##VIDEO ID:HhxcNdAm3rU## I hereby call the order this meeting the Sunderland select board the time is 6:15 uh before we get started uh just a quick little note for anyone who might be listening um we are going to suspend the Normal public comment for this meeting we will not be entertaining it um but that will resume our next meeting um so our first order of business will be to approve the meeting the minutes from our last two meetings September 16th and September 20th a motion we approve the minutes from September 16th and September 20th second all right we have a motion made and seconded all those in favor all roll roll call is needed for remote yeah for J hi Dan Murphy hi all three nothing thank you all right our first order new business will be to approve a one-day liquor license for kitchen garden farms LLC there not on is there any discussion needed for that one the uh kitchen Garden Farm will be having an event on October 12th uh from 6:00 to 10: p.m. uh the expected attendance is 100 people uh they are let's see they have uh submitted all of the liquid liability insurance certificates and uh they have gotten approval from the police chief regarding a parking plan so I don't believe we're waiting on anything however I would ask that the motion contain that contingency in case anything else is needed and is that that's a residential neighborhood it is a residential neighborhood they've given the chief the plan as far as parking um the event is going to be held at their Farm Outdoors on the grass lawn and the chief has expressed no concern with that all right I am motion we approve the liquor license for garden kitchen or kitchen Garden kitchen Garden kitchen Garden on October 12 second right we motion made and seconded all those in favor I hi Dan Murphy I three nothing thank you all right our next order of business will be to sign the election the state election warrant for November 5th's election I'm assuming you need an motion to approve that at this time I would entertain a motion to approve the state election warrant go ahead D motion to approve the state election a second all right we have a motion made and seconded to approve the state election warrant all those in favor hi hi Dan Murphy I Nathaniel wearing that's three nothing all right okay that's all of our new business the other three pieces of new business that we have on the agenda for today um all have to do with uh designating select board members for specific um duties well we do have to do the one for October 8th don't need before um so the first two of them the one for sces and the one for the capital planning committee we're going to um push that off into our next meeting uh the third item is um designating a select board member for the October 8th meeting with Franklin Tech Teachers Association negotiations that is going to be an in-person meeting at 4:30 p.m. in the library conference room at Franklin County TCH school on October 8th Tuesday is there anybody who would like to do that is there any possibility of them allowing remote on that remote access Zo I have not checked I I can I can certainly check um just I mean I think me and Dan probably both for a 4:30 meeting unfortunately it's a little early in the day probably even for you right yeah I would have to I'd have to move things around to make it work um if it was remote I can I can do something like that okay um that I I can't answer that I just don't know I will I'll volunteer for that um if I can make it work in person great if if remote's an option great if I can't it is what it all right so then it can we do a contingent if he's can't make it work I will he can get a hold of me and I'll see if I can make it work yeah that's that's totally fine they're just looking for a member of the board so yeah go ahead it's just it's tough tough timer it it is it's an it's an odd odd time yeah unfortunately you know so Nathaniel um we'll try and as a contingency you will try yeah perfect so motion yeah all right at the time of entertain a motion to appoint myself as the primary delegate to the Franklin Tech Teachers Association negotiations and Crystal as the backup so I motion that Nathaniel be the primary for Franklin Tech and in the event that he's unable to attend I will make attempts to attend okay second all right we have motion made and seconded all those in favor uh i i i three nothing thank you very much okay all right the other two items we will table until next time we got a couple minutes uh to go before our first candidate comes up go ahead yeah so uh I'll be introducing our human resources consultant in a in a moment here um as she brings up our first the board's first finalist to be interviewed this evening I just want to give the board a brief uh summary of the search process that we've followed to date uh the Town Administrator position was advertised the third week of August on the town website the Massachusetts Municipal association website LinkedIn the UMass and Smith college and Harvard Kennedy School alumni sites the mass higher career center the master list which is a list for state and Municipal uh jobs the small town administrators list serve and to connections of the Franklin Regional Council of government so we advertised the position broadly a 13 application packets were received um 12 of them by the September 16th date that was mentioned in the ad and one following that there were 10 candidates from Massachusetts two candidates from New Hampshire and one that gave no address 10 of the candidates were men and three of the candidates were women seven candidates whose resumés best reflected the attributes listed in the ideal candidate profile and challenge statement the board approved were interviewed remotely with HR consultant Deborah radway who I'll introduce to the board and the public in a moment and me the week of September 16th four candidates were designated as finalists and invited to interview with the select board in person this evening none of the finalists have withdrawn their names from consideration you will meet all four the four finalists were each asked to submit a sample spreadsheet and a written memo or presentation that reflects their work these samples have been received and revised or reviewed I'm sorry for clarity relevance and professionalism and there available for the board's review proof of educational attainment was requested and provided by the candidates and can and can be made available to the board each finalist was also asked to provide the contact information for three professional references they all complied and Miss radway has completed three comprehensive reference checks for each of the finalists a summary of the references can be made available to the board a Corey criminal offender offender record information check will be done prior to hire on the finalist accepting a conditional offer ofy employment lastly Deborah and I Deborah radway is here um with me this evening uh Deborah and I and the board recognize both the critical importance of the Town Administrator position and that great comp uh competition exists for the Town Administrator positions in this region and across the Commonwealth Deb and I are very excited that the four finalists you'll talk with tonight see Sunderland as a community they'd like to be part of your first candidate tonight is here and this is Nicholas kamo KAC kamo sorry Nick has extensive experience in municipal government having previously served as a city counselor in Pittsfield from 2014 to 2021 and as williamsburg's current Town Administrator since May of 2021 prior to this he was employed in the education field for six years he holds a dual master's degree in public policy and administration and Regional planning from UMass amst and a bachelor's degree in secondary education from Champlain College well welcome Nick hi nice to see you all right thank you very much for being with us today Nick appreciate it very much um do you prefer Nick or Nicholas Nick would be great Nick wonderful I always like to ask that so we can address you as you like to be addressed um so we're going to go through a series of seven questions um that we'd like to have your honest anwers on um are we ready for questions go right ahead all right introduce ourselves yeah introduce ourselves probably gooda um before I start with the questions uh we'll go through and introduce ourselves I am Nathaniel in I'm the chair of the board hi I'm Crystal Drake I'm Vice chair mlar remember great can you hear me well enough through the the system yes okay wonderful all right thank you Mar our first question is please give us your impression of Sunderland tell us why you want to work here and what you will bring to our town that may improve it yeah so I think my my initial impressions of Sunderland are kind of like a lot of people that you Mass Amur uh I would assume you probably don't love to be thought of as a suburb of UMass Amur but during undergrad I have some friends that went here and certainly they live here and things like that I kind of travel through Sunderland on the way to Amhurst for a number of years uh but primarily you know I see Sunderland as a you know like a delightful little Community within the Pioneer Valley which is pretty characteristic of of most of the Pioneer Valley uh Sunderland I think represents an opportunity for myself uh I'm looking at uh continuing work in local government particularly at the administrative or manager level um it's really kind of a scalability thing so right now the town I work in is about 2500 people an operating budget a little over 9 million Sunland represents sort of that next jump within the valley so there's a big gap between communities greater than but less than or greater than 3,000 but less than 5,000 so sun sunland's already kind of that top of that and then after 5,000 6,000 7,000 things start to kind of move in those larger managerial type positions great thank you Crystal what is the ideal role you seek for the select board in supporting the Town Administrator to address the community's needs conversely what is the ideal role for the Town Administrator in supporting the select board uh so I think uh building that relationship at the onset is sort of the key in sort of understanding expectations uh so I know that select boards can be sort of vary between community and Community uh some prefer a more Hands-On approach I think some others might be a little more hands-off and I think that sort of relationship if you set the tone correctly at the beginning you can kind of invest in that relationship and it'll pay dividends in the long run where sort of the select board can use their strengths and the Town Administrator can use their strengths to kind of further the quality of life and Improvement in the community but that's largely how I kind of see that relationship sort of developing off the off the GetGo thank you Dan Y what approaches have you used or have you seen used to increase the number and diversity of volunteers serving on community committees and commissions that's a good question so I I think uh one of sort of the strongest points of small towns is a desire of the community to volunteer and give back um but I think we have to be realistic and understand understand that that well is only so deep and towns can operate sort of traditional sort of Outreach methods I of think that in small towns particularly maybe a size like this that word of mouth can actually be one of the the best ways to encourage you know new faces and new people to to join committees especially if you're looking for uh persons that maybe sort of outside of the I guess I'll quote The Usual Suspects I think sometimes in small communities you see a lot of the same faces on boards and commission and you know I certainly bringing in more diverse opinions and points of view only furthers the work that these boards and commissions can do but it's not it's not an easy task right like it's a they're thankless jobs they require time outside of your life to to give to these things so hopefully you know encouraging so you know think of as a farm system you know and finding people that are interested in something getting them involved and then kind of building them up to some of the more prominent positions thinking conservation zoning board of appeals planning board sort of those larger footprint you know boards and committees and that just takes time I don't think there's any like magic stroke that says we're going to find every volunteer of every person we're looking for in this process thank you all right our fourth question is uh Sunderland is challenged to balance the needs of uh for development to increase its tax base the desire to maintain its rural agricultural Community as town administrator how do you address the need to fund continued Service delivery with ongoing funding limitations yeah I think uh I think many communities kind of struggle with this idea of like what sustainable development looks like to them how that fits into the characteristics that they they see their Community kind of putting forward um I think largely that can start when I think of a community's most important piece of their puzzle it often to me is the zoning ordinance or the zon bylaw so you know I can't tell you Sunderland zoning bylaw Sunderland is actively committed to you know promoting and sustaining a certain you know rural farming characteristic while sort of looking for sustainable growth I think if you invest the time and energy to make improvements to your zoning ordinance that are careful thought out and consider it you can kind of set those guard rails for that development over time and uh certainly ensuring that your zoning board of appeals and your planning board kind of represent those interests I know that looks like Sunderland has not completed a master plan or comprehensive plan in some amount of years often that document feels to me like a very important sort of road map for a community so actively seeking out and kind of doing that work I think really sets the tone and the course for the board of Selectmen as you know the leaders of the community that says these are the things we really value this is the direction we want to take the community and we hope that people will help us get there um and but I mean you can take some legislative approaches and I think primarily through refinement of your zoning ordinance and your zoning bylaw and making sure that it's thoughtful and measured great Sunderland has an excellent team of employees describe the town administrator's role in relationship with department heads and staff how will you promote communication and teamwork within and across departments and from town staff including yourself and the community to the community Sor kind just just clarify how many employees work in this building just in this building we probably have about 14 14 okay yeah combination of full-time and part-time yeah yeah sure uh so you know that's a good question I think that as an administrator what I do uh quite well is sort of a softer approach in sort of employee relationship building um so I'm the type of person that often comes into a new building or a new place of employment uh I quickly learn names I quickly learn a little bit about a person that allows to sort of build on a relationship that's at least grounded and some familiarity and sort of a friendliness and I think what that does is it creates a comfortability between you know the administrator maybe your assessor your collector any of these positions that you know pretty you know Common across these communities so I think it starts there and then uh I know it's critically important for the administrator to have sort of their eyes and ears on everything whether or not they're like directly or indirectly involved in those things so I do take the time to actually like move through offices kind of check in see how things are going regardless if I'm asked to to do such a thing um I think there's just real value in hearing directly from employees and and that could range you know just from like how's the weather to you know I'm working on this great project that I need some support on and things like that and I think it kind of comes out when you build a relationship that's at least a little bit founded in a sense of familiarity a sense of comfort uh and what that ultimately does it it allows to it allows you to create and promote accountability in the process as well so you know I tend to take a more of a softer you know managerial approach in that in that regard great thank you Dan sorry understanding the to administrator's responsibility for handling multiple priorities at once tell us what tools you use to organize your work when there are competing priorities in sometimes agendas sorry one second hey Margaret uh George is trying to enter you mind a minute thanks sorry please take go ahead uh so just repeat the question it was about uh prioritizing sort of multip sorry sure I'll do it again yeah that's right understanding the town administrator's responsibility for handling multiple priorities at once tell us what tools you use to organize your work when there are competing priorities and sometimes agenda yeah so I think primarily uh with with these jobs that they offer is especially in the the municipal calendar sort of the The rhythms and the patterns that we go through in terms of like getting ready to set the tax rate getting ready to prepare for Town meetings these things sort of have their place and I think um at the onset if you sort of prioritize which you know are like the critical pieces the the can't miss and then you kind of work backwards after that so you know constantly administrators are sort of you know I don't think I've ever come into work and said these are the things I'm going to do today and been able to check them off like in a systematic way I mean we we just know that with these small towns they're Sho string operations and the most unusual things happen you know the internet goes down that basically sort of prevents any operations from occurring so that becomes the priority and those just take time and I think at the end of the day if you are you know aware of sort of the month of the year what's on the financial calendar what's on the community calendar and things like that you prioritize those big things you you prioritize those things that simply can't wait uh we have deadlines to meet we understand that thing uh but in terms of like tools I mean it's largely sort of a time management practice of my own right um you know so I'll keep track of all the things that are ongoing you know and I'm constantly just having to make decisions to say like Well I this can wait another day and at at the end of the day the work we do um is almost always going to be there the next day so we just have to you know be kind of aware of those things Shuffle things as they arise be responsive to the moment to the situation and just make smart choices and you know you know it does doesn't mean you can just let things fall to the Wayside but you know I think you can I think if you do the appropriate amount of shuffling and the right amount of awareness that you can kind of balance those things thanks great all right and our final question is do you have any questions or anything else you'd like to tell us about yourself that you may not have already covered that's the open-ended one okay uh about myself yeah so I mean uh just a little bit about myself my professional history so when I when I graduated undergrad you know I really thought I would be a high school social studies teacher you know one of those teachers that might be in a in a school for a long time if you don't you may ear and recall the 200920 labor market especially in education was like highly competitive so that sort of dream never quite panned out but I did uh develop over time a pretty interesting sort [Music] of unusual path in academics and for a long time I really felt like I never really hit my stride in sort of secondary education and it wasn't until I actually left teaching uh to sort of pivot and build on the city council stuff that my colleague sort of pointed out that they said you know Nick even though you never really you know found your place so to speak your relationship with students is sort of unparalleled and the work you do with them and the the student development that you sort of at the time what I really didn't realize was I wasn't even aware I was doing those things I was just kind of being myself creating those relationships and they turned out to be pretty profound in the way that like students still will engage with me like outside of the classroom like years later just so like and and what that to me says is like I've carried a lot of that forward in my work as a city counselor so you know I'm familiar with the legislative role what that entails you know I'm quite familiar with you know handling constituent concerns of a wide range of topics you know from the the very mundane to the to the very complicated um and what that does I think over time has allowed me to put together a lot of really interesting pieces uh certainly my student relationships have influenced my management style which I think is reflective in my in my current role I work as a legislator a legislator um at the city council level has you know under I understand what the board of Selectmen or the the select board need to kind of do as the as the policy makers for a community how to support them and you know how to move the the community forward um subsequently you know I made a a choice to go back to grad school you know in a very untraditional manner so I was 32 or 33 at the time so I was one of the oldest students in my class you know um and but it it gave me this like educational frame framework that I think is really valuable I have a lot of skill sets that I can kind of bring to this and you know exercise in very interesting ways when allowed the space to do so so I think in totality you know while I may have not seen this years ago you know my career has moved in a pretty interesting way and I feel really comfortable like at this table tonight knowing that I have a pretty interesting skill set um I really have a love and a commitment to local government I just find that that's a field that needs more people in involved more more good people involved in this process and you know has been incredibly rewarding it's somewhere where I hope to see myself kind of growing over the years and uh what I like to think of is I have all these interesting pieces and parts of the puzzle but I've yet to hit my career Peak so I think uh sometime you know in the next like you know three to 10 years I think that's that's going to happen and then a community that I've I've landed in where I'm hitting my Peak I think really kind of the sky the limit for possibilities and you know promoting a better quality of life for its Community thank you do we open up for other questions from the the board or um no we we don't not from the board but if if Nick would like to add anything else or ask any questions of the board yeah no I'd be agre um so question yeah yeah I got plenty um yes so I'd love to just uh you know either one or all three of you could answer but I'd love to just get a better sense of like your your relationship with the town ad Town Administrator what that's looked like over time so I don't know how long you've been you know members of the board of selectman but so that's a very fair question um we are a very young board not necessarily in age necessarily but um well maybe that's especially crystal crystal is the youngest one here um I've been this is my third year of so the last year of my first term okay crystal is on her first year of her second term and Dan is on the second year of his first term so uh none of us have been here from 4 years okay um which is in some ways provides some challenges because you're you're a new Town Administrator coming into a group of people who aren't seasoned select board members per se um but also it gives us an opportunity on our end and on your end to be able to not get stuck in Old you know ruts and not get stuck in old ways and be able to you know Forge our own path and whatnot yeah you want hear a lot of well this is how we always did it because we're we're pretty we're making up as we go you know um now the the that being said um sorry never mind I can't ask questions go ahead I I had another question I was gonna ask but I'm not gonna I'm not goingon to do that sorry okay anything else you want to know from our end yeah no definitely so I just be curious you know in your you said about four four years everyone's kind of been on the board um are there certain characteristics that you think make sort of or have made a successful administrator in your eyes yeah so our you know and again I've only worked worked with the previous administrator um I've known Margaret and you know I've been I'm a lifelong resident here so I've known the other Town administrators things like that but for me it it was great with the last Town Administrator getting direction from him um where you know if a problem arose or and he could say all right well when this happened in June of you know 2014 even though he wasn't here it gave us a a place to go back and look and see you know what you know you always have the ability to go back and grab notes or grab you know meeting minutes and things like that and he was really for me really good at shuffling through that paperwork to get it for me because obviously this isn't our full-time job right all three of us have full-time jobs and as much as we would love to come sit here and rifle through all old paperwork and old meeting minutes it wasn't always easy for us to do so getting that type of support and direction from him I really felt was you know for me especially in the beginning was well wonderful there's a fine balance between providing your opinion on subjects and then also accepting whatever the board says and doing that full wholeheartedly and and one of the things I really appreciate about Jeff was his ability to know when to give us his advice know the the bounds of that advice and not overstep those bounds um but also make us feel like we're supported and we're getting not just I'll do whatever you want you know he felt like he gave us good feedback in that respect but when it came down to us making the decision regardless of what it was whether it was something that he necessarily would have gone that direction himself um he always executed that to the fullest extent of his abilities and professionally and whatnot um so that's obviously something that we're looking to continue with you know yeah he was another again we all have different personalities and stuff and and I'm not going to deny it I'm I'm a strong opinion and but I I don't ever want someone to back down from me I want them to challenge me because in my head I might be thinking well this is the only possible way to go and I need someone to say okay but we can do this and boom boom boom these are the reasons why and give me that I don't want someone that's just going to say yes Crystal yes Crystal I I want that challenge I want someone to to dis you know not disagree with me for the sake of disagreeing with me but if I'm wrong you got to tell me I'm wrong not you know just Sor I'll agree I'll agree with that Crystal I definitely like open communication um definitely sharing your thoughts um and I would really like responsiveness is is great too but yeah the the open communication and sharing your thoughts and up and to guide us that's great yeah I don't know what we're on for time like one more question or um we got yes yes you do have time for another question yeah I I'd also just be curious if the the board wanted would elaborate on sort of either uh quality or quantitative metrics they might look towards to you know kind of see a demonstration of success in in a position like this oh that's a good question um so I'm not sure we're going to have necessarily A a checklist with a bunch of Rubiks that say oh yeah he did that this year he did that this year um I mean I think that the biggest one for me would be um how successful budget season and town meeting are you know did we get everything done when we needed to did we have everything on time did we have to push town meeting back because things weren't prepared that kind of a thing um you know we're very lowkey into that respect as long as the town continues to run and function well you did a great job you know we're not we're not looking to to have some sort of high lofty you know expectations um that being said if you're looking to have good feedback from us to help improve your own performance and whatnot um that's certainly a conversation that we could have about coming up with some more subjective metrics to be able to track um and then the the completely non non-subjective one is how the other people in town interact with you right that's really the bottom line is that you are going to be or the person we hire is going to be the first person the front face of Sunderland and most most communication with people in town um aside from wheny our Clerk and the other you know Town officers and whatnot um and so we're going to judge that part of it by the feedback that we get from members of the public um you know not to harp on Jeff but we got good feedback from about Jeff we didn't you know have people saying Jeff you know that was the previous the previous admin yeah sorry I'm just filling in okay Mark the interro mark AR um I shouldn't say just and a fer here in many hats many hats in in the many in the last bunch of years for Mario but um but yeah so so really it's it's did the day-to-day operation of town get done and were you PL and kind to people sure you know I know it's a low bar but um that's sort of the the the basement of where we go from there and then the reality of it is you know the successful candidate is coming into someplace new right he you know there's things that no matter what you as you know the successful candid it's going to know town meeting has to happen budgets have to happen but then you know it it's kind of what else with that time you know is there you know it's always great somebody who can you know think a little bit outside the box and go oh well you know there there's grants or there's you know and figure out what that priority is because again you can apply for a million grants and you can get all these grants but there's some reality base on that too right if you're going to you know it kind of all has to balance out but not no one's going to say to you I don't think at least in from what I see in the near future is you know we need X number of dollars and grants per year that's you know I I don't see things like that being any type of metric that you know we would really be looking to you know set some real definites on that but obviously you know when they're available and it's something that you know can benefit us yes but I don't see a lot of real hard you know other than you know obviously the day-to-day running of the Town um can I can I just I just want to add something and it's just to to um support something that you said earlier a Town Administrator is never going to come in and say oh I'm just going to accomplish this today there's not there isn't a day like that um there is always going to be something new happening on any given day so balancing the need to um to do uh budget projections and and uh Revenue projections and prepare the town meeting warrant and those are the routine priorities but there's always something else going on and I think you might have been getting to that those are the intricacies of the community that'll take a little time right to to understand yeah one other thing i' like to also to add is that I I valued in Jeff and in our future time administrator um the ability to push back when I ask him to do something that was like that's going to be 30 hours of my time do you really need that is that something that's really going to be helpful because there was a handful of times um during contract negotiations for example where I'd say hey you mind pulling this information he said well I can but just so you know that's going to take me half of this week to do and I can give you a you know a basic guess right now that's going to be close enough that kind of a thing and so we do appreciate a certain amount of guarding of your own time to be like no my time I only have 40 hours a week for the town or I only have you know however many contract hours a week for the town um I want to make sure that I'm doing my due diligence with my time as well so that's also an important thing for us as well great thanks Dan did you have any answer or thing to add on that particular one no I'm good I'm good sounded good thanks thanks I think we have time for one more does that sound right you have anything else I think those are kind of the three the three I usually lead with but great yeah this is a great opportunity I really appreciate you taking the time to to interview me tonight absolutely and thank you for asking us good questions because this is as much of an interview for us for you as it is for you for us yeah thanks anything else I need to well as far as as far as timeline just you know a little snapshot on the board's timeline the board is conducting the final interviews T finalist interviews tonight um and is expected to make um a decision on a candidate to make a a conditional offer to in the very near future um as there is a current vacancy here so um the board will be discussing uh discussing that tonight um if they are ready to so it's um the process is going to move along great uh who's the primary point of contact throughout the rest of this is it de yeah de I um would be the primary points of contact for you just on a on a regular basis um uh select board would be communicating with you should you be the successful candidate yeah it's really helpful I thank you so much absolutely we appreciate your time thanks Nick thank you I say it looks terrible a night take thank you very much all right that went [Music] well any feedback for us between candidates I are you okay with the microphone here yeah that's fine you are and Dan you can hear okay yeah okay all right I just on mute we can't hear I'm good I'm good as long as you can hear from that from that vantage point then we're good okay um This is distracting to me so I'm just going to shut this off yep not doing anything good anyways might as well make it go away and I think no I love the um I love the fact that you had an opportunity for discussion at the end I think that's that's really good do not um hesitate to ask um the finalists um to follow up on your given question if you feel that you didn't get a thorough answer you could just say and you know what about you know what about this okay okay it's not straying from the question in that case it's just asking them to elaborate a little further yep good with that Dan okay all right so we got Steven McCarthy yes okay so yeah okay so your next candidate your next uh finalist is is coming in this um this is uh I'll introduce him as he as he comes in I believe he's coming does the board have any questions for me while we are waiting nope okay okay we're doing good with time too this is wonderful oh yes I much rather have to wait a couple minutes than end up being like I'm sorry but we're going have to cut you off there you know I want to hear exactly or run way over so this is good very good y let me just take a quick do you give feedback to the candidates um no I I typically don't and and I I really shouldn't be chiming in so much I just am trying that's support what you're you're asking yeah no I was just spirit for do you know if we have a um location requirement you know for them to live within um I don't think we do just that it's in person is required so kind of depends on whether where they live and how far they want to drive um I mean yeah I like I liked having Jeff and ERS because then if you need to come have a emergency meeting in our Colac or whatever but uh I don't know that we made that a requirement yeah that's I mean our candidates are currently at least three of them are currently working in towns that are within 10 minutes of us now 20 minutes for Williamsburg but you know amers and Sh are both close enough if they're driving there you know yeah this will be the most riveting 15 minutes of uh of FCAT ever okay next appointment is at 7 and 657 I think um the candidate's coming into the building right now beautiful excellent and for for it's very quiet I know okay I hear I I hear conversation so I'm going to go ahead and and introduce and start introducing Steve now um again his his appointment is at 7 o'clock at 6:59 um stepen McCarthy is your next finalist Ste Steve has seven years of municipal government experience in amr's inspection services and planning departments he currently serves as ammer licensing coordinator and administrator for the licensing commission having transitioned to his current position when ammer moved to a city form of government in 2018 Steve serves as the chapter president and an executive board member of SEIU Local 888 representing 60 ammer toown employees and 8,000 members as executive board uh member he holds a bachelor's degree in political science from UMass Amer and a certificate in Municipal financial management from suffk University hi Steve hello hello hi there welcome do you prefer Steve prer whatever Steve's fine thank you's fine wonderful all righty thank you for the introduction all right um questions uctions yeah if you'd like uh so we'll start with the board intr ourselves I'm Nate wearing I'm the chair of the board I'm Crystal Drake trpl I'm Vice chair I'm gar pleasure to meet all three of you thank you so we have seven questions for you today U we're going to ask them and ask that you give us your most honest answer you can if you have any clarifying questions we will ask you those our first question today is please give us your impressions of Sunderland tell us why you want to work here and what you will bring to the town that may improve it so I grew up in a town called Westwood which was outside of Boston and I had never been west of wor in my life until I came out for UMass orientation in 2011 and I'll never forget we got off the pike and I was driving through belter town and I was with my mother and we got stuck um behind a lettuce parade and there was a septic truck pulling a septic tank float said let us flush your pipes and I turned to my mother and said what am I doing out here and here 14 years later I still find myself you I really fall in love with the area I love the mix of um Rural Life with um some culture and activity um and I've lived in amorist for um all one of the last uh prob 10 or 10 or 12 years and um I always enjoyed spending time in Sunderland now Sunderland was a place that certainly I drive through my way up to go to Mas Moka or other things like that but I certainly taken the time to stop by um some of the lovely places like Buffs barbecue or um the blue heron and found myself really enjoying the uh the small town feel that sundan has and um I think that uh Sunland is beautiful Community the place where um I'd like to do everything I can to help improve it and keep the the the functions of town government town government continuing great thank you what is the ideal role you seek for the select board in supporting the Town Administrator to address the community's needs conversely what is the ideal role for the Town Administrator in supporting the select board well I think the town administrator's role is to support the select board so uh if I were to be selected as the Town Administrator my role would be um whatever is needed now um I've served um the town of amoris as a staff support for the board of license Commissioners um and that was a new board that was created um after the town transition from a select board to a Town Council of former government so Board license Commissioners handles liquor licensing common victual licensing a lot of the same things that a uh select board handles and a select board town meeting former government and so um I I think that I have a good idea of a lot of what the select board business is um and my role would be to do whatever the select Board needs man manage the day-to-day business of the Town work collaboratively with the department heads and the town staff and um achieving the goals of the Town um and supporting the select board whatever they need information on proposals they may have um looking into uh questions looking into the best way to do things assisting and drafting uh regulations or bylaw amendments um assisting with any Personnel issues that may come up um doing research into whether it be a search and rescue dog or a or pfas leaking out of landfill whatever issues may come up that I may assist with and I think I would take my direction from the select board as the elected governor of the Town great thank you any follow Dan um what what approaches have you used or have seen used to increase the number and diversity of volunteers serving on committees and commissions well I know that a seeking a diverse representation of uh all the people in the town is a very important Challenge and I know it's a very interesting uh problem in Sunderland which has the highest proportion of Renters of any town in the Commonwealth um and that is a uh that is a challenge I think I'd be well suited to um to assist with trying to find uh Representatives who are of who are more the tenants rather than than long-term land owners um and I think that's because I'm somebody who has who has lived that life I came to Western Massachusetts without much family around here um I was a tenant I was somebody who was new to town and um even when I was an undergrad I tried to find ways to get involved in town government um I was in a fraternity in college and I was elected to be the uh inter fraternity Council Pres president which is the governing board that manages all fraternities and uh I knew that there was a serious uh problem with you know the perception of fraternities on campus as well as um some of the actions that some of them took that uh did not necessarily reflect well on the UMass student body so I created a a program to um do a street cleanup obviously a big a big complaint that uh many many homeowners had in Amis was that the college students would leave messes they would leave trash litter and um from my P perspective as attendant there as a college student there I created this um this program to organiz of attorneys and sororities to uh go about the town and pick up the trash and pick up the litter in the some of the hight traffic areas um and so having been a tenant myself having been an undergrad myself in this area I think that I would be able to speak the language be able to interact with and uh and try to bridge the gap between um the town and gown and between the the Landers and the tenants to try to get more um participation in town government from those who haven't been traditionally represented um and of course I think that we also have to take a look at the cultural diversity of uh people who maybe representing the town um I do have a decent decent Proficiency in Spanish um that's something that has been helpful to me in assisting business owners in my position here in uh in trying to bridge the gap between people who may not traditionally have been felt well represented by town government and that's a skill I would use as well to try to communicate with people who um who deserve and um deserve to be represented in town and may not have felt comfortable traditionally um so I think I would try to take creative approaches to reach out to uh to different different groups that that may want to be more involved in town government I know that there's some interesting things going on in Sunderland with uh tense associations forming and um some organization going on and that's something I would be excited to participate in um to to help the town as an organization bridge the gap between it and uh the people who live here great thank you wonderful thank you much our next question is suland is challenged to balance the needs for a development to increase its tax base with a desire to maintain its rural agricultural Community as Town Administrator how do you address the need to fund continued Service delivery with ongoing funding limitations now that um now I mentioned earlier that I really do like the rural New England feel of sundland of um many of the towns around and I think that that is a perennial challenge that many towns face um we've see different approaches that different towns have taken hadly focused on creating a uh more defined commercial commercial sector and retaining a um kind of much more rural field in the more outlying areas I think that that's somewhere where're zoning can be very important um but of course I mean you know I think we all know that tough fin times may be ahead we live in an uncertain world and maintaining our services U maintaining the paychecks for our hardworking employees and um maintaining you know the continuity of the town government is an extremely important challenge um so I would take a hard look at the budget um make sure that things are being the money is being spent well that all attention is being paid everything it needs to be and I would hope to work closely with the select board as well as the planning board and the zoning board of appeals to um take a close look at where in Sunderland there are growth opportunities where um there are opportunities for more commercial development where those opportunities could be focused and um what actions could be taken to maintain our tax base while retaining the beautiful rural uh field which is what attracted me is to be in the first place great thank you Sunderland has an excellent team of employees describe the town administrator's role in relationship with department heads and staff how will you promote communication and teamwork within and across departments and from town staff including yourself in the community I believe the most important um role for a town administrative play is that of a uh a bridg maker that of some you can facilitate conversation and I think that the most important attitude to take is that of collaboration so I've been working uh in the town of amoras for eight years um and in that time U I've held a couple different roles some of those roles I have um coordinated the work of different people in trying to accomplish tasks and I've also served as the um the president of our uh Union Union chapter as well as on the exact Board of uh our un local SEIU Local 888 and um in that time I've had a lot of experience coordinating different different problems because um you know Amis isn't a small town as sundland is but it's still a pretty small town and especially in the employee side you get to know everybody and um in my role I think I was able to see a lot of the uh a lot of the communication that wasn't being made a lot of the connections that weren't being made a lot of the miscommunications that arise I think a lot of conflicts in the workplace often come from miscommunication um people's goals not being aligned they may not have a good sense of what other people are thinking um and so if I were to be selected as a town administrat I think my first priority would be to facilitate that communication facilitate um those kind of bonds and make sure everybody's in the same place I mean I think it's important to take a Hands-On attitude um you know the beauty of working a town like sun is that you can get to know everybody on a personal level you can get to uh you know know exactly what everybody is working on and I think that's the most important role for a town administ to play is if you have a good sense of um the challenges everybody's facing what everybody's working on the struggles they may have um then you can get a good sense of of you know if there are problems that come up how those problems can be addressed um they often just come from miscommunication and uh facilitate those problems being solved great thank you Dan great sure understanding the town administrator's responsibility for handling multiple priorities at once tell us what tools you use to organize your work when there are competing priorities in sometimes agendas well that's something that I have a lot of experience in um my current position I serve as a licensing coordinator so I not only support the board of license Commissioners I also oversee the rental registration program um I deal with different business owners who may be coming in and trying to start a business and helping them with whatever licensing uh they may need um I'll facilitate the communication between them and The Zing board and inspection services and um you know there's a lot of different places that that business owners have to uh have to interact with town government to get their problem solved so um I have a lot of experience juggling different things and on top of that you know I mentioned the union work I've done um so I often find myself juggling many different things um a lot of different conversations going on in the emailing box a lot of voicemails to get back to um and I think uh you know taking a taking a hands- on attitude is the most important thing in terms of specific tools I've used you know I think things we all know to-do lists uh keeping track of things in your email inbox I know that someone's lucky enough to have an administrative assistant within the the select board and the T administrator um which can certainly help keep priorities on track um there's a lot of different things you need to use because a lot of um situations that develop in municipal government are very multifaceted um something may come up and there's a lot of different threads you have to chase down with uh what you know looking into what regulations are looking into how they may interact state regulations local regulations trying to trace all those things down um so I I guess to answer your uh your fundamental question I think there's a lot of uh a lot of different tools you have to use you have to be a be able to use all of them um and uh I'm confident I'd be able to handle that all right thank you wonderful all right our last uh question is do you have any questions or anything else you'd like to tell us about yourself that you would not have already covered a question I have is um you know I've I've reviewed a lot of the recent select board meetings in the town of sundland um and there's a lot of different things you guys are working on but I'd like to know what do you guys feel like are the the biggest short-term and long-term challenges that are before the town it's a good question um one of the biggest short-term challenges that I see is budgetary concerns um there's been arpa money for the last bunch of years that helped Shore a bunch of town budgets up for the last four years um that is no longer going to be available um and that has largely hidden a budget shortfall for the last bunch of years that we are no longer going to be able to hide um so figuring out this coming year and years going forward um how to make that work within the confines of proper 2 and a half within the confines of the fiscal ability of the town to pay um that's I think our biggest challenge about of anything I agree anything you want to add Crystal or no I agree I think that's going to be a it's going to be a tough y you know that's going to be that's going to be a challenge for us oh I'll second that 13 yeah shortterm and long term because once you have a structural deficit you know that that's going to that's going to carry and you have to do things every year to try to mitigate that that structural deficit heading into the next year so I think you could probably look at that challenge as a long a shortterm and a longterm a long-term issue one of the other big issues that's not just affecting Sunderland but it's affecting a lot of rural towns in western Mass is declining enrollment into schools um increasing costs for um transportation for students things like that um where there's there's you know a city like Boston's budget the amount of money that goes to the school is a small part of that so if that fluctuates a little bit it's you know not that big of a deal to them for us we had our our busing go up by like 70% this last year or something like that and that's all of a sudden like well what does a town do and one of our biggest line items go by 70% um so yeah budget concerns are really probably always going to be the biggest the biggest thing um luckily besides that we don't have a lot of contentious issues in town which makes my job a lot easier um but uh no really budget is and always will the big one yeah I can really understand where you're coming from with the AR the problem I mean I took a municipal financial management class this spring um Town Administrator position is something I've been interested in for a while and somewhere where I personally a little bit weaker in my work experience I believe is the is the the budgetary side so I took this course to try to try to sh up on that and get a little bit bit of a better sense um you know how that all works and the best practices and that so I was I was able to take different classes with um you know many different town administrators across the state and um accountants collectors comp controllers resources everything and something that everybody was saying was the challenge that as arpa is starting to dry up I think a lot of towns are in that same position where there were some things they could afford and some holes they could plug for a while but it is coming to an end I I think that's going to be a big challenge across the Commonwealth and I think that on the municipal level everywhere it's going to take a lot of hard work to figure out how to how how to tackle that I me curious to see why why would the school bus budget go up 70% in one year was there so the short answer is that the the contracts are negotiated I think it's every six years or some some arbitrary number of years um and the last time they had gone up was before covid before um inflation before all the things and so we were getting a deal for a couple of years there um and but like the arpa thing that was sort of a for a bunch of years we didn't have a real um honest expectation of what the price what the cost increase was actually looking like until it jumped up by 70% in one year where if we had been more Forward Thinking those last five years or so we could have maybe anticipated it more and had a plan um but yeah I mean even even that being said we were thinking 20% we were thinking something like that and then it came back at 76% or something horrible like that it was it was like well I don't know what to say about that but it it also wasn't like there was other options that were cheaper you know there's only so many bus companies and there's only all of them raised their rates by a huge chunk so um that was a particularly out of out of left field kind of thing um but what we need to be expecting to see for the next chunk of years is uh with with un with unsound uh inflation numbers with um supply chain issues across the world with unstable political stuff in parts of the world and whatnot um you know we need to do a better job in the in the in the future with preparing for the unprepared um which I know and the and the onus is on the town to to one of the board's last questions the onuses on the town to look at any opportunity to generate Revenue to expand the tax base to be able to absorb some of these some of these unpredictable um cost increases so that is absolutely another challenge that would be longterm for the town it's not just um you know it's not just uh visioning it's more you know really visioning with a plan really with with a goal in mind that you're going to do something about expanding that tax base or generating revenues in some way that you know credit to this board um they recently signed a host Community agreement um there is going to be a recreational marijuana facility coming into town that's just a small little piece of commercial development that that Sunderland needs to to broaden it its tax base yeah and and there is such an uncertain environment municipalities these days I mean speaking of marijuana that's something I've worked with as well and I know that there's recently some changes to the uh equity and transparency standards in the CCC that reduced significantly the amount of money that a local municipality could take in from post Community agreements um yes that's something we've been dealing with in ammer yeah oh yes um we have some time for more more questions do you have anything else that you'd like to ask the board about the nature of uh the town our priorities anything like that yeah I mean I think it's um it's great to hear the dedication you guys have to uh to tackling these budgetary issues I wonder what do you guys think I mean Mr Murphy I read an article um that you were mentioning I think from a couple of years ago about creating a uh a uh a multi-use you know bike lane coming up through uh you know kind of alongside North Pleasant Street in Amis up to Sunland I thought that was a great I actually know exactly the the right way you're talking about because um I'm a bike rider myself and I I've ridden up there almost got lost a couple times I thought that was a a wonderful idea but I wondering what are some of the ideas you you all have about um about trying to expand a tax base um so one of the things that we're in the middle of going through right now is a vision sorry A Village Center visioning project um where we trying to decide what we want to see the future of our Village Center um and so many towns Village centers is a beautiful little spot ours is you know a flying a windshield through 116 most people just fly on through town and don't stop um so one of the things we're looking into is how to slow traffic down not just in terms of speed and safety but in terms of making people look out their windows and notice hey there's a cute little shop there or hey I've never been to Blue hering before maybe I'll stop there that kind of thing um so that's one of the things we're looking at is U potentially the traffic circle potentially some repainting some uh trees some some uh you know even just something as simple as uh couple Flags along the side as you go in there give visual cues to people that oh this is a Village Center this isn't just another stretch of 116 um so that's really one of the big things we're doing is working on that um as you mentioned Dan has been very involved in the shared use path which is very exciting for us uh the prospect of being able to have um foot traffic from ammer be able to come into town without having to have people drive in and park here especially the UMass students that opens up a whole slew of people who may not have transportation to get to town otherwise being being able to come the bike path um working with uh FTA and the pvta to try to you know make make the bus routes work well for Town also is is a priority that we we you know are looking at um yeah development of this little Park that we have here right now you know we you know we've had some grant money and stuff where we can put in pickle ball courts but then there's concerns from Neighbors and where's the right place to put them and the noise and you know but again we want reasons for people to come here into the center of town and we want reasons for them to you know this park here it's a wonderful little walk but there's things we can do to expand on it it might not actually bring the park itself you know hopefully you get the Overflow that it brings money to blue herin or it it give some of you know some of the other smaller places in the center of town the ability to increase their business and I think there's also there is room to partner with the library on a lot of these things one of the things that the library has done recently was add um kayaks kiosk with kayaks that you can rent from them or borrow from them to use in that little section of the river um which are right behind the library um and that's the kind of thing that that's going to bring people in they go kayaking they return the kayak well they're hungry now you know just got a bunch of exercise where they're going to go they're going to go to blarin they're going to go to um Frosty they're going to go some like that or they're going to stop at the corner store and they're going to get themselves a snack there so that's the kind of thing that we're looking at is how can we encourage people to get into town to begin with and then while they're here how can we make it obvious to them what's what there is to offer and and get them to maybe spend a couple dollars while they're here you know side grows no I mean there's there's stuff here it's just MH is your driving from UMass to get over the bridge to get on 91 do people even notice that bridgeside Grill is there you know so it's it's getting that that ability for people to actually see that there is something here and and there's also there's not a lot of places to park in town or that kind of thing and so the shared youth path is a real opportunity to get people to come into town um cuz otherwise people aren't staying in town they're driving by you know um so yeah I think I all those things um are really helping to open the future up Dan do you have anything you want to add I don't want to leave you out oh you guys com a good okay stop let take a look yeah those are really are such good ideas and is a beautiful bike ride me I know Lance Armstrong but you know it's nice and flat and level and easy to get to and it is such a beautiful downtown and I think those all those suggestions are very well taken I I remember hearing a couple your meetings you're talking about adding some parallel parking and there's a challenge with that with it being a state road but uh I mean it is such a beautiful downtown I think there could be a lot of success in just getting people to uh to stop and take a better look at it and there's a part of me that would be sad to see that succeed because the Blue Heron into a walk in the park is one of my favorite date ideas but I think for the uh the people of Sunland would be better for if a little more crowded for me so that's very interesting yeah and I'd be happy to help you guys along as you make those plans wonderful I think we have time for one more question from you if you have anything else for us um I guess I would ask what what brought the three of you to public service in Sunderland what what what I don't know if you all three of you grew up here or what made you want to serve in the select Bo he it's a lot of work I I I'll start I don't care I've lived in Central and my entire life um you know we all had those few years during college and stuff where we moved away and you know thought we were going to live someplace else and have this you know Wonderful Life somewhere else and I came back this is my home um I grew up with you know just these family values of this is the town that raised me and educated me and you give back to the town and you know I was on the fire department at one point I was on the I was in EMT at one point and this just became the next thing I figured I'd you know do what I can to give back to the town that I grew up in I made a mistake of coming to a meeting and then Tom convinced me to just run out say um I I grew up in shutesbury up the hill um and so for me Sunderland was always the town you drove through to get anywhere because if you're going to ammer if you're going to Greenfield if you're going Northampton if you're going anywhere really in shutesbury you drive through something to get there and it was always just the most beautiful place to drive through growing up I loved the fall and leaves here Trio Frosty was we call it the greenhous that was like the place my family went for special occasions all the way through Elementary School it was always like the last thing we did summer break before before the school year came back as the whole family would go to Shugo Frosty and you know do that experience uh so I've had a love of sunderlin my entire life and when I um turned 18 and left the the house I did the thing where I you know I lived in Hatfield for a year lived in Greenfield for a year um and then came to Sundin and 21 years now I think in Sunderland just love the town it's an amazing Town um I also am somebody who um worked for seven years in a horrible horrible job uh working as a Comcast contractor is just as bad as it sounds like it is um and that gave me a real appreciation for both how things can be run well by seeing how they aren't run well um and also a real um real strong labor ethic um I ended up becoming the deao union rep for my my guys um and then ended up suing my former employer and to took took them to Comcast to court and all that stuff um and on the H the tale of that um decided to run for state representative because I was all fired up and ready to change the world um realized really quickly that's a lot more of a task to do um but it gave me a good opportunity to meet a bunch of people in politics um that's how I reconnected with Tom fighten kevitz the former chair of the the um select board um and he I think the his exact words were you and I will work together someday um and a couple years later um for I think it was David Pierce was retiring and I showed up to the meeting and Tommy said hey Nate and I said I guess that's me now um so not not actually the most uh you know sexy story of getting here but um absolutely love the town I would do anything for Sunderland hence why I'm here um and also care a lot about how local government is run I think you know all politics is local I can't change the way the world is I can't change the way the country is but I can certaint cly make sure that sundland is the best version of itself that's what really attracted me to local government as well and Dan just Qui yeah came in 2000 raised the family here fell in love with the town and just started serving on boards and as I learned more and met more people um they they you know they wrot me in a little bit but they decided you know I decided to Ser the like board because it was the next place to go after serving on planning consumation Finance just love love government love the small town and settle is a great place if I just add one other thing and that's just that um one of the questions we asked you is how do how do you get more a more diverse group of people to come volunteer for boards like the select board um and that one of the things that that I have seen as a real um opportunity for growth in town is getting more people involved um it's a little embarrassing to say that a lot of the times when we come to the spring time to nominate people for positions we're having to like search in the hallway hey anyone out here want to be nominated for something because there's just not enough candidates and not enough people who are interested and so for me getting more people who want to be involved maybe even having a contested election or two in the future that kind of a thing would be a real I think Boon for the town um so well someone's very lucky to have all through those are very uh inspiring stories through a non-contest election or two it sounds very very lucky do you have anything that you'd like to add about yourself Steve before we conclude here yeah well I guess I guess another thing that uh attracted me to Sunland is um you know I uh I'm kind of an amateur mechanic and I have a couple cars I I fix up I actually bought one from um my friend's my friend's dad and it was sitting in his barn and I brought it back and the oil the oil pressure gauge was showing zero PSI and I figured that must just be a that must must just be a you know a broken gauge or something there's no way it turned out no it was Zero PSI and I had never done much work on an engine like that before but um I I wanted to drive it and so I just read got the book open and figured it out and um I I didn't take it tonight CU I thought it was a little greasy in might stay in my street but I've been driving it all summer and one of my favorite places to come is uh up 116 and then down through 47 because it is such a beautiful area and um you know I'm I'm I'm younger than some of the people you might have applying for um I have a lot of experience in am but not extremely broad-based in other communities and um but I think I do have that Hands-On get it type of attitude the energy to help to do it and um you know the cont the energy of the three of you is certainly contagious and uh I'm uh very excited to to speak with the three of you and um I hope that uh you'll consider me and I'd be uh I'd be honored if you were to select me to assist you because I I think this is a great town and um it'll be very big shoes to fill with Jeff and Margaret but well thank you very much um we appreciate you coming would you like me to just recap the process um the board is going to be conducting the interviews this evening and then I I because we do have an existing vacancy here the board um will be moving um expeditiously to um to decide on um a candidate that they would like to make a uh conditional offer to uh one way or another all finalists are going to uh receive word from the town as to um the status of the board's of the board's decision excellent okay well it's really been a pleasure to speak with the three of you your like I said before your enthusiasm is contagious and it really is and um I hope to hear back from you soon thank you very much let me speak with you abely pleasure to meet you toel you sir nice to meet you pleasure to meet you take care great seeing you Steve you too all right thank you very much so we've got five minutes for our next one all right that was a nice discussion I enjoyed hearing from the board too about your reasons for wanting to to be board members that's um that was great definitely a boon in his in his favor is the questions he asked were very well thought out and I was you know appreciated them so definitely a good [Music] thing all right well we could have could have recessed but today is my my husband's in my 36th wedding anniversary wow congratulations sure he's home watching something he's not watching thatat congratulations congratulations oh thank oh thank you time flies yeah yeah Ben got his permit today oh yeah what about Elsa Elsa got hers two weeks ago or so oh did you yeah so if you see the the car driving really slowly around the call the stay far away from him so who's up next Rebecca Torres Rebecca okay yes y so I I saw Michelle in the passenger seat but I have no idea who is driving today not today this was a couple weeks ago that been Elsa going around the called theck real slow Y and I thought good for you guys I have to say if we have to teach them how to learn a drive having a culd theck or having two culde sacks to do it in is just amazing because three cars a day that passes in front of our house and as long as she avoids those three cars she's fine but yeah both of them both of them are learning now they're going to start luk up in Greenfield this winter do their driver's ad test apparently us parents also have to do a driver's ed class as well really oh they've changed that rle I remember those days when my kids won I had to go did you really yep it's only one night yeah oh maybe then it was so long ago for me don't so my kids went right on Main Street there was like this little oh strip Herms restaurant or something used to be in there and okay we have our next finalist hi Becky hi uh this is Rebecca Torres Becky currently serves asbury's long-term Town Administrator having held the position since 2009 prior to becoming the Town Administrator she served as shutesbury select board chair from 2002 to 2009 and as its finance committee chair from 1994 to 200000 Becky holds a bachelor's degree in economics from UMass ammer good evening everyone welcome wonderful thank you for having us uh so I'm going to start off the only one that bought this bright green that's um before we started we like to just introduce ourselves I'm Nate wearing the chair of the select board um I'm Crystal J CH BL I'm the vice chair good I'm Dan Murphy the Clark hi Dan so we have seven questions that we're going to ask you today um we'd like to have you give us as best of an answer as you can give us um be honest and if we have any followup questions or anything after that we will we will ask them or any qualifying questions our first question is please give us your impressions of Sunderland tell us why you want to work here and what you will bring to our town that may improve it um I think the best way to start is I was talking to my mom about suland and she said you know the nicest people live in Sun and I was you know I I knowing growing up uh in well living in chatsbury in the neighborhood Sunderland has always been a destination point or you know things are happening here but you've got such a mixture of an agricultural Community with uh the professionals commuting into amers you've got um all the student populations one thing she's very has um has some of but not to the extent the housing facility ities that you provide for our extended Community really make a difference and to be able to do that and still maintain a residential Suburban feel and um with all the students here is is a remarkable thing and I think for me um having been in shets very long time um most of the major projects I've worked on are coming to fruition and the challenges here seem um seem exciting because it's it's facing the reality of growth and learning how to you accommodate the different needs that people have for uh for services but also for keeping zoning at at at using zoning to keep growth from destroying the values that people have here and it's been clear that work has been done to um hold on to history to hold on to um the rural character um you've got so many fields behind Suburban developments you've got opportunity for you know more growth but it I'm sure it has to be very carefully done um and the last part of the question was how might I impact that I think yeah um I think I would work to listen to the vision of the population um to help support the select board in their needs to uh take on new projects I know that you're faced with development Economic Development and but how you respond to it um how zoning can be U utiliz to to Really build um protections and structures I noticed you also had a battery uh solar battery on your amendment to your zoning this year um so it's clear that protecting the people is important um and protecting the land is important I know the people are concerned about solar and it its potential to devastate and er Roe population but it's a fine balance about of appreciating solar and making sure it's done correctly so you don't end up with the erosion problems or any other disasters from from utilizing that development so I think I would be a bit of a Watch doar Dog on zoning and um checking in with your planning board making sure that any development is done carefully and productively for for all your goals great thank you very much Crystal what is the ideal role you seek for the select board in supporting the Town Administrator to address the community's needs and conversely what is the ideal role for the Town Administrator in supporting the select board I think the select an ideal select board um would be one that is inspired by your work it's such a taxing job it's hard to maintain that excitement sometimes um but I think this community hopefully has been supportive of your work um you need to get the word out about what you're doing um and messaging is very important I think the Town Administrator can help facilitate that and make sure sure um press releases go out and people are aware of the beneficial things um that the commun you know the town is doing the select board if there I've always felt it's the toughest job because you have to put your personal issues aside to some extent you have to think first of the town you have to think through what's best for the town and it might not agree uh with what you personally want to do um but that double check when you have a a strong select board they are Town focused above their own concerns as far as what I would hope to do as a Town Administrator is really bring together uh the volunteers and support them as well as each employee and individual that is working for the town um in shutesbury we have an army of volunteers and I'm sure you have one here um it is it is really important that you keep them in mind um when you're creating committees knowing when to create a new committee um hopefully the Town Administrator can alert you to developments that you might not see or you can alert me to develops I'm the Town Administrator is missing thanks great um what approaches have you used or have you seen used to increase the number and diversity of volunteers serving on committees and commissions um that was a great segue I know it was that next question is G great seg um okay methods well this was kind of accidental but we've had uh the transition of our three major department heads um the well our fourth one is coming at the library but in the last four years we have uh replaced a longtime police chief with a new uh younger person to some extent who really is um believes in community policing she has been inspiring to um a number of people um that have come out and started coming to meetings we had a a police study committee before she became Chief and we drew a lot of new people out in those discussions that and some of them have continued on and volunteered for other things our new fire chief um Lenny zanka has also been recruiting working with the Library he's been attending different Library events and um we have found people you know he has brought in three four four new volunteer firefighters and that has been a godsend it getting new firefighters in this day and age in our community which is probably similar to yours when you don't have people at home very often um some people work remote and we've been able to tap into those folks a little bit so that it's been a younger mix of people but it's been bringing in uh new people and then finally the highway department also we replaced um a longtime 20-year uh veteran in the F in the highway department and we brought in the new person has a he's older but has attracted new young people to that department I think overall all of our committees are gaining ground in younger people I think that there's been since Co there's there's been a renewed sense of volunteerism it feels like we had a lot of people move into town we hadn't had um much turnover in housing prior to covid we did not um our internet service um was turned on in January of 2020 um thank goodness um is that fiber fiber Network fiber networ uh shy. net um went live December and January of 2020 and it was just I don't know how we could have gotten through we couldn't have held Zoom meetings we couldn't have you know people were around the lake were still on dialup um it was a miracle and it's also um brought in a lot of people that weren't able to move to shsb because we didn't have internet so I think it's Diversified you all are using a Comcast you you were able to get a traditional cable TV which we were jealous of for decades um but right now we were able to reduce our rates to I think $75 a month um and we're feeling in control of that and I don't know where the future is for cable um but the initiative to to build your own network is another possibility if needed thank you all right our next question is uh Sunderland is challenged to balance the need for development to increase its tax base with a desire to maintain its rural agricultural Community as Town Administrator how do you address the need to fund continued Service delivery with ongoing funding limitations um well the other difference between cheps fa and Sunderland is your commercial base um we have um you know 50% of shsb is Forest we get some money from the state but we have no commercial base um our tax rate was sitting at 244 um for just three years ago um we we have seen um growth in values so our tax rate has come down but we're still in a pickle there Sunderland having the commercial base potentially uh could build from that um solar um Pilots are another potential option that's the only one sheets veryy has [Music] um I think also your school is probably your largest expense um probably about 60% of your budget from what I saw um changes in funding are really necessary from the state you know that we're always hoping it doesn't happen um but I think working together and figuring out different ways to consolidate ammer is struggling uh their brainstorm of the week is to move the Middle School into the high school um but they're desperately looking for a $4 million fix this year so gaining you know if we're able to find a way there's a lot of pressure on the state to find a way for Education because across the board the Regional Schools were in trouble this year um so hopefully there'll be some some solutions coming there but other revenu streams I think we'll have to look making sure that all your Parcels are fully um being taxed appropriately is a concern I did not determine um who you're using as your assessor typically um Consultants have been brought in when you and when you don't have an administrative assessor I don't know your situation there because I didn't see uh an administrative assessor um or a consultant so I'm not sure I think the assessors use a number we we using a Patriot Properties at the moment for the the cards and there are a few other Consultants um that the assessors are working with for um inputting building permit data into the assessor system and things like that okay yeah you just want to be sure that you're fully um capturing capturing every dollar that is due you and that that would be a a top priority to to review um I already had a little conversation with Margaret about your tax collection which I guess was struggling for a little while but you seem to have come to terms with that and that's that's great um shsb has been spoiled we just had to extend our um longevity to accommodate 50-year longevity because of our tax collector um she's she's been running a 99% collection rate for 40 some years so um that's always a good thing yeah yeah W okay sundland has an excellent team of employees describe the town administrator's role in relationship with department heads and staff how will you promote communication and teamwork within and across departments and from town staff including yourself to the community um staff is critical they need support at all times I have an open door policy in shsy um it takes more time but I make it a priority to stop and listen um department heads don't come if they don't have a reason and um I think it really helps Foster respect and understanding employees are the backbone of your work the select board support of your employees is critical and um and you must be doing it or you wouldn't have such a good team of employees um employees are in Municipal work tend to be uh Workaholics and more dedicated than some other people so you have to sometimes make sure they're taking care of themselves um and check in that way I I you want to make sure people don't work themselves too hard y um I have worked a lot with our Highway uh superintendent and the department so we work on different different projects and and getting to know the crew is really important because I always have somebody I can get an answer from and it's a small town so you can't can't know the superintendent without knowing the whole crew there uh you have a similarly sized Highway Department it's like three or four individuals and so I which is remarkable because you have 45 miles of Road and I I think we only have about 30 the difference being we have half dirt roads and I couldn't figure out how many miles of dirt roads you have and I don't think it's very many not very it's the couple up 47 yeah maybe not as much as as shy right um but think um teamwork is critical you have to bring people together and I think that having department head meetings regularly really will will help sustain that I imagine it's probably being done um and as far as brainstorming for bringing the um people together we have an we have regular Emergency Management meetings quarterly now um we used to have them monthly but we didn't have the need luckily I think that's another area where the select board working with the department heads on that it it's it really helps make people ready to act when you do have a problem um because you're already familiar you know each other um you've probably done different projects together so there's a lot of ways to bring people together okay um understanding the Town Administrator responsibility for handing handling multiple priorities at once tell us what tools you use to organize your work when there are competing priorities and sometimes agendas um well just basic to organize the work just basic calendars and project lists and with priorities stated but most importantly like on a given day it it's really difficult um to achieve that list you wrote the day before I mean I I at this point I want I write a list for the week um because I can check off maybe three items a day um to get because there's new things new developments new problems new phone calls that have to be attended to and then um try to catch up early mornings on things that you can't get done when the door is open great thank you thank you Dan wonderful all right um our last question is a little more open-ended uh do you have any questions or anything else you'd like to tell us about yourself that you may not have already covered I want to brag about one thing please do well um two weeks ago my mother again my mother um was named the oldest person in lever the select board came out and awarded her a cane pin and it was so lovely and you have the original yeah we have one on the can oh that is so marvelous no sh fa lost their cane qu I know while back so that is wonderful to see so we actually when we award it we bring it they get it like for their birthday party celebration and stuff but then we have we have to go get it back so we can we we we maintain the the we kind of keep it the idea yeah the pen is lovely that's ongoing but it was really a wonderful um event the Le Select Bo came and spoke with her and it it was just it was great um I don't why that came to mind but um oh but that's a small town thing that you don't see in when we got the opportunity to go give up the cane was it last year that was one of the highlights of of my time I've done it twice I've only done this last time yeah yeah but yeah it's definitely one of the fun things and that's one of the nice things about selectboard is a lot of paperwork a lot of budget a lot of stuff like that but every now and then you get to do something of fun a good social people thing yes um do you have any questions for the select board anything you like to know about the town anything you like to know about us in particular our priorities anything have you all established a list of goals for the year or um we don't NE year haven't had Town Administrator for three months I'm sorry no and it's a fair question and honestly um no we haven't I think largely our goals have been to keep the town running and if we accomplish that and we have five minutes after that to do something else great um but it's a good question and a good thought for once we do settle on a Town Administrator sitting down and having that conversation with the administrator um to figure out what we do want to accomplish yeah I mean I think we have things that we know we kind of sitting on the back burner kind of waiting um because they'll take you know it's not fair to Margaret it's an interim to say hey start running with this when she's not going to be here long enough yeah you know to follow through and it it's just you know with limited time and stuff you know like we have we have grant money and funding to put pickle ball courts in here at the um at the Riverside Park but then there's some controversy over the noise and the abutters and you know and unfortunately it's been a problem in many communities right with the pickle ball courts and and the noise and and like that's something we really need to find a solution for you know we need to figure out what the best way to proceed because the town wanted it there's the grant money there's so there's things like that that are kind of sitting on the back burner until we have somebody that can take control of those and run with them you know um we were talking about we have the there's a visioning for the center of town how do you turn the center of town into a center of town where you know you having been a longtime person in this area you know just looking for ways and a new set of ideas you know because a lot of these people have been working on this for a long time um so I think there's always this list of things that we just haven't been able to prioritize right now because we need some you know to to be able to say okay this is you know what we really like to see next happen I would like to see us as a board get to a place where we're a little bit more preemptive than reactive right where we're rather than just what are we dealing with now whatever disaster fell in our lap this last year like oh it's the budget oh it's this I'd much rather have get to a place where all that stuff is much more sort of settled and and you know don't worry it's it's it's moving along to give the board more opportunities to think those big questions of what do we want to do um we spent a lot of our time figuring out how we're going to balance the budget or figuring out how we're going to be able to you know overcome issues with the school or overcome issues with Town departments or whatnot um it's definitely a goal of mine to get to a place where all of that is 60% of our time and we have extra effort and time and energy to be able to think about the improvements of the Town things like the visioning that's great but what's the next thing after that we don't know yet because we're not thinking about it yet so like you know having that not just the the immediate thoughts in mind but also what's our fiveyear plan what's our 10year plan what's our 50-year plan you know what's the town going to look like in 50 years I have no idea you know if you went back 50 years and asked the people 50 years ago what was started look like in 2024 it's not going to be what it looked like today and so trying to figure out how to make plans for things like roof on schools and and that kind of thing um I'd like us to get to a place where we have more capacity for that kind of thing as well so it's a goal Dan do you have anything you wanted to add well I think we're doing good yeah coming up with I love idea of comprehensive plan at some point in the future yes that is a yeah that is a really good point too a comprehensive plan updating the master plan or at least um um phasing um master plan chapter updates yes you know I think that would go a long way to this longterm long-term visioning long long-term planning in town when was the last update to the master plan I think it's been uh years yeah I think the housing production plan probably would have been the most recent one because of sugal not sugala States because of the large Sanderson no the large scale development down near the line I think that probably was addressed back then but um all the different chapters need to be to be looked at and and also 116 Flats is that yeah cha stat no it's not cha States yeah also for context we're a very new board four years 3 years and two years um and so there's a lot of maturing that the board is doing also and so one of the the advantages of having a new town minist coming in is it gives both sides an opportunity to sort of start from the ground up and be able to not rely heavily on how things have been done for a long time but more get a chance to discuss how things should be done in the future and how we can improve on things and what not so there's definitely um some excitement there for that kind of thing as well um any other questions for the board um the 55 and um housing area where is that going to be located that is Sanderson place so that is constructed um it's not fully valued yet which is interesting I've been on that yes but it is constructed and occupied so that is located um just a little further down uh 47 from um The Blue Heron okay and it's it it's a it's a beautiful yeah it's a beautiful development it was developed kind of in harmony with the agricultural um the agricultural rural feel of the community so it's honestly the views from that building are amazing and make make sure make everybody jealous because at one side you look and you see Mount Sugarloaf and the mountain range and you beautiful you know sunsets and sunrises or whatever direction that is and then the other direction is just out into these open beautiful fields that just go out behind the the Heather place um condo Buton yeah it's just amazing location um the residents there are very lucky we got the opportunity to go there and I was very impressed with it I had a resident come in about a week ago who who told me how lucky she was she just wants to stay in her in her unit and just look out the window she says it's absolutely gorgeous so I think we have some happy happy residents there which does raise a question that you know in town is how do we how do we increase the number of available units for seniors because we we have a lot of we have an aging population um many of whom would like to stay in Sunland long term may not basally be able to do that in their houses long term so how do we improve our stock of over 55 housing subsidize housing that kind of thing in order to be able to keep sundling the place that these people are able to age in place in um So that obviously the sers and place is a huge deal for us because that's a bunch of units but that's not the end of the story that's you know the beginning of the story for us about how to figure out how to get more housing like that um and that's a great example of of a place where Grant money and a bunch of community organizations and and sundland you know members of the board and members of the planning committee and like that all came together to make something quite unique and amazing happen so um definitely a a a footprint for what we can do in the future in that respect for sure to do more of Y it's very exciting and um everybody's watch looking at their watches no okay oh yeah no we're just looking to see if we have time for another question or where we yeah just be respectful of of our of our next candidate time no we we definitely still have uh good old six minutes or so so if you have any other questions for the board um education yeah the frontier your relationship with Frontier is a pretty straightforward agreement where you just split um the the assessment cost yep it's it's done by number of students attending so if fluctuate year to year dep Bas on how many students from Sunderland are going then also through three other towns um but yeah it's a straight I think sunderland's share usually end being right under 30% like 27 28 29 something like that percent um but yeah sometimes that goes up and down um and then we do also have a relationship with um Franklin Tech up in terms Falls we have a number of students who go there both my kids are actually going there currently um and so we also have assessments that come out of Franklin Tech as well as the normal school choice and whatnot and then we have um South County EMS our ambulance you know we have an assessment on that the um Senior Center so yeah we have a few things that are regionalized besides just the school yeah from a town minist standpoint though a lot of the administration of the TR toown quad town organizations falls under deerfields perview okay um they're the largest town and they do all the Personnel stuff and that kind of thing and they all reside in their Town yeah and and exactly they're physically located in that or at least the senior Cent was Prior and not that's not to say there isn't a certain amount of work involved with maintaining that relationship and whatnot but a lot of the day-to-day running of those departments luckily Falls outside of our borders yeah that's noting that some of the work done in jsb like the fire department and the Council on Aging you you have y administration of um in we've had this ongoing uh issue in the amers region where um there's shsb has finally successfully about four or five years ago gotten the um the region to adopt the statutory formula and the reason for the push was we have great disparities in wealth in the four towns in that region um in your in the frontier region it seems like people are pretty much on an even footing like if you're 30% maybe deerfield's 40 deerfield's closer to 50 we're in like the 30ish or 25 to 30-ish we're the second second largest community in front yeah is it an issue with I mean if the in your community do people argue about assessments or they get along well so I think luckily the four town are very equally situated financially both in terms of our town budgets and also in terms of the average wealth and the average income in the average you know very similar it's very similar not perfect by any means um I think if you if you talk to Conway they might disagree with us a little bit on that um but so so we don't have necessarily the same kind of discrepancy I know I know the ammer school system very well and ammer is this huge thing with UMass and all these colleges and they have pil of money and I know that an AM Town ministrator might argue with me about how much money they have but compared to to Sho lever or pelum they absolutely have piles of money and so I I certainly understand that that Dynamic is wildly different luckily than our Dynamic um there's not at least in my three years here there hasn't been any contention between the towns about any of these items um I think largely the way we have it set up is Equitable and fair in a way that all three all four towns agree on um and because of that you know yeah I think we see it probably the most with um Tech with Franklin County Tech because you know again that's a bigger and I don't think it's contentious but the sunderland's assessment per student ends up like higher maybe than AOL and oranges and wend and you know last year we were like three times oranges assessment per student because of the income difference which and to be honest you know this is going to sound weird coming from the person whose job is to to manage the budget of the town is fair we have more money in town the average person in souland has more money in town than the person in Orange does and so I'm not necessarily arguing with the fairness of that um but when it does come up that's one of the things in town meeting people go wait a minute why are we paying three times as much as they are you know um so yeah that that's at the Franklin tech level that's more of an issue luckily we're not talking about a huge volume of students you know 10 students or something like that go to Tech from Sunderland so um it may be a small contentious point but nothing that's you know but that's where we see that income disparity is more attack yeah outside of the South County when you start to do the larger Franklin County population Sunderland Deerfield weightly and and um Conway start to FL to a different side of the total equation um that's good one quick question oh please um the role of the select board in the budget in shoot sh shb primarily the the finance committee handles the budget and and presents it at town meeting they take you know they work you know select board reviews it and they have conversations about it but for the most part it's handled by the finance committee and I don't know if it's the same here or not um I I would say that the select board is a lot more Hands-On of the budget in our end um which it is in a number of towns um I mean I would certainly approve of leaning on the finance committee a little bit more on something sometimes you know anything I can shift off of my plan them would be a bad thing um but that being said uh December through March for the select board is busy um a lot of meetings a lot of things to talk about a lot of um discussions about things like capital projects um you know so Capital plan and updates yeah um we do have a capital planning committee that has a member from the select board a member from finance a member from planning a member from a bunch of other other departments and whatnot um that makes suggestions to the select board in general but uh a lot of the the finance committee has their say and everything but a lot of stuff comes through us either concurrently or before it goes to them or or whatnot um so definitely a lot more involvement and I would say that you used to in trsb um not neily a bad thing no but the Town Administrator will play a a critical role in assisting the finance committee with the the budget document bringing it to the select board for review and disc discussion um organizing the budget meetings and and right keeping that running total of where we are you know how many how many tens of thousands do we need to shift around you know yeah yeah and our last time to minister ow have to say was great at that was you know every week he had an update with you know all right you know we got a deficit of this many 100,000 and now we just closed it and you know I have one of the things that is a good is going to be a good thing for us is that we had some issues with Accounting in the past that made it hard for us to do the budget because we get town the free cash would be certified like a month before before town meeting um we have switched to a new um accounting firm aony and aony they have been wonderful they've gotten us up to date they've been Johnny on the spot about things and we are very confident going into this next couple of budget Seasons that we're going to have free cash certified much earlier that we're not going to have to try to free cash just got certified if I had a report tonight I would have amazing which which I mean this is literally six months before we two years ago we had it was February it was literally February like 23rd or something like that it gotro we actually had had a conversation about pushing back town meeting because we weren't sure we were going to have freeat certify by then and so the good news is we're past that particular bumpy stretch um and so we actually have really good accountants that are do a really good job of getting us that information as you can see in October which is fantastic um it gives us a lot more breathing room for the budget um and so I'm very confident that it's going to be good year so we're going to have to wrap it up um sorry I'd like to I'd like to though just give a very brief recap about the board's process so um obviously there is a vacancy in the Town Administrator position here so the board is going to proceed um without delay in discussing um um their you know their options moving forward um and offering uh conditional employment to uh to a finalist um One Way or Another all finalists are going to hear from us um with this with the status of the board's decision and I think the board just is going to proceed without delay yes we're going to try to do our due diligence as fast as possible my interview nice to meet you and I love your choice look at that look at that that's what I said I mat mat bye Becky nice seeing you have a great one thank Youk you her seemed to show up on the camera like not as um traffic you know like the best they wear in the traffic the high visibility a woman walking all around the field out there I could have lend it to her take care Becky nice seeing you all right all right so our last one is going to be Andrew yes wonderful this has gone very well yes I think it's fabulous discussions [Music] as soon as I hear footsteps coming up here I'll start the introduction keep us moving sounds good [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] okay the board's next finalist is Andrew LaVine Andrew LaVine currently serves as the chief of staff in the city of Newburyport um he's he's done this he's been in this position since January of 2022 prior to this his Public Service experience goes back to 2016 where he serves served as the town of Bill rickus director of administrative Services operations officer and program and project manager of the transformative development initiative at the Massachusetts development Finance Agency and as a decaka summer fellow in the governor's office Andrew holds a master's degree in public policy from Harvard University's John F Kennedy School of government and a bachelor's degree in government with minors in Theology and Italian from Georgetown University Welcome Andrew Well thank thank you for joining us today um off with some introductions I'm Nate wearing I'm the chair of the select board I'm Crystal Drake John I'm the vice chair I'm Dan Murphy the clerk wonderful so we have uh seven questions prepared for you today uh we're going to go take turns going around and asking them if we have any clarifying questions that we'd like to ask to clarify something from something you said um we will do so but otherwise we're just going to go around and start asking some questions all right our first question is uh please give us your impression of Sunderland tell us why you want to work here and what you will bring to our town that may improve it fantastic well thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to interview tonight uh enjoy process so far and it's been great meeting Dad and Margaret and I really appreciate the opportunity to meet all of you and to get to learn more about you in Sunderland so I try to do my research as best as possible I've read your annual reports your budgets and if there's really one way to know a town is by reading their budget to a certain extent so you were scared there you go um no so I I actually really appreciate the challenge statement that you put together as well because I think it it summarized you know how you think of this community and how you think of some of the the challenges that are facing you right now and you know in my career I've been able to work in a lot of different communities I as Margaret was saying I worked in at Mass development where I worked across the state in the the Gateway cities um which brought me out to places like Fall River New Bedford chapi Lawrence Springfield and then I worked uh in Bill riess and and then Newport this would definitely be the smallest community working but I think there's a lot of things that about it that that really intrigue me first of all the rural identity and really just an overall sense of understanding what this community looks like to to the residents people who choose to to live here brought up here and want to raise a family here real sense of identity of what kind of place it is while at the same time understanding that that that identity is in some ways changing is some ways potentially depending on your perspective threatened that's something that I've dealt with a lot in in nuber Port which has been fascinating it's a longtime blueco collar town that doesn't really look like that anymore uh has a lot of people who've who've moved in and and think of it as a more of a bedroom community and I think that's an identity issue that that Sunderland is in some ways moving uh dealing with so I like working in places that both understand who they are uh but are also interested in know preserving what they have but meeting those interesting development challenges headon and finding ways to finding ways to help help the residents who are already there and those who want to be there make it the best community that it can be I'm Public Service professional I care about working in communities that uh can Thrive with with everyone working together and the other thing that really drew me to Sunderland is the Social Capital here looks like you've got really strong boards you've got uh great volunteer Spirit uh your town meeting looks like it went pretty quickly which is nice from a spirit of of community engagement and early working together collaboration you know that's something that is a little bit missing in some of the towns I've worked in recently and there's defin some there's some strong social capital in some of them but it's not necessarily about what can we do together it's often about how can we get our way and I think uh for a first opportunity to be a Town Administrator I'd love it to be somewhere where we're thinking about how can we make this a better future for all working together and uh I'm sure I'm sugar coding some of the divisions that exist in town it happens everywhere but but from what I've seen it looks like a great place to be wonderful thank you Crystal what is your ideal role you seek for the select board in supporting the Town Administrator to address the community's needs conversely what is the ideal role for the Town Administrator in supporting the select board that's a really great question because I usually think of it as as the latter part of that question first you what can the Town Administrator do for you uh can do for the select board and in turn what can they do for the the people of Sunderland like because I think that's the connector in both ways it's what can they both do to look at how we support the people of Sunderland now and into the future um so I think as long as you're focused on what that ultimate purpose is then then both ways it's it's going to work well so to actually answer the question um when you think about what are things that the town administ that the select board can do for the Town Administrator so I I think it's really helpful uh when your select board articulates goals when they talk about um and they take that time to either through a retreat or or or just an annual process look at what the things that that they're trying to accomplish that year I think I think having big picture goals is helpful for a Town Administrator it's ways that you can look at a bringing that into every aspect of what you're doing um you know if the town already has a comprehensive plan or or has you know other documents that that it's done working together I think that can serve as a really strong template to work with and finding ways to build in you know check-ins each year or even more often about how are we meeting those goals together I think that's really helpful obviously strong communication both ways uh we we'll help both the select board and will help the the Town Administrator I'm a big fan of of setting up regular check-ins so I I'd want to make sure I'm checking in at least weekly with with the chair and then probably weekly as well with the other members on items that are in their portfolio that would be important to me to make sure we have those regular times so we can all make sure that um we're staying on top of what we're doing um and understand what we expect from each other I say from the very start the the other thing could be really helpful is just getting a chance to really listen to the select board and understand you know what your not just goals but your values are and how I can work to to help further those so I think but uh certainly strong communication setting out goals and then setting that regularity I think those are all things that that help each way um yeah I know that would help me as a the Town Administrator hope to help this thank you Dan great uh what approaches have you used or have you seen used to increase the number and diversity of volunteers serving on committees and commissions great so um it's definitely a challenge you know you often end up with the the same folks coming different things and you at once you know want to make sure that they feel valued and and keep them coming because the lifeblood of the community but you want to try to find more ways to engage people for sure so one thing that we did in in Newber Port this year uh with the new mayor had a opportunity for some new new blood uh last year and then again this year we held a boards and commissions Fair we we opened up the uh town hall for um for all the boards and Commissioners that that operate in town to bring one or two people to represent them and and let people know come on in and meet folks who are working in the different boards and commissions uh that was an idea that I'd had and brought out to the mayor and he he ran with it our Administrative Assistant for for the mayor did a lot of the hard work to bring it all together so a nice nice team effort uh was something that I'd heard of in some other communities that if you can even take that a step further there's a thing I love called the government Academy where uh you run boot camps basically to teach people about how their government works and uh give them some some opportunities as well to learn about with the different boards and commissions doo I love that structure I I think that's great um obviously it helps if you're a town city with more resources uh but if you have great volunteers who understand what they do well it's something that they could take and run with as well so I think those are are two great things that that you can do it's still a challenge to get people to come to something like that so you also want to look for more ways to try to get more Community communication out to more folks um and the best communication technique that I've seen work is putting letters in um in either tax or water bills and if you put you know some some information about open vacancies or maybe information about your upcoming government Academy or or Town Hall open house that can bring a lot of people in as well uh people do tend to read their bills thank goodness uh and they'll often read those inserts that are in there as well so that's a great way because you're reaching basically everybody um who who pays a bill in town um so those are all some things to start with and then of course there the question of you know why might folks not be be joining in the first place they might not feel like these are are for them and you can try to answer what what what that question means to you whether there's some kind of language or access barrier or whether it's just all the meetings take place in the evening and some people can't come to a meeting in the evening would would you consider having some boards that that meet at a different time of day um so lots of different different ways to try to FKS great thank you all right our next question is uh Sunderland is challenged to balance the need for development to increase its tax base with a desire to maintain its rural agricultural Community as Town Administrator how do you address the need to fund continued Service delivery with ongoing funding limitations it's a pretty good question so I think the best thing that a Town Administrator can try to do is is frame these issues for both the for all the decision makers and all the stakeholders in town you know in some ways I'd want to try to offer you know what guidance I can and give some ideas of of what I think could work but I really want to do the research for you and try to find what the best practices out there uh to help frame those decisions for the decision makers um so specifically on this issue you know you want to try to look for Best Practices that are out there look at communities that have been able to find that that divide uh look at what can be done through some some more uh Innovative zoning that's out there uh there there's we've had a lot of luck in in Newport not just luck I think it's been a very successful program through our our 40R smart growth District uh I think that that works pretty well to um help manage that that development while also um just putting in the right places in town and still preserving what we have we have a historic downtown core newre Port if if we were to overdevelop that we'd lose that anim of the town we we lose what what makes it a place where people want to be in the first place you wouldn't want to do that here in Sunderland either you want to preserve the the history and preserve the the rural uh and agricultural animus that that brings people to this place and makes them proud to be here so you'd want to make sure that you're you're looking at the right opportunities that you're you're being proactive you're getting into the details and really understanding implications of maybe any new zoning or any new development you might be courting uh and really trying to to understand how how to do that thoughtfully so for for me as a as an administrator again I'd want to do the research I'd want to prevent uh present you with options that seem to be right and then help you do that you know Community engagement work to really listen to folks about you know what is it that they want to keep what what matters to them I think there's some really good uh Community engagement Tech techniques you can do especially around development just because it's so tangible to people they you know what does their neighborhood look like is one of the most tangible questions and a lot will say they don't want want anything to change I think if you probe a little deeper you can find ways that people can think about things that they'd like to see happen in their Community especially when you present them with those trade-offs you know thinking about would you rather see your taxes go up or would you rather see maybe a little bit more development in another area of town and I think once you present those trade-offs I think it can be be good as long as you're presenting you know a bigger picture you know people just think well the next thing you're going to do is develop you know this area that I care about if you're articulating those values and saying these are the areas that we think right for development these are the areas that we think we need to make sure we're really preserving think people respond to hearing those values great thank you CH Sunderland has an excellent team of employees describe the town administrator's role and relationship with department heads and staff how will you promote communication and teamwork within and across departments and from town staff including yourself to the community I need to say this is something that I would be learning more about for sure and I um would want to talk to some successful Town administrators and really understand you know what they've done talk to current staff who's here and understand from them what they feel like is successful and of course talk to you as a board um I understand that the that there are a few positions that would report directly to the administrator which is great I I have a good amount of management experience um and then there's others that are still reporting to the the uh select board or to their respective uh chairs of different boards or commissions uh but then I would be there to assist them with with their work and and help them uh carry out what they're doing which in a lot of ways is very similar to my current role as Chief of Staff I'm my title has also been called a chief administrative officer so I'm directly responsible for not really managing anybody at the moment which is fantastic but I also am the first call for basically anybody uh who who comes in so the fire chief the police Marshal the um building uh building inspector if anyone has a problem or something that they will need to eventually bring to the mayor they usually start with me first and they'll look for support we'll look for a way to try to deal with an issue whether it's a budget issue um new policy uh a Personnel issue um they'll usually come to me first and we can can start trying to figure out how to how to work on it together so I'm I'm very comfortable with kind of this role of managing while not actually being the manager uh and then I'm comfortable managing as well uh directly um had Direct reports before um and I'm comfortable that position as well great thank you Dan good y understanding the town administrator's responsibility for handling multiple priorities at once tell us what tools do you use to organize your work when there are competing priorities and sometimes Computing agendas yeah absolutely I'm a big fan of what's sometimes named the the Eisenhower Matrix attributed to Dwight Eisenhower where you look at everything on a 2 x two Matrix of what's urgent and important so that that's helpful for me to to key up you know if it's both urgent and important you do it now if it's important but it's not urgent um then the tool you're really using is scheduling you're figuring out you know what what kind of time is going to need to go into something like this making sure that you're scheduling that time for yourself or scheduling you know regular meetings for the the stakeholders that need to complete this together and then uh when possible if if it's know uh if it's uh urgent but not important if you can delegate that's great and then not urgent not important not important but uh yeah so I'm a big fan of of the prioritization tool that it's helpful for me in kind of framing you know what what to be doing because you know time is one of the most valuable resources you have in a in a small town um but between time and and money that's that's that's what we have to work with so is a precious resource absolutely absolutely so so that's that's the first thing I'd say um I'm a big fan of uh my my trell board um that that's a helpful thing for me for my my own personal project management and I've used that in the past just a online platform uh for for setting that up with other departments who maybe have like a lot of balls in the air and are having trouble kind of thinking through you know what are all the different tasks kind of that visual uh can be really helpful to to see what that is so I'll create shared ones sometimes and we'll work through through that together and I'm just a big fan of having deadlines and and setting up timelines that make sense um so sometimes I'll use like little project management software for that or make make a Gant chart or something if I really feel like we have a lot going on that we want to be clear on on what the the timelines are um set up those those rolling timelines uh and hold people to it so I'm kind of comfortable in that that project management uh set I I need to be great thank you all right and our last question is much more of an open indic question uh do you have any questions for us do you have anything else you'd like to tell us about yourself that you didn't have a chance to cover today sure um so I I guess I I've been able to do you know some research and find out what some of the major projects you have going on are but uh I'd love to hear just more about what you view as as the biggest priorities uh and kind of what you feel like would be the most helpful for an administr to take on rather than things that uh May a select board or others would be doing um so and probably getting tired of hearing me say this but our our biggest priority our biggest challenge in town is always budgetary stuff um I mean that probably the case in most towns uh but especially given the arpa money ending no longer having access to that um our transportation for our school which is one of our highest ticket items in a town like ours um just went up by 70 something per last year 7 like 4% something like that like a gross amount heard worse but not much worse yeah um and so you know for us it's we've had razor thin budgets for as long as I've been alive um and going into a a year and years um without the arpa money to artificially fill the gap between you know the shortfalls in town um is going to be a challenge for us so one of our biggest challenges for this fiscal year and for probably the next couple fisal years is figuring out how to how to maintain the budget in a way that doesn't hit the pockets of the people in town more than we have to while also not sacrificing important services in town because you know there's not a lot of fat to to cut out of our budget um so besides that um our big priorities in town include um a uh Village Center re uh revisioning um we're you know our Village Center right now is basically 116 and the side of the road off 116 um we'd like that to feel more like an actual Village Center and give people reasons to slow down and stop you know shop at the stores and whatnot in town um and Danny can go into more detail about this but we also have a shared use path that we're working on with um ammer connecting UMass students via bike through Sunderland all the way into Deerfield and Mount Sugarloaf um really opening up a lot of Tourism bike tourism for this part of the the valley um any other big priorities that you no just you know again along with the Village Center just you know expanding on what we have here now you know we've got this nice little Park in a river walk and what else can we do to make that attractive to people or Recreation something for you know for families and people to to want to come into the center of town and hang out and visit the local businesses in the Village Center all of this has to do with this ex expanding the tax base or bringing in you know bringing in visitors to the community to help generate um revenues for the town so it is all tying into exactly what what Nathaniel explained the financial challenges we have so we are the opportunities there to kind of build on that and Village Center is a great great idea just be able to to bring out some of the things that you love about the community and bring more people to it so it's something I feel somewhat familiar with the work of mass development that's great Dan do you have anything you wanted to add that I missed no I think it's good I mean really just to get people just kind of driveing through to stop and look around shop and eat and everything use the use a m we got great resource here and we just need more people to know it do you imagine the um Town ad Ministry having a role in kind of that Economic Development work and trying to help with those those issues yeah good I think the former Town Administrator Dan you You' know more about this but I think the former Town Administrator was involved or participating with the Village Center Committee in um through the entire visioning process and was was helping support them you know understanding of course the Town Administrator has the day-to-day a um you know Chief administrator of Officer role and they need to tackle that so um which I would imagine could cause a little bit of strain on the administrator's time but yeah the administrator um Jeff was was very involved in that yeah certainly certainly was yeah and what was the reaction to the uh 2021 rapid recovery plan on the um Village Center I'm just just curious what what folks you know thought about that and how helpful that was as a starting point um I I don't know a lot about that effort but I know that that became the Village Center whole visioning exercise that we're wrapping up now that that was kind of the place where it all started and now we're going through the vision vill center committee to kind of go through and bring it to the next level kind the main road is all controlled by mot right so it's that kind of relationship too we have to we have to think about yeah we the stantech is the company that advises us on that and the stantech guy came out here say I'm not I'm not going to represent his words exactly but something along the lines of I've never seen a more egregious um use of a town by a state than Sunderland having 116 plowed through us because 116 didn't exist I don't know what was it 60 70 years ago something like that um they used to be a nice little me like I was alive you remember that right you've been Town longer than I do you know things I don't know come on and and yeah but we the state decided that they needed a a big big old road from ammer up to 91 and so they basically just took our nice little tiny Road and threw a giant Highway through the middle of it with no no buying from the town really you know and we we've been sitting there for the last you know half a century trying to figure out how do we get back the field that we lost how do we slow traffic down and make it less than just a thorough way through our town um especially because it's not just it was like off the side somewhere like that's our main drag that's where our our church is and our you know our convenience stores and whatnot um and so the Village Center visioning process is not just about how do we make it more functional but how do we how we re recapture some of the feel that we had in the past and how do we you know obviously we don't have a choice about whether or not 16 runs through our town we can't go to the state and say get it out of here that's never going to happen but how can we work with the state to try to take back some of the control we have over part of our town um and make it feel again less like a town that happens to be around 116 as opposed to this is one of our main roads going through town yeah to the Village Center committee's Credit I'm sorry I keep chiming uh to to the Village Center committee's Credit they have heavily engaged Mast do Mast do is very involved in in their their meetings and they're going to be having a community outreach meeting soon yeah so they are getting they are getting a lot of feedback from mot so this can uh potentially um be a very successful effort y that's very exciting on the financial side too um what's the town's kind of Grant situation looking like there a number of things to be able grants we have a handful of Grants um most of our grants are targeted grants for a specific project you know we apping for a grant for this thing for this thing um we do have a couple of um recurring grants things like um we have a grant that the police chief applied to last uh two years ago that provides for a mental health worker to go with a police officer to Mental Health crisis situations that kind of thing um that being said there is definitely the sky is the limit for improving in terms of how many grants we apply for and the scope that we look to apply to um our biggest limitation is your time you know there's one time administrator we don't have a fulltime there's the balance with grants right absolutely you know like we we you get grant money to build something that's wonderful but we have to keep in mind maintaining it um I think that's someplace that not every time not all the time but that kind of falls short sometimes for us is you know we can find the money and we can get the grant to build something but then when again it goes right back to budgeting right we get into one of these tight areas and now you know we're going to take what used to be $5,000 to maintain this and we don't have the money this year so you know we won't maintain it this year we'll do it next year and and that's and there's an additional level of complexity which is that we're in western Mass and Boston is in eastern Mass and so we'll get a grant for something and they'll require that we use their Architects for from Boston for something and then they require that we use this and this and this and in the end like if we had done it ourselves it would be a million dollar project we got a million dollar from the government and it cost $2 million to do it so at that point it's like there there's times where we didn't actually save the town any money we just took control and gave it the state and it ended up costing us that much more because of that and so you also have the opportunity to leverage the resources of some two really powerful Regional agencies the fr the housing authority and Housing and Redevelopment auth andil and RDI was very instrumental in moving the Sanderson place over 55 housing um development forward yeah yeah it's a good point yeah the definitely one of the things that we have for yeah and that's the Franklin Regional County of governers um and government and so that is one of the things that definitely helps to to sort Shore up small towns lack of of Administrators um is we we get some services to them and um some collective bargaining and that kind of stuff to them so that's that's very helpful um and the town Min would definitely be very closely working with the furog um and with other agencies in the area um sundelin is is a green Community uh Sunderland has a municipal vulnerability preparedness plan um which I believe needs to be updated a little bit to kind of rep prioritize some of the um the uh Hazard vulnerabilities uh on it uh in order to get funding trying excuse me complete streets too oh yeah yeah we've done complete streets yeah y that's kind of the the roster ofense yep now we've got some unique um like our Emergency Medical Services are unique here we're regionalized um we have South County EMS our senior center is regionalized um with our school our Well Middle School through high school I do have to say that's another reason why I'd be very excited about working here I'm a big regionalization fan I know it's difficult but I think the benefits are worth it something that I've tried to push for you know even the larger communties I think it can work really well yeah I can tell you I can guarantee you that at one point I thought South County EMS was never going to work and it's one of the it's an amazing service now it's it's becoming a model that other regions are looking at to how they're going to how they're going to make maintain good Regional Services because you can't do volunteer ambulance anymore it's it it's just impossible contracted model isn't always going to work and just the staffing issues we've had in the last couple of years have made that not reliable either ask ask Hadley Hadley I think that that's that's really one of the Silver Linings of all this is that we have a very good group of towns in this area that work very closely together not just the South County but Franklin County in general and not just Franklin County but you know Northampton and ammer and you know there's there's good communication Town Administrator something that we want to Foster is that relationship um and because we have that good relationship a lot of things run smoothly the the frontier funding you know is is not very cont just that kind of thing um and that's definitely I think a perk for the town but also a perk for the Town Administrator is um having those pre-existing relationships already set up um and a real Cooperative feel amongst the towns in this area that networking is so important just for for facing those challenges that you know only those who are in them can really understand I started a Chiefs of Staff Network in Massachusetts uh in the last year to help you know with the networking and you know monthly Discussion Group about different issues going on in in cities in Massachusetts that's been a really help thing for for me and for for the network so it's a thing I like a lot I don't know if you've heard of Stam small town administrators of Massachusetts oh yeah well reputation it does yeah yeah that's uh that's been a very strong organization and and just a valuable Network for for Small Small Town Administrator founding member hey yeah very nice I was involved in the naming of the organization great before I ask him if he has any more questions Dan do you have anything you want to tr on no no I'm good all right I think we have time for one more question from you if you have anything else for us no I I just say is there anything else you feel like I didn't get to touch on my answers here I uh drove a long way and be very happy to answer more questions for a little while just before quite a long drive for you wasn't it yeah um just to address that because I think it is helpful um so my wife and I um have a 10-month old daughter happen to show pictures after the meeting at yeah uh and we're looking for the place to call home right now she's got TI to Western Mass and uh this feels like it would really be a special place to to live out here in the pine R Valley so um we're committed to making the move we're excited about it so I I think this would be a this feels like a right right time right place be here well we we totally agree with you that this is one of the most beautiful special places in the world um amazing schools out here uh amazing people great place to raise kids one of the reasons I rais my kids here as well um but great thank thank you so much for coming in really appreciate it look forward to talking to you again soon absolutely thank you so much process here oh yes I'm sorry I didn't mention the process the select board's process let me just very quickly very quickly so this obviously the the board has the town has a vacancy in the Town Administrator position um so the board is doing its due diligence to try to move as expeditiously as possible and making a decision uh on offering a conditional employment to one of the finalists um and the board will begin discussions tonight and we'd expect I think we'd expect a decision in the very near future all finalists will be notified of the status of the um of the board's decision as soon as the board makes that decision that's fantastic okay well it's great to meet you all great to meet you as well good to see you on the zoom thank you great nice seeing you Andrew take care nice to meet you too in person [Music] all right so we are down to the discussing part I'm very pleased uh with tonight's discussion oh yeah know they they all made it very hard decision so that is definitely thing I mean do we want to each like take and put them in order and see if we agree before we even and then we'll kind of figure out how much discussion we even need to have wonderful am that so yeah if uh if everyone would would you want rank all four or just do number one and number two choice for I would say all four and then you know we could probably go from there and okay if we agree on the top two then all we have to do is discuss the top two right yep [Music] okay do any of the board members have a strong um a strong sense of one of the candidates that you'd like to start with um I'll go uh my top choice would be Nick that was going to be my Top Choice um I think he was very professional I think he has good experience with a similarly sized town with similar um you know challenges to our town um and I felt like his answers were you know appropriate to what I was looking for and whatnot um so so I did number one is Andrew who' you do number one as yeah um gosh that's tough I like I guess trying to think of what we're looking for I want to hopefully talk but I guess we just going to pick one probably went last well no but again we already don't agree so it's going to be a discussion yeah so to be fair Andrew is my number two and so if you guys both have Andrew as number one and I got Andrew's number two I think that that's a pretty resounding first choice I would say um I'm perfectly happy having him as as our first choice um honestly I him and Nick were very close neck to neck with for me in terms of um their history what they can bring to the town largely for me what it really came down to is um I felt like Nick had slightly more experience with our level government um and that agre and I I think that while Andrew definitely can certainly come up the speed and whatnot there is a certain amount of he's used to a higher level of support at his current positions in terms of other employees in terms of larger budgets in terms of larger everything um and just if we were talking about a more seasoned selectboard moving into hiring somebody who doesn't have experience in this particular type of town and things I would be more comfortable um my first priority here was who can we get in that day one is going to be able to pick up run with things and get us to where we need to go um with the least amount of uptick while also maintaining the most amount of long-term potential so that for me that's why Nick just edged out Andrew a little bit that being said Andrew definitely has a whole lot going for her in terms of um skills and knowledge and pedigree and whatnot that um any town would be thrilled to have um not saying not he's definitely an amazing candidate um see I had Rebecca as my number two so Rebecca's a great a great choice also um just like Nick she also has that small town experience um shutesbury is a little further from Sunderland in terms of budget and makeup and whatnot um then Nick's Community is um so which is why I ranked her slightly slightly blow Nick in that respect um but I also think that she she brings a lot of realistic expectations and understandings that I think the other three candidates kind of had a little bit maybe more Pie in the Sky kind of ideas about things she was much more like no I know there's challenges I know there stuff let's let's talk about what we can do about those kind of so she was definitely she was great also um but yeah again for me Nick was the number one um but I'd be perfectly happy to go with Andrew if if Dan and Crystal you feel that that's the direction we should go in well I I do I do say that you know that Rebecca and Nick are the ones that have experience as Town administrators yes I guess you know again we're a volunteer board so there is something said somebody who's done it and knows that walking in the door there not really a big learning yeah but I got the sense that Andrew knew enough to be able to come and probably take care of it but there's definitely something to be said for the experience that the other bring especially Rebecca who's been doing it for a long time and certainly could walk in tomorrow and she Prett once she got to know everybody she be run probably the same I have to say she did definitely feel seem the most comfortable of the four of them in terms of like not that being nervous in interview is a problem everybody gets nervous in interview you know like I'm I'm the first person to be sitting there sweating taing the table um but just that she seemed very much like if if we hired her tomorrow and she walked into the position she'd be starting tomorrow you know what I mean and that that um very little need for getting her up to speed although the same thing can be said for Nick that again the two of them with that experience um you know they give them a a big a big Boon in terms of walking in day one um now I know we don't necessarily want to just entirely py I ize our own comfort and our own expeditious nature you know we also want to be thinking about you know if if they're perfect day one but they're the same person after two years is that what the town needs in two years you know somebody who has more potential long term and needs more time to get the speed may not be what we need necessarily today in October and November but maybe exactly what we need next year and the year after and the year after that and whatnot um so it's tough choice definitely definitely a variety yeah yes yes no they didn't make it easy I was I was secretly hoping that there would be one candidate that was just going to be so obvious that we all be like so it's this person right yeah okay cool let's move on um but no I mean really the candidates all made it very good arguments and very good um you know they presented themselves very well it makes it hard for us to to make a decision there um Dan who was your number two I probably I probably want with Rebecca just because do she have experience you walking in so we do so what we have right now is Andrew is your guys is first and first and first in my second Rebecca is second second and my third um so it sounds like those two are probably the the top two that we're looking at um it sounds like if if the two of you were to choose between Rebecca and Nick you probably go Rebecca um that kind of what it sounds like to me um just based on your your ranking you I know who one two are and so that means he's got to be in your three and fours um that being said you know if if we I I'm am fine with it coming down to Rebecca and Andrew in terms of our top two the question becomes which do we want to have br1 and which do we want to have be um so if that falls through you know I honestly think given where we are in the whole town area demographic looking for Town administrators I think we should maybe pick I know this only has two but I think we should also decide on a third okay you can certainly yeah so yeah I would say I would say Nick would be our third also um no offense to Stephen um but he's still a little bit more rough than I think a board of our current experience needs we need someone with a little bit more experience um you know Steve if you're watching this you did a great job I think you're a wonderful candidate and in a couple years a little more experience in your belt you're going to do a great job great things Town dumler um that being said I think that I think we're all in agreement that our number three choice would then be Nick yes definit so Nick is number three and that will be if we end up needing to offer to a third candidate because of the competition that we have or somebody just withdraws because it's not happens it happens um so the question again becomes Andrew or Rebecca for number one and number two um it sounds based on the initial initial Impressions that Andrew had a little bit of a a an edge um but back to the whole Rebecca and Nicholas having more experience and being able to step in day one I know that's a hard one so I I could easily switch I could easily put Rebecca as my it it's tough because I think these I for me at least Rebecca and an Andrew very much have very different skill sets but their skill sets and stuff are relatively equal mhm um yeah it's very much they yeah they're neck and neck but not neck and neck with the same things you know what I mean [Music] some of your set and some of your set make one administrator um but yeah I think the question that the three of us really need to decide is what is is the experience or the potential the bigger issue and that's not to say that Andrew has more potential than any other candidates does just that he's somebody who needs some time to get up to speed um and does have what's the need time to get up spe them um he doesn't know any of the other Town administrators in western Mass he doesn't know a lot of the the politics stuff like that and not to say that that will take him a huge amount of time or anything like that um but also he's he hasn't been a Town Administrator itself so said his answer to question number five he actually said he was lacking there yeah it would be it's a transition for anyone going from yeah another sector or a larger a larger Community to small town Administration I was one of those I was I was an ammer for years before I came here to to sundelin it does it's a transition um anyway I I this is your decision I do think he's I do think he's amply uh capable of of learning the job and and you know and taking it I my only the only risk I have with Andrew is just looking at his resume it's it's two years here two years there two years there and um you know two years are someone really good is good what we want that maybe what we get but um just just something that and and that's a concern that I have also in terms of you know it be it would not be unfair to say that his resume makes him overqualified for the position is he going to be happy in this position for the next 10 years or is he going to find himself two years from now being in a position where you know my my kid's a little older I'm less worried about you know being there all the time for a a you know young child um and is he going to want to move into green Greenfield or Northampton or Ambush or something like that um I'm not saying there's any kind of foregone conclusion there but that is definitely a concern in terms of whether he's sizing his job correctly for our town or not for his long term um and whether or not that means that we're going to have another Town Administrator search in two years well unfortunately there are never any guarantees any guarantees his references and on on all of their references I pr that question because um Nick was very clear in his screening interview that he wants to be a town manager that's his goal and Andrew is on a stepping stone and he made it really clear and his references made it really clear that he wants to be a Small Town Administrator oh okay and I I had a I struggled with that MH but that came through clearly repeatedly that he doesn't have the visions and he wants to be a regional he wants to be a collaborator in Regional efforts and that's what he wants to be I absolutely see him as being AB abolutely see him as being capable of heading up um Regional initiatives you know with our neighboring communities and um I I see him um able to do that I see him as a and I mean I I think un unfortunately I think Regional you know and again I'll be the first one to admit I never thought South County EMS would work and I have never been more impressed by an ambulance service so I do believe regionalization is for our area unfortunately it's the coming future um I I believe we're going to have more regionalized services going forward so you know I think that's another the other thing I'll say about Nick and Andrew is that they' worked in multiple communities so they bring a breath of different ideas is M that's true no and there is definitely something to be said also for um are you know other two CS we're talking about are moving from a smaller Community into a larger Community having him going from a larger Community into a smaller community means he brings ideas and experience and possibly trainings and whatnot that smaller towns don't have the funds and time to send their to administrators on um so he definitely does bring a different perspective than we're used to um I'm just trying to figure out whether that's the protective we want brings she's innate she gets it innately she does here so long yes yeah um and again that's one of the things with Becky for me is that um she's been in in the game in western Mass in Franklin County for 30 years um not that Andrew can't you know make those relationships real fast but you you've been in Sul so long that when you came into this position you knew Crystal's mom you know I mean all the that feel and that that kind of thing is an intangible benefit that we that we in a small town like this it really matters if it's Boston who you know who cares whether the chief of staff of Boston you know is a nice person you're never going to talk to them anyways in Sunderland this is the first person that they're going to talk to every single time and you know again that relationship building that um Regional knowledge is important to us I just want to note and hopefully this doesn't complicate your your your discussion it see sounds like you're you're all pretty much following the same track but um I just want to say shutesbury um shutesbury has dealt with major P issues which Sunderland is just beginning to see now they have had they have 72 properties that have been affected by by P that is that is massive for a a tiny town so you know we talk about innate it's it's those types of things you know that that handson Hands-On stuff and that's really sort I'm I'm I'm where I'm going is is Rebecca and Nick for that matter bring in our status quo bring in another person who replaces the last person who does the job the last person does and does it the way we've been used to doing it and the question is is that what we're looking for or are we looking for somebody to come in with fancier ideas from a fancier part of the state to to change things um there's definitely pluses and minuses to that you know they bring in knowledge that we don't have but they also bring in preconceived notions and ways of doing things that may not jive with the small town vibe that we have here and do we find ourselves having to push back to the New Town Administrator on wanting to change Sunderland into a town that's more like towns that they're used to I'm not saying necessarily is going to happen but just you know we know what we get when we go with somebody like Rebecca or Nicholas in terms of Nick in terms of you know we know that they can handle a western Mass town you know so it kind of sounds to me um like Becca and um and Andrew are sort of neck to neck and it's a real question of which which direction do we want to go in um do we want to do a quick little informal go around and say how we're feeling one two right now and see if we're all in agreement there yeah I can do that all right um I would say right now I am leaning towards um Rebecca number one Andrew number two I am leaning towards Rebecca number one Andrew number two say I'll con I'll concur okay strugg I'm struggling with leaving Nicholas home table that's all so so Nicholas is going to be our number three um and you know we as has been said number of times tonight this is a very competitive season for Town administrators there are more towns than I can even remember right now in this area who are looking for them um so our decision on 123 may be far less important than we want it to be um that decision may end up being out of our hands at the end of the day um but it sounds like we have a one two three Rebecca Andrew Nick does that sound no you got to say it if you you all have to be comfortable with it you have to be hon be comfortable with it because if if you do not think Rebecca is the right number one choice you have to say it and we can we can keep discussing this well yeah I think it's smooth s I mean it's it's definitely the easy it's easier I mean to just to keep things rolling because she can come right in I definitely agree with that what is it about now you were concerned about Nick um as as oh it's it's the same thing I mean I'm just looking at the I look at the qualifications and the education that they had I know Rebecca brings a lot of strength so I see her as a as a good choice because she she knows the area she knows I expect you probably going to stick stay right here and be happy and uh yeah so I'm fine I'm fine with it I'm fine with that choice now there's no relocation expenses provided no nothing like that that would all be negotiated in the contract if if if there was an Ask yeah you've got two candidates who are fairly local here that you've been discussing the other I I can't I can't speak to that it would be part of contract negotiations but it sounds like that candidate is already interested in moving this way anyways so you know it's it's a lot harder to convince somebody who wants to stay in with Easter Mass to come out here if he wants to come out here already that's going to make it easier but we also never asked Nick that's true he lives in Pittsville it's not yeah that is an over an hour that is true which also is another um benefit of of Rea is that she lives you know 17 minutes that way or something like that um right in the center of shsb so um she's about as loc CL as you're going to get all right so um it sounds like unless there's any more discussion that needs to be done that we have come up with our one two three um for Rebecca Andrew and then Nick I would entertain a motion to do you want a motion for this or oh yeah absolutely one here on the bottom the motion yeah the motion is on the bottom of the sheet and I would ask that the motion off also authorize the chair or another member if the chair is is unable to do this to negotiate the contract terms and bring back recommendations to the board this will alleviate the need for the board to go into executive for all contract negotiations Goa so so this plus authorizing you to do to contract negotiations sorry I was sorry you want us to authorize you to be able to do no I said the chair or another member yeah that's fine got you okay sorry um mine sitting in no no just all right so I'll do the motion then yeah please I move that the board make a conditional offer of employment to Rebecca toras subject to satisfactory reference background and Corey checks and successful no negotiation of terms of employment I would also move that the board make a contingent offer to second choice or to reserve the right for second choice I guess make a contingent offer of employment to Andrew LaVine if okay if negotiations with Rebecca Torres are unsuccessful subject satisfactory reference checks backgrounds inquiry checks and successful not negotiation of terms of employment uh and Chrystal in both in both cases authorize the chair to all right I authorize the chair to enter into negotiations with either well yep with either Rebecca Torres as the first choice or Andrew LaVine as the second choice and bring back what why don't we do a third as well you you discussed that I didn't put it here but I think it's wise I move that the board makes a contingent offer of employment to third choice Nick cako if negotiations with Rebecca Torres Andor Adam Lavine are unsuccessful subject saus Andrew what did I say Adam he's a rockar yeah oh my gosh that's right Adam and true leine are unsuccessful subject satisfactory reference check background inquiry checks and successful negotiation of terms of employment and in all cases the chair all cases the chair will is is authorized to negotiate terms of employment all right we have motion made have a second second all right we have motion made and seconded all those in favor hi hi Murphy all right three nothing thank you very much everybody okay um would the board like me to contact Rebecca or would you like to designate the chair to contact Rebecca I'm perfectly happy to have you go ahead and and let her know okay um you know obviously send her our best and than her for coming in and you know before we go too too far down that or not too far it doesn't matter um what would be typical if she asks for time to think about it um limited it's got to be limited in this case so that's why I'm saying I think we need to come up with or not even I mean give her through the weekend through the weekend okay so if you contact her tomorrow she'll have till till Monday Monday yeah end the day Monday yeah okay and and if she doesn't come back to us or she said know at that point then we move to number two and right and that's why I just wanted to do we need a motion on that uh or no no that's okay I've I understand all right wonderful and then again with whoever you know if it goes to number two or number three it'll be you know the same type of okay all right so I'm going to have us fly through the end of the meeting so we can yep get out of here um so we're going to do a very quick selectboard updates I have nothing Crystal I have nothing Dan um Shor Center is I know the womane I don't I should have a date Mark if you could help me with getting out the date on the next thing narrowing down the selection to two of the three uh locations for the senior center study there's one in weightly there's the Congregational Church in Deerfield and there our basically the sunding property not on Plum Tre so they're narrowing it down to two for some reason they couldn't bring forward the three and that is that's upcoming but I apologize I don't have the exact gate but U that that is coming and people are interested in it and they really feel strongly they should uh definitely let let me let let Margaret uh let everybody know so it's just the place in weight Ley and just the property in Sunderland yeah well they did they have they studied all three and now they're basically trying to now down to two to kind of I think to bring it to the next level of study so they're trying to trying to knock out one because they say they don't have enough money to look it all three so so it's an important decision oh no it's a very important decision but so would the senior center purchase the Palm Tree Road property themselves well at the same time they're looking at doing becoming a Consortium which will allow the the basically to to the Consortium itself to to basically uh do a purchase and finance a building rather than going through one of the towns yeah so trying to figure it all out but as far as the study goes they're try to narrow down to two so it's it's an important decision coming up uh soon and apolog I will make sure I get the date uh to Market to let everybody know when when that next meeting is coming up okay we could put it on uh news on the website as well I'm just wondering about the the Consortium I I don't have that information but uh I mean clearly someone's got to pay for the purchase if the right of course of course of course we come from the talent you know all yeah yeah no as long as as long as the thought wasn't that Sunderland was still going to be interested in purchasing that property because that's true I that's right you know at one point it was a consideration I don't believe I think that my my reflection is the board all agreed that we don't want to be landlords so yeah we don't want what we don't want to be landlords we don't want to be in the business of having to have tenants and and deal with all that cuz that's a whole thing um but anyways uh thank you for the update Dan anything else before we move on thank you we we'll be inviting the uh vhp to come do a kick off uh at one of the next few meetings and I I'll reach out to you name schedu yes and the Village Center committee is going to be having a forum on October 10th this month that's right on the 10 we have a meeting Thursday and then on the 10th we have a big Forum public forum at the library so wonderful thank you very much Dan all right margar any Town Administrator updates covered um I mentioned earlier that free cash has been certified it's about $644,000 I I had hoped that it would be a few hundred th000 more than that but it's 644,000 uh a little plus um we also got word this week that the um the resident whose residential well was affected by is has been affected by uh p um has has acknowledged um um receipt of the uh of the letters from our engineer and the town and has agreed to move forward with the process so we now start um looking into um the poet poet system great that's wonderful news I'm glad that we made contact with them yep all right anything else from you Margaret that's it for today wonderful uh we have executive session on here but uh we don't need to meet because we just did it in public session so no need for executive session um at that uh the last thing before we adjourn is our next regular meeting will be Tuesday October 15 2024 and that'll be our normal 6:30 time at this time I would entertain a motion to adjourn a motion we adjourn second we have a motion made and seconded to adjourn all those in favor I I I three nothing Margaret time is 997