Current Issues and Thoughts
June 10, 2006

The next selectmen’s meeting is Monday, June 12, starting at 5:30pm. This is a regular meeting. The first item on the agenda is a non-public session relating to “reputation”, at 5:30pm. The public meeting is scheduled to start at 6:00pm.

I count 33 items for action or discussion. If we can keep it to roughly 8 minutes per item, we will be out by 10:00pm. Any bets?

Here are some of the agenda items that may be of interest. There is a link (to the left) for the full agenda, but as of now (Saturday morning) the agenda is not yet up on the town website:

1. We will be discussing parking on the Oval, including after-hours parking. There is already an active discussion of Oval parking on the blog (link to the left).
   
   
2. Maintenance for the new police facility will be addressed again.
   
3. We’ll have an update on the process for interviewing the permanent town administrator candidates. The list is now down to the top 10 candidates, and there is a special selectmen’s meeting on Tuesday, June 13, to discuss these candidates. The town department heads nominated Rose Evans (Finance Director) to sit on the interview panel.
   
   
4. We’ll continue the discussions of several matters that came up at prior meetings, including (a) “budget philosophy”, (b) whether to hire an outside consultant to do a compensation study this year, (c) the draft purchasing guidelines, and (d) selectmen’s goals. There are posts on all these topics on the blog. I’ll be putting up another post on budget philosophy.
   
   
5. We’ll discuss competitive bids to provide legal services and engineering services to the town. I feel we should not be locked to any single service provider and that taxpayers would be better served if the town has a stable of available firms.
   
   
6. The new email policy is up for clarification on how long to keep hard copies. For regular readers of the blog -- we may also want to clarify it to cover other forms of electronic communications (instant messaging, etc.)?
   
   
7. There’s a regular agenda topic called “Information Items Requiring No Decisions”. Sometimes we discuss these; sometimes they just sit there. Over the past several meetings there has been some interesting stuff here that taxpayers should know about. For example, in the past we’ve gotten information about how much “room” there is in this year’s budget for more unexpected spending (there is quite a bit of room because of unfilled employee positions that free up money that would otherwise go to wages and benefits). This week there is correspondence about a new problem with the Badger Hill roads (apparently the actual grade as constructed may be more than the 8% maximum grade that was approved); an update on town headcount (7 of 108 full time positions are currently vacant); and a fascinating email dialog with the town’s insurance carrier about what the town needs to do to manage the ATV liability risks at Mile Slip (basically go around and put up warning signs for hazards, which may be a big job).