure that our town meeting runs efficiently um I would say that's really where we are right now that that of course that could change tomor that's it I love Labor Management Harmony right and you know and if it is a lot of land use um you know a little humble brag I still don't think and I was at KP and I still don't think there's a better land use group in the Commonwealth than our group between Liz and myself and Adam and Lisa and Brian winter our land use group is really Second To None So if you've got zoning conservation planning enforcement any of that stuff our our groups like ready to go similar to Kate I was inhouse in New Bedford and I worked primarily with um planning zoning conservation um dffm DPI so Department of Public infrastructure building um but I was very ingrained in the land use world and so when they when Jay brought me over as well um that's what he hired me for and then found out I also did contracts she's going to hide that so I would be doing both of those for you but we've been on top of the Adu changes that just came down um 3A bylaws cannabis um and so we would be doing a lot of that and helping you if you need to make changes to those bylaws as well our president police chief was actually a New Bedford Police Captain I I think oh really yeah was have a connection all right any other questions from the board no I a quick one on percentage of municipalities that go retainer or hourly I mean is there are you guys do your majority of work on retainer majority majority some some have chose like they think they can manage better it's what they're used to and they're um econom you know kind of cautious like we just became Town Council in Foxboro and they looked at both and decided to give it a run on the hourly and they said we'll revisit um most of our clients have gone with one of the two flat fees a few want to manage on an hourly and that's fine they don't get any different service they they might look around March and April where their legal budget is a little bit more just to make sure they're in good shape but it's the same set of services and you get the same bills it's just you're going to get the detailed reports so you know where we're spending our time and you can evaluate where the legal services are going so you're saying most most OP proposal one or two versus three in this package correct mhm has has there ever um been an instance where you've been on retainer um you set an amount and then you know at the end of the year you go oh man we're we're getting killed here with work have you have you ever had a situation where you have to approach that community and say guys we need to not in the first two years so we we'll we're giving you a number and even if the bear eats us those first two years we'll hold it for two years and then we'll be honest with you you we have an hourly effective hourly rate that that we're looking at we're also cognizant of the fact that sometimes it'll be a heavy year for legal services so if you had like a big school project and then you know some some other big to-do a crazy bylaw or a big piece of litigation that you had to do our effective hourly rates going to take a a beating that year but everything's cyclical and the great thing about doing this in so many towns is we average it across all of the communities we represent so if we when we onboarded Rochester they were a pretty needy consumer of legal services so the eff of hourly rate for the first year and a half or so was tough for us but we've got another town that is on a Glide path where the effective hourly rate is good so these things have a way of managing but we'll be really open and honest with you and we never do like big jumps either we might say hey we got to push this up 500 a month or so in in year three and to be clear we give a lot of lead time because we understand how how far back you have to prepare October if for the next fiscal starting the next July 1 we had to push it up a little bit but we're confident I looked at your past legal budgets you know you take a quick look at court dockets I'm confident that these numbers would hold pretty well I mean we're pretty used to what a um Suburban semi- rural community is going to need in terms of legal services so we think it's a good forecast great okay um we'll give you guys the last shot if you have anything you want to tell us that you haven't ever talked about you've been very helpful so far but no I mean we've had we had a great talk earlier with Cody and and Jonathan we think you know that we think we'd be a really good fit we think regionally we're strong in this region we think we have a great team behind us the New Bedford office is growing so we have a lot of proximity there and we're happy to throw a lot of expertise at this at this account if you choose oh so I was just looking at your letterhead here but it says the office is in Millis and Newberry Port you have in the Bedford one oh sorry yeah this must have been old letterhead and must have been the only one on my computer so yeah we've got um we've got four attorneys in Millis right now um four and a half um six in New Bedford and the remainder up in Newburyport I see okay yeah and you're probably New Bedford I assume I I'm actually a Millis yeah M and but like I said primarily I'm on the road so and you're a New Bedford I'm a New Bedford right yeah the New Bedford office we opened three years about three years ago and it's our fastest growing office um uh our client base down there is growing it's a great spot to just just restaurant wise and I also I also have a house in Dartmouth so I'm back and forth between the Millis office and Dartmouth so I go down to New Bedford just to eat I say I'm coming for an office visit where are we going to lunch and then then a 3-hour lunch later I asked Jay to come to New Bedford so we can go you ever ever go to Max Diner no you never been tox D oh it's near Fall River I'm sorry oh how about P rafas pfus for pizza yeah that's good okay very good well thank you for coming in app and if there's any followup questions Something You Forgot yeah absolutely email us and we'll get it answered right away thank you awesome great to meet you folks it was a pleasure nice meeting you meet you pleasure nice meet you see thank you appreciate it so when were you moderator uh Legend here started in 200 n up until 9 years later and then I didn't do anything for a couple years then I got back on the board I was on the board life from before that for 15 years is this a town meeting time Town Roberts rules or town meeting time uh well technically Robert rules technically Roberts rules but in my 35 years here we've never opened that book we always do that's better we need to change we're we're rewriting town meeting time I'm on the editorial board for it it's going to be so so user friendly you should really tuck something in it's very help I think it's helpful yeah so it's better than Robert I'm going on 15th year as moderator this year yeah although Robert's Rules originated inord so they don't apply I don't know like to General thanks for coming in thank you guys you have a nice night uh okay uh let's see so that completes our agenda um y just out of curiosity uh has anyone checked any of the references um I have not spoken to any communities um of Clifford and Kenny but I have spoken to uh two Comm two Town administrators that use me tman and Costa um only have good things to say okay I can I'll reach out to Charlie C just going to say can at least ask Charlie what you think cuz yeah I'll reach out to Doug lap too um in Rocklin and I will also reach out I have not spoken with Lisa in Hansen so I think it' be good to speak with Lisa and Hansen um who has meall and Costa I I've spoken with Keith hickey um in Kingston and they have meall they have um so Jay and uh Kate serve as the primar over in Kingston okay and I have I have spoken with Charlie seelig in East bridgew um Dave the chair in East bridgew and the chair in Rockland Mike O'Neal about Clifford and Kenny and again similar similar sentiments all right very good well uh I guess we'll take a motion to aour nothing else for us to do so moved any discussion all those in favor say I unanimous uh we'll may make a decision tomorrow we're not sure yet though don't need to think about it [Music]