Current Issues and Thoughts
April 7, 2006

The next selectmen’s meeting is Monday, April 10, at 5:00pm. We are starting with non-public sessions on union negotiations and personnel matters, which last until 6:30pm. The public session starts at 6:30pm, according to the agenda. By the way, I got my agenda today, but it is not yet online. Hopefully it will be online by Monday (and the link will work!).

Nominees for Town Boards and Commissions
We will continue our interviews of nominees seeking reappointment to town boards and commissions. We will see Len Harten, who is up for reappointment to the ZBA, and Chuck Worcester, who is up for reappointment to the Heritage Commission. If you want more background on these interviews, please look (on the links to the left) at the Archives for March 31, 2006, and also at my blog.

Internal BOS matters
We will also address four important “internal” matters for the board of selectmen (BOS).

• Vacancy: We will discuss the appointment process to fill the vacancy on the BOS created by Doug Bianchi’s resignation. The BOS has the job of appointing a successor to Doug, who will serve from now until next March when a new selectmen is elected by the voters at the 2007 town meeting. We will discuss the process that will be used to gather nominations and make a decision.
  
  
• Goals: We will review the selectmen’s goals for 2006/2007, which were circulated by Gary Daniels on March 27. I had circulated some comments at that time as well, which were aimed at including the objective of managing the budget so that any tax increases stay in line with taxpayers’ own incomes.
  
  
• Email Policy: We will discuss whether to have a formal, written policy on use of emails by selectmen. We agreed on March 27 that emails should not be used to make decisions or discuss substantive matters with a quorum of the board. I am in favor of putting this policy in writing and also providing that any emails regarding town matters that are sent by one selectmen to any two or more other selectmen (ie, that involve a quorum) should be put in a public file. This way citizens and the press can have easy access to the emails.
  
  
• Ethics Policy: On March 27 Gary Daniels circulated a draft ethics policy for the board of selectmen and other town boards and commissions. The draft is based on the state ethics code (applicable to state employees) effective in January 2005. I want to review the draft more, but one question I have now is whether the ethics policy should also cover town employees.

Town Administrator
We will discuss the Town Administrator’s position and the changes that should be made to improve the effectiveness of the TA position and mesh it better with the BOS’s own approach. We will review the TA’s current job description and the TA’s goals. I am in favor of changing the job description. The current approach makes the TA into sort of a “conduit” between the department heads and the BOS, with little real decision-making authority in the TA position. I will suggest giving the TA clear responsibility, authority and accountability. For the BOS to function better, the TA position has to work like a chief executive officer of a company. The “buck should stop” with the TA on most matters, with the BOS having the role of overseeing (instead of actually executing) the management of the town departments. The BOS needs to have more time for big picture issues and policy.

Other Matters
Several other significant policy matters are on the agenda. We will look at some proposed 2006 wage increases for specific town employees. We will discuss some new proposals to change the fees charged by the different town departments for their services. I will want to discuss the proposal I made during the campaign to have the Planning Department become more self-funding through user fees. We will also review the 2006/2007 goals established by each town department.

Hopefully this meeting will not go past midnight!

Please email me or call me if you have any questions, comments or views on the agenda items. Thanks in advance for your thoughts. As always, I will do my best to do a post on my blog on Tuesday with a quick update on what happened at the meeting.