A crossfire debate format is an effective method for evaluating local government candidates by providing voters with direct, substantive exchanges on key issues. This format typically includes opening statements, structured topic segments with initial responses and crossfire exchanges, and closing statements, allowing candidates to demonstrate their knowledge, communication skills, and decision-making abilities while enabling voters to compare candidates' positions on critical municipal issues such as budget management, technology implementation, and community accountability.
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Friends of Northborough Presents: Northborough Candidates Night / May 6, 2026Added:
somewhere.
>> Okay.
>> It's not that big a space.
>> No.
>> All right.
All right. Good evening. You can tell it's going to be fun and exciting, right? Right. Cuz I got the horn. Right.
All right. Good evening and welcome. My name is Michael Shaka. I'm your host.
I'm representing Friends of North for tonight's candidate event. I expect, as I said, for this to be a very fun, exciting, engaging, and exhilarating night, but that's up to the candidates.
This is a Crossfire style debate, so we'll talk a little bit more about what that means in a minute. But before I do that, I want to make a couple of notes.
Um, both Leslie and Fred were invited uh to participate this evening, but unfortunately uh they declined the opportunity to participate. So, um, we're going to move forward. Uh, there will be another opportunity to hear the candidates tomorrow night at, uh, Elgangquin Regional High School at 7:30 hosted by the Junior Women's Club. It'll be a very different format, but it should be equally informative about tonight's format. Tonight's debate will follow what I referred to before as a crossfire style debate. If uh if you're not familiar with that, what it does is it gives voters a clear and direct look at where each candidate stands on the issues that matter most to Northboro.
This is how it's going to unfold.
There's going to be two segments. The first segment will be the select board members. We'll begin with opening statements. Each candidate will have two minutes to provide their opening statement. We'll then move forward with five topics. Those topics have already been provided to everyone as everyone may have noticed already on the flyer.
Each segment will run approximately 15 minutes. The moderator, Aaron Hutchkins, will introduce the topic and each candidate will have approximately 1 to one and a half minutes to respond to the initial top question. We'll then open it up to a six-minute crossfire exchange where they will ask each other questions relative to that topic.
or relative to their responses on that topic.
Each segment will close with a brief wrap-up from each candidate and we'll have a hard stop at 8:30 so that we can allow time for a two-minute closing statement from each candidate. From that point, we're going to transition to a moderator portion where we will flip the table and the select board members will ask the moderator candidate questions relative to the topics that have been previously provided.
So, with that, I'd like to introduce you to the moderator to go over the rules, Erin Hutchkins. And thank you all for attending.
Yeah, I've got it. Yep. I just want to note that that uh here you can take the noise maker out of >> blow that instead. Yeah.
>> The uh applause was for for for Mike. Uh thank you for arranging us.
Um so my uh my role here this evening at least for one night I will serve as moderator.
Uh a few ground rules for the evening.
uh he outlined this the the time limits.
So, I'm going to have the use of the bell to indicate when the time is up.
And I've decided that I will ding the bell at 15 seconds prior to the end of the time rather than right at the end.
So, when you hear the bell, you've got 15 seconds to uh wrap up.
Um, during the crossfire segments, hate to use that word because we're not trying to uh kill anybody here, but during those segments, direct exchanges between candidates are encouraged.
Obviously, we encourage you to keep the conversation substantive and respectful.
Uh, and the audience, I'm not sure that I need to say this, but in the event that any of you feel like you want to applaud something that's being said, please don't. Um we will wait until the conclusion either of each segment or uh at the end of the entire um select board candidate debates for a round of applause. We ask everyone in the room to be professional and polite. We are here to discuss ideas, records, and vision. And the goal, as Mike indicated, tonight is to provide a debate that informs challenges and serves the voters of Northboro for the upcoming election. So, with that, uh, I presume there's no questions from any of you.
So, by a, uh, random flip of the coin, three-sided coin, I've decided that, uh, the first opening statement is going to go to Mr. Ostagai, and we will go in this direction. And obviously, because Mr. Mr. Ostagai is starting this segment. When we have an opportunity to change segments, I will change the starter so that um people are rotating through that uh arrangement. So, Mr. Ostagy, you have two minutes for your opening statement starting now, sir.
>> All right. Well, hello. Thank you. Uh hello. My name is Jeff Ostagy. Uh Mike, thanks for setting this up. Um so, I'm running uh because Northro means a lot to me. Uh I grew up here, went to school here, uh graduated from Al Gangquin in 93. Uh my oldest son is graduating this year. My youngest is a freshman. Uh my wife and I moved back here uh several years ago because I always felt a very strong connection to the community and to the schools and I wanted my children uh to have an opportunity to be exposed to that as well. Uh I've always been quite proud to tell people that I am from North. Uh I'm running because I feel like there is a disconnect between the residents of the town and the people representing their interests. I feel a contentiousness and an unnecessary communication barrier that makes it hard for residents to understand priorities and vision. Uh my approach to the role is simple. Uh if you're familiar with Steven Kovi, um seek first to understand. Um I will ask a lot of questions, but I will also do my homework. Um trust but verify. Um I come to the table uh fundamentally believing that the residents of the town and the employees of the town have the town's best interests at heart. Um, that does not mean I don't reserve the right to ask them to ask hard questions uh and make them hard decisions or make hard decisions, but um I believe that we're all trying to do the best that we can together. I'll be open. I'll be honest.
Uh you'll never have to question where I stand on something. Uh throughout the campaign, I've been very open. Uh I don't know everything. I'm not the smartest person in the world. Um and I am open to new ideas. Um I'm willing to work together with people to get things done. I am a resident, not a politician.
Um, this is a challenging time economically, locally, nationally, globally. Um, the costs we can control and costs we can't. My priorities are protecting the things that drive value in town, police, fire, schools, uh, serving the seniors and veterans whose shoulders we stand on, making Northboro a better place to do business in, and being a thoughtful, conservative steward of residents tax dollars.
>> Thank you, Mr. Oagy. Mr. Jones, your time begins now.
>> Thank you. What matters to me is that the town government should work for the residents and not the other way around.
The residents deserve leaders who listen, communicate honestly, make decisions transparently and competently.
The residents should feel respected, be respected, be informed and confident that their tax dollars are managed and being carefully managed responsibly. Accountability matters. I will work every day to make sure North Burl's government earns and keeps the trust of the community. Sometimes that ma means making tough decisions. Would I love to have a new street sweeper? Sure.
But we looked closely at every question including that one together with our other financial boards and the conclusion was right now that's not the best decision for the town. And that was a hard decision. I'm also here to protect the budgets that the residents approve. For example, I protected $6.5 million of taxpayer dollars on the fire station project by adding additional oversight. I've been a select board member for the last year. In that short time, I've helped the town achieve major wins. We reduced the proposed $1.8 million override.
We saved $700,000 in free cash for next year's needs. We lowered the projected tax rate next year by 8 cents per thousand. We closed the White Cliff Steel, which is a win-win. We finalized five union contracts and there's so much more.
Jacob Jones on the select board means wins and results for the town. Our finance directors again projecting a possible two and a half override next year. We also face important decision on four West Main Street, a major school project, another union negotiation, and a lot of other challenges that we'll have to work through. I'd like to stay on the select board to keep delivering wins. Don't rely too much on AI, but chat GPT described my background as combining legal, technical, and analytical expertise with hands-on local government experience. It concluded, I bring the skills, judgment, experience needed for thoughtful decision-making and oversight.
>> Thank you, Mr. Jones. Miss Ziton, your time begins now.
>> Thank you. My name is Laura Zitan, and I've been on the select board for the past three years. I've enjoyed serving.
The reasons that I initially run ran were for transparency and accountability. And I've had a lot of fun in these last three years really making sure that we followed the bylaws and we've done our best to really uphold what the expectations are of the community. Uh when I came to the select board, the first vote that I got to make was on White Cliffs, which was when we had a proposal for apartment buildings to be adjacent to the White Cliffs. It was a hard vote. It was a hard first vote, but it was very important to me that we listened to the community and feedback of the residents. Fast forward to today, that vote we ended up not voting for. Today, um, at town meeting, I was thrilled that we were able to have the community come together with great momentum to support a white list win for the community. Listening to the residents is critically important to me.
Managing our tax rate is critically important to me. Finding creative ways to save money while also working with the people within our tax is critically important to me. I love the people that work here. I'm grateful for the um relationships that we've built and we're going to have to work very hard to figure out what we can live with and what we can wait until tomorrow for. Um I'm looking forward to continuing that work. I think the relationships that we've got so far, both from the community perspective, the subcommittees, the finance boards, is going to be really important as we look ahead. So, I'm really looking forward to leaning in more strongly on those relationships and really helping bolster what we can do in terms of figuring out new streams of revenue for the town through economic development with a constant eye on the cost of living and making sure that the town is affordable for the um those residents for our residents, especially those on fixed income.
I think that wraps up my opening statement.
>> Wonderful. I will attribute 15 seconds to Miss Ziton at future point.
>> I'm also efficient.
We're off to a good start. Thank you.
So, now we turn our attention to the uh five topics that have been selected, not by me, I will point out. Um and uh it's my prerogative now to introduce them and to assign a speaker rotation. As Mike indicated, this first portion is going to be essentially a 90 second initial response from each of you on the topic.
And at the conclusion of your 90-second responses, there will then be a six-minute engagement uh between the three of you.
And uh you know, obviously 6 minutes goes by very quickly. So we're hoping to uh proceed in a manner that allows everybody an opportunity to participate equally. All right. So uh the first topic, and I won't start the clock yet, obviously, but the first topic is activity versus productivity in town government.
I'm not sure where your thoughts are going on that, but if you need sort of a primer, I would say how do you distinguish between a town government that is busy and one that is genuinely productive? Mr. Jones, 90 seconds starts now.
>> Um, one thing that I've observed in the last year that I've been here, I've watched a lot of meetings of other boards and committees where I learn a lot. One of those that's been very active is the financial planning committee and they've had a lot of robust discussions about how we can improve measuring the utilization and productive use of town resources whether that's vehicles that we have, personnel that we have. No one is suggesting that anyone's not doing their job or not doing it effectively. But there there are times where uh closer analysis will suggest maybe this resource could be shifted elsewhere. Um, an example that I would give is that last town meeting the town overwhelmingly voted against the Blake Street improvement project 145 to 67 or something like that. Um, but town resources were then spent for the next year representing and repreparing that project for town meeting again where it was defeated again. And I'm was never at any point against revitalizing downtown. I just thought the timing wasn't right compared to the for West Main. So that would be an example of I don't know that those resources were being well spent. While I don't, you know, we have a that's 15. We have very hardworking employees. No doubt about that. Everyone that I've met scores five out of five stars for work ethic.
Absolutely. And I I just want to make sure that we're focusing that work ethic on things that are for the best benefit of the town. Thanks.
>> Thank you, Miss Ziton. Your 90 seconds starts now.
>> Thank you. So when it comes to activity and productivity, I see activity as the meetings, the agenda, setting the goals, and really making sure that they're goals that are attainable. We're talking right now about economic development.
And it's going to be important to me that when we set that committee in motion that it's got measurable goals.
Is it going to be the number of businesses that stay here? Is it going to be the additional revenue? We've got to figure out what that's going to look like. But really getting our committees into that behavior is going to be very important to me. When it comes to productivity, we're talking about problems solved, projects completed, services improved. I really love the White Cliff story mainly because we had such a resounding success for it. I want everything to get that kind of support either for or against where everybody comes together to work towards that um common goal. Another important meeting that we've had for the last two years was the financial summit. This is an event that's hosted where town staff comes to meet with the boards, the committees, and the public to talk about their needs for level service versus level funding. as a community, we're going to really need to figure out what we do and don't want right now to figure out how we can save money and really shifting the mindset around that. And I think that's going to be a very productive guideline for how we look uh to to the future for how we manage just expenses when it comes to those um activities. And then when it comes to activity, uh transparency is critically important, but also just figuring out how to manage the tax burden on residents. So, those are the two key drivers in my decision-making process.
>> Thank you, Mr. Ostaga. Your 90 seconds starts now.
>> Uh, productivity starts with priorities, right? If you don't know what your priorities are and you don't know what you're working against, you don't know how productive you're being, right? So, I would argue that one way we're going to get to a place where we're able to measure productivity is making sure that all our departments are doing a good job of helping us understand what their priorities actually are. Speaking only for myself, I look at some of these meetings. I watch the meetings. I go to the meetings. I think the school department does a pretty good pretty good job of saying these are our priorities and these this is how we map this against our strategic plan. I don't necessarily see as much of that from other departments. That's not a ding on the other departments. That's just they can do a better job of helping us understand what their priorities are so we can work against them. If we have priorities in place, it's easier to to uh streamline our conversations. It's easier to streamline conversations around budgets and it's easier to report back to the residents in a town how well we're doing against those. Right? It can be as simple as a red, yellow, green dashboard, right? Any department that has priorities and goals in place. It doesn't have to be a hugely complex set of, you know, data and and and things that are hard to understand. Just red, yellow, green. How are we progressing against these? If you have three, four, five strategic priorities, how are you measured against those priorities? How are you tracking against those priorities in this particular time frame?
>> Thank you. All right, so let's move into the six-minute segment where you each get to uh uh talk to each other. Um not exactly sure how this is going to play out, but here's what I would suggest. At a minimum, uh we're going to start with Miss Zen with the opportunity to ask the first question of either of you. When her question is done, uh we'll move to Mr. Ostagai to ask a question and Mr. Jones to ask a question. My goal is to hopefully get just one question from each of you. Not sure how the answers are going to go. Um I'm I'm open to the possibility of hey I want to answer that and hey and we may run out of six minutes on one question. So we'll see how this goes but for now Miss Zaiton I'm going to uh start the sixminute clock and you get the first question.
>> Thank you. So Jeff thank you for mentioning that. Well you touched on the hot button when you talk about asking staff to come to us and talk about priorities. they feel like they have done that at the financial summit. What would you do differently?
>> Uh I would make sure that it's clear, right? I don't necessarily feel like the presentations I've sat and I've watched the financial presentations, the financial budget presentations. I've sat in rooms with people. There's a lot of questions about what is in those presentations, right? It is unclear to me when I look at those what the actual priorities are. And by that, what I mean by that is what is it they are actually trying to accomplish? not just what they're trying to get funded, but what they're actually trying to accomplish.
And there's a difference between those two things, right? So, that's what I would ask for, right? I think you would ask a little bit more about what is it, what are the key and critical things that you need to accomplish and why, >> right? You touched on needs versus wants before, right? I think that's an important thing, too, where we are right now. I think the most important thing is needs.
>> Blake Street is a want, not a need. Um, so that's an example of what I would ask or recommend that we do differently.
>> Miss, do you have a follow-up at all?
>> Nope.
>> Okay, Mr. Ros, got your question?
>> Yeah, you mentioned Blake Street. Um, and the time >> Who are you asking?
>> Oh, can I ask him both? Oz Jacob. Um, you mentioned Blake Street and the fact that it, you know, when we're talking about activity versus productivity and that it was voted down resoundingly.
um why did it come back and why were we why did we have to spend so much time sort of rehashing that in town meeting if we want that to me and that's not a criticism that's just it's it was a confusion for me like why is this here right now when it was voted down and then we literally spent I think well over an hour debating it before we got to a place where we were tied >> my friend you're preaching to the choir I'm afraid to say because I agree everything that you just said and uh thank you for highlighting those and I asked myself those questions. I'll try my best to answer because >> um again this being my first year there's a lot of learning the first year. So um what I understand is that a focus group not appointed by the select board not appointed by anyone that I know of but just a a focus group of smart uh individuals who had good intentions uh were formed to give advice to the planning director about what to do about Blake Street. I'm not sure that was the best approach because I believe the focus group was largely made up of people who wanted the project to occur.
>> So, you're kind of presetting the outcome by who you put on the focus group.
>> So, I'm not sure that was a great idea, but I didn't learn about it until like months into the focus group and then I hear about the focus group and uh I hear about the the plans and I hear in in various committees um we're still talking about this. Um and then it got to um community uh where the select board was asked, do we submit a letter of recommendation for the CPC application? The town is the applicant for the CPC. The select board didn't um support applying for CPC money.
>> Uh at the time we were requested. If I had a doover, maybe I would have tried harder to convince my fellow board members to say, "Let's actually make a vote to instruct the folks to not proceed with this." Look, and I'm not saying we didn't learn a lot.
>> I'm going to stop you there. You have a follow-up question?
>> No. Yeah.
>> Okay. Thanks.
>> So, just in the interest of fairness, then Mr. Jones, I'm gonna ask that you ask Miss Ziton your question.
>> Sure. Um, so, so as I came to the board, um, I felt a lot like we like like the select board um, puts out a lot of fires. Like not they're not all fires, but like we're reacting to what's thrown at us. A new alcohol permit, a new business permit, a new this, and a lot of that's routine stuff that pretty much is unanimous most of the time. So, there's a lot of reactionary work that we do. And it felt like it took a little bit of speed before we got on top of our goal setting and being proactive with where we wanted to direct.
>> Question, Mr. >> What would you do suggest we do differently this coming year to be more proactive than reactive?
>> I think our board and our staff has there's been a lot of turnover since I got elected. We've appointed two interimm town administrators, a town administrator that resigned and now staff. So, I think there's been a lot of changes now that we've had Steph, our town administrator, in the seat for over a year. We've got some nice cadence going and having more open communication with her just to really take those goals and help move them forward. I think it's just going to get a little bit more gelled now that we've got people in seats for a longer period of time and just making sure that we're focused on the same goals. you know, looking at those goals that we had set out, making sure we're taking actions to accomplish them and um just really relying on relationships that we've got so far.
>> Does that Okay, so we are at uh 5 minutes right now. So, in the interest of trying to stay within our boundaries here, am I correct, Mike? Now, everybody gets an opportunity to wrap up on this presentation topic.
>> Yes.
>> Okay. So, where did I leave off on uh on first? you had >> I will yield the floor.
>> All right. Laura had the first question.
Why don't we go back to you, Jeff? Uh wrap-up thoughts on this to 60 seconds or less.
>> Sure. I'll stand by my opening statement on this. Right. I think uh you know there may be different departments and different meetings and different times where people are articulating their priorities. I think we need to start there. Right. I think priorities are the first step to getting to a place where we can determine real productivity.
>> Okay. Mr. Jones.
>> Yeah. I yielded. So I'm done I guess.
>> Okay.
>> Exciting. Anything else?
>> I I've stated the points.
>> Okay. So according to the proposed rules, this would be an opportunity if you want to applaud. You don't have to.
We can save it for the end. But we are done with topic number one.
>> We made it through one.
>> Did that work for everybody?
>> I felt >> we have no >> twothirds vote. anyone?
>> Okay. Uh, topic number two.
>> I think there's question.
>> I just have a question. I'm new to the area and so even the role I I mean I I read on it because I saw there was an election coming up. But can what is the term? What is can can you introduce the function a little?
>> We will uh I think tomorrow night you have an opportunity to ask questions directly. I think that's a different format tonight unfortunately. you just get to sit and listen. But after this is done, if your question isn't answered, then please go up and approach one of them and >> and I'm sure they'll talk your ear off.
>> Okay. Uh topic number two, again, not chosen by me, uh but phrased in the following manner. Addressing budget sacred cows, quote unquote. And by that I'm I'm assuming we're referring to education and first responders as being the budget sacred cows. So again, don't know what thoughts you put into this, but if you need a primer question, it would be should any area of the municipal budget be exempt from serious scrutiny during financial periods?
And I think uh did we start with Laura last time?
>> I don't remember.
>> Yes.
>> So Jeff, why don't you start? 90 seconds.
>> Okay. Okay.
>> Uh the short answer, no. There are no sacred cows. There cannot be any sacred cows, right? There are again things that drive more value for the town, right?
Police, fire, schools, those drive town values, right? Period. That's why people move into a town. That's why people stay in a town. However, um that doesn't mean that we can't ask them to make hard decisions and make hard choices. So again, I mentioned needs and wants before, right? I mentioned the idea of coming to us with a with a matrix of needs versus wants. Coming to us with a matrix of costs we can control and costs we can't control. Right? There's plenty of costs that go into these various budgets we cannot control. Clearly on the school side, special education, you know, all the way across the board on pensions and insurance, those are costs that can't be controlled, right? If we start with those costs with an understanding that they can't be controlled, then it doesn't muddle up the rest of the process by trying to sort of fit square pegs into round holes. Again, long way of saying there are no sacred cows. Um, however, you know, we do need to prioritize based on what drives value for the town. Um, I lost my train of thought there. Um, but no, my short answer is no, there are no sacred cows. However, there are priorities and are things that uh require um greater scrutiny than others.
>> Thank you, Mr. Jones. Your 90 seconds starts now.
>> Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Again, I agree with my friend uh with his conclusion on the question um about no department, no role should be exempt from being analyzed to see if the resources being provided match the needs of the mission of whatever department it is. And um it's sometimes I think unfortunate that sometimes folks feel like if you're asking some of those questions they assume it's because you're against the thing you're asking questions about. And I just wish that we didn't think that way. Um period. Um we should evaluate each department and their needs compared to their mission and what the town needs for that mission. We shouldn't really compare them to each other because each group and especially the three on the list here uh education, police and uh fire and EMS services, they have totally different missions. They're not really comparable one with another. Um and they're all important missions that we would like to not live without. We would like to not we would like to have them always. Um and I feel like to my friend's point, they're high priorities.
Does that mean they get unlimited budgets? No. None of them should have an unlimited budget. Um, but I I appreciate the ability to look at questions whether it's why are we paying this much for special education transportation. I hope I could ask that question without being accused of being against special education. I just want to know why it costs so much.
>> Thank you, Mr. Jones. Miss Ziton, your 90 seconds starts now.
>> Thank you. So, when it comes to the sacred cows, police, fire, schools, DPW, you know, there's things that we can control and then there's things that we can't. Health insurance has been this like wild roller coaster of cost increases and we always find out at the 11th hour that they're spiking and it's a panic because then we're like where can we pull things back and it's unpredictable that unfortunately we can't control. There's predictions that hopefully it's going to level out with some changes on the state for what's covered and what is not covered. So I'm hopeful that that will level out and make it easier for the rest of us to really figure out our budgets. Special education. The tricky part of special education costs is that we approve it now, but we won't know what the actual cost is till next year because it fluctuates based on needs and we don't know that until the school year starts.
So hopefully that as well will become a little bit easier just in in government finances. We want to be predictable and to understand, you know, what we're looking ahead to because budgets, you know, we don't like to have any surprises in the budgets. Um, again, we're going to need to all work together in how we save money. We've talked as a board about getting more standardized reports from department heads on a more regular basis to understand what the expenses are that they're facing. We, you know, some of my board members have been very great about identifying decisions that are based on data and that I think will be very helpful next year just in really looking at more regular um updates on the on the on the expenses. But at the end of the day, just making sure that we're communicating with the residents that you are aware of what's coming and what we're facing will be really important.
So, I'll do my best to make sure that we're doing that.
>> Thank you.
>> Okay. Uh, Mr. Jones, I will allow you the, uh, first question.
>> Okay. And, uh, I'll start the six minutes now.
>> Okay. Last time I went here, so equal opportunity.
>> Fire away.
>> So, um, Oh, I had the question in my hand. Oh, yeah. Uh, so our fire our police chief, I've talked to him. he believes uh we need or it would be beneficial to the town to hire in the near future additional public safety officers.
The I've read the fire reports that suggest that the best practices would be that we hire more fire and EMS personnel. The schools collectively just closed down 14 positions and I suspect they would say we could use more teachers and other educators. Um, what process would you follow to know how to evaluate those questions when forming a budget?
>> So, I've managed other people's budgets pretty much my whole career, right? Um, working in marketing and revives. That's what I do.
>> You speak up a little bit.
>> Oh, sorry. My the microphone over here.
Sorry. Um, >> u I've I've managed other people's budgets my whole career, right? And I've, you know, as a marketer, we're always asking for more than what the budget can support, right? that's what marketers do. I will not bring that same to to this role. But um I have mentioned before that I do think pressure creates diamonds, right? And some of the most creative, thoughtful, and impactful decisions that I've I've made and I've seen other people make are as a function of saying not necessarily no, right? But go back, take a hard look at your budget in its entirety and figure out where we can move things around to fund other things. So again, it's it's not a it's not a to your point, it's not a hard no.
>> It's how can we get to yes or how can we get to some variation of yes, right? And I think when it comes to budgets and when it comes to making decisions, I think sometimes applying pressure is exactly what is needed to come up with, for lack of a better term, creative solutions.
>> Mr. Jones, any follow-up?
>> Yeah. What do you do when applying that pressure is construed as um you don't like the that group? How do you respond to that? I communicate clearly with that group if I need to, right? Um that's the other part of what I've done my whole career is I am a communicator, right?
I'm happy to sit down, have a cup of coffee, listen to them. Um I'm also very happy for them to tell me that I'm wrong >> and I reserve the right to change my mind, right? If I can be if I can be uh pulled in another direction or convinced otherwise, that's fine, too. Right? That it's not I'm not in a position to be rigid about anything. I think the position is to make the best possible decisions uh for the greater.
>> Thank you, Miss Knight. Your question.
>> Thank you. Um we were talking about sacred cows when I started. Yes, I I know I don't know you as well as I know Jacob, so I'm sorry.
>> I just never saw this coming. The two incumbents asking all the questions, but you know went both ways.
>> So when I joined the board, we merged health and human services and there was a lot of thought about that and how it came together. What are your thoughts on health and human services and how it serves the community?
>> Um, I think health and human services serves the community in a lot of wonderful ways. Um, it is not frankly a department that I'm as familiar with, right, as as some others, but I think like everything else I said, um, you know, their budgets and what they deliver should be scrutinized the same way.
>> Follow up.
>> Nope.
>> Okay. Your question, sir. So my question, I'll go back to to you, Laura, is >> would you be comfortable going to a department like health and human services and forcing them to come with a budget that is either absolutely level or potentially decreased.
>> So at the financial summit that we host once a year, they do come forward and they talk about what you're going to sacrifice with level funding versus level service. And it was eye opening because if there is level funding things will be cut and it is difficult but working with them to really figure out there's no question we're going to have cuts. So it's going to be really important for staff as we work together to figure out what the needs are versus where the wants are and really shifting the mindset to not you know be as use it or lose it with it's going to happen.
How are we going to do this so it's the least disruptive for the community. But I really prioritize, you know, all the help that they do for mental health, all the work that they do for awareness around, you know, some of the vulnerable populations in our community and making sure that they've got the support that they need. So >> follow up.
>> No, >> I'll give you a second question to Mr. Jones since you had two to you.
>> Uh, I'll ask you the same question. Um, what's your level of comfort going to people and asking for potential cuts?
And similar to what was asked of me, how would you go about communicating back to those people in the situation where they're not happy about that? That's a great question and I being again I hate to keep referring to my first year um I w it was a learning experience when I went from what I thought we gave the direction for level funded budget for everyone to somewhere in the process I must have blinked because I was at every meeting uh everyone came back with a 3% and I said that's not what we asked for and I don't know where we lost the the the trail. So, um, part of it was being new. Um, gosh, this is how we do it, but I don't think it's how we should do it. So, if I had a doover, uh, this year, um, it would be, yes, I'm comfortable having the discussion.
There's a a quick side to that. Our bylaws don't let us individual members give directions to department heads. We have to go through the town administrator. And that that can be a little bit of an ownorous process because we can only do that in an open meeting. and we only, you know, and so it's a little bit um burdensome to officially as a board say XYZ department, we'd like you to do this because an individual board member isn't, as I understand, is not supposed to do that.
>> Thank you. Follow up.
>> Can I follow up?
>> Yeah.
>> Why is that burdensome? That would seem to be an an incredibly critical thing to do.
>> I And maybe I used the wrong word in burdensome. What I mean is um to I love your idea of sitting down with someone and having coffee and anyone who wants to do that I'm open and I think a lot of problems can be solved like that being subject to open meeting law nothing product nothing that we do as a board can be done that way and so we have to have a noticed meeting discuss it out in public agree on the outcome and agree on the direction and that what I'm I'm not saying burdensome isn't the right word it is a it's a bit more um work and harder and takes longer than a cup of coffee.
>> Okay, so uh that wraps up the crossfire.
Now we'll start with the 90 second or sorry 60cond closing unless you're passing on this one too.
>> Yeah. Um I I I really appreciated the discussion. I >> I mean you are speaking >> I wish I am going to take my opportunity if I could.
I really um I invite us all to be open-minded about looking closely at at at everything insurance. It's not just oh well that's the cost. I guess nothing I can do about that. In fact, this board is looking at insurance and how we can improve that going forward. We've we've given directions. I don't have time right now to say about it. But it's not just accepting well that's how it is. I guess next question. Ask I like us to be able to ask the questions and asking questions doesn't mean we don't like the thing we're asking questions about.
>> Thank you, Miss Leon.
>> I'm >> You're good.
>> Yep.
>> No, I you actually bring up an interesting point about the 2.9% increase or whatever it turned out to be. Um I would just say given given where we are from an economic standpoint in town right now, um the expectation should be that we should start at a minimum at level funding. There should be no expectation going into this that it would any be anything but level funding and anything above that should be clearly justified.
>> Okay, that concludes the second topic.
All right, everyone comfortable? Let's move to topic three.
Uh let's see.
Mr. Jones, are we on you to open this one? I think >> possible. Um this one the topic is managing and flattening the tax burden.
Again as I have in previous topics don't know what you prepared but if you want a primer I would ask what is your strategy for slowing the long-term tax burden or reducing it in Northboro? Mr. Jones your >> is it two minutes?
>> One 90 seconds.
>> Thank you. 90 seconds starts now.
The tax burden is a huge burden. We don't I don't have to say that. You all know that when you open your tax bills and it gets a bigger burden every year.
Uh the budgets we're talking about are 90 plus million dollars this year. Um they're projected to get bigger. They're in categories. Yes, a lot of it's handled by the school committee um which is separately elected officials. Um, but there's a lot we do and we can work with them and we do work with them and should work continue to work with them. Um, and communicate and understand their needs.
Uh, but there's a lot we do have control over. Um, you know, I can't control what the market is on everyone's housing appraisals, but I have taken active steps to try to make sure that the valuation of our residential properties are more fair in comparison to our commercial and industrial properties and I've made a lot of points about that in meetings and I hope to see that improve.
Uh, beginning with a fair distribution of the valuations of our property values is a way to level it out. Um, that's The first thing that comes to mind, I'm not even down to 15 seconds yet. Um, okay.
Valuations have to be fair on across all property types. That that will help distribute the tax burden. Um, bringing in new revenue, like my friend said, helps as well, but it's not Oh, it's the elephant. We got to take it one bite at a time. Small numbers add up to big numbers. That's what I was trying to get out.
>> Ziton, your 90 seconds starts now.
>> Thank you. When it talk when we talk about flattening the tax burden, again, transparency is really important to me and making sure that we're managing your money efficiently is important. Again, we can't cut health insurance. That is what it is. Hopefully, that will level out special education and contract obligations. We have to work from that.
Um, from there, I've already talked about ways that we can spend, you know, we can prioritize spending on the department level. I am very optimistic from an economic development perspective. We don't have anyone really looking to help build that revenue stream and I think that it can make a difference. It's going to start with White Cliffs. When White Cliffs has weddings coming to town, it's going to bring bring people to the community that are going to spend money at our golf course and our salons and our restaurants. And I think that'll really start to help to grow. We need to find things that are going to bring people to Northro to spend their money. So, it's not just us spending our money here. We need to get more money from from external sources. Finding a good use for four West Main Street is going to be really important. I'd love a solution that's going to bring some foot traffic to downtown that's going to help, you know, drive some of the needs that our community really wants. Um, doing more with public private partnership. I think once we get economic development up and running, we'll be able to find needs for the community that we can work with these businesses to help us fund those rather than taxpayer money and and CPC money. And then again, just paying a close attention to the capital plan and making sure that we've got everything prioritized in that way. and just being, you know, getting more visibility into the expenses that we have coming up from a town department perspective.
>> Thank you.
>> Thank you, >> Mr. Ostaga. Your 90 seconds starts now.
>> Yeah, I'll echo a lot of what what Jacob and Laura said, right? I mean, there's there's a good news and a bad news part to all of this, right? The good news is when you look at the tax rate, right, it's been relatively flat. Your tax bill, right? Because there's an important distinction to make there, has gone up. It has gone up for two reasons, right? One is again the assessed value continues to go up, which again not necessarily a bad thing, right? If what you own is worth more, that's a good thing. Um however, um to both of their points, the commercial base is not pulling its part of the weight, right?
So, um we have to figure out a way to make Northro a more appealing place to do business in. And I'm really curious to to, you know, see where this economic development committee group, whatever it is, uh, goes. I think there's a lot of opportunity there in that. Um, I'm really curious to see how we go about, for lack of a better term, marketing and promoting our town, what we plan to do, and how we plan to put our town out there as an appealing place to do business, what those talking points are.
Um, I think that's going to be really, really important. I think yes, we have taken some important steps with White Clips. I hope we can take some some more steps with for West Main. Um, but there is work to be done and the primary goal should be trying to make sure that commercial base starts to pick up more of the load on the residential side.
>> Perfect.
All right, Miss Leighton, I think we are back to you. I'm starting my sixminute clock. Your first question.
>> You can ask me a question.
>> I'm trying to remember what you said.
Um, so you were talking about managing the curb, you know, is there anything that we can be more transparent about this process to the resident just so that, you know, we're doing a better job communicating to them. Is there anything that you would do differently in that regard?
>> There's a tiny thing, maybe people don't observe it, but I've I've I find that sometimes, first of all, people don't go to select board meetings by and large, as you as you probably know.
>> You don't have good snacks.
>> We don't have great snacks. Maybe we need better snacks. Uh and and well, I'll say uh the it's difficult to follow along sometimes on the meetings when you're watching it either on replay or live because you don't see what they're talking about. One thing that I started doing recently in a meeting and I got permission from the chair to do this was to actually connect my computer to the thing and start showing up on the screen whatever document we're talking about.
One of my friends on the board started asking questions about individual line items on our line by line town budget.
And if I'm a resident watching, you're like, that sounds like a great question, but I have no idea what he's talking about. Um, that's like a transparency communication thing where it's like, I'd like this, that's a thing I'd like to improve on because I think that it only works if you're watching Zoom. It doesn't go to cable yet. So, I bet that's a problem we can solve.
>> Any followup?
>> No. Thank you.
>> Yeah. Stra your question.
>> Laura, what would your uh what are your opinions or your take on a potential split tax study implementation study?
>> We talk about that a lot and I do my my constant like the thing that's in the back of my head is that I'm grateful for the businesses that we have and I'm concerned about causing any disruption for local businesses. I feel like every time we have this discussion there's something going on that's negatively impacting their revenue earning ability.
Um, I do I'm open to that. I think that we've got a lot of industrial businesses that do have a lot of money. Um, and they I see what they're doing for other communities to give back. I I don't know what the best vehicle for our town to be able to get more involved in that. We did have an industrial development committee that's been defunct for over a decade at this point. Um, but I think there is more that we can do along those lines, but I'm not quite sure exactly what that looks like because an industrial business is very different from a local business. So there's two sides to the coin. Thank you for the question.
>> So Mr. Jones, your question to Mr. OA.
>> All right. Um, the last I remember, and I could be wrong, someone could correct me, that that someone openly said, "I'd like to have a dual tax rate." I believe that the 495 um I'm forgetting the name of the group.
I'm so sorry. The um Chamber of Commerce, those guys uh really campaigned against that person. Um, and I've noticed it's part of yours and you've probably heard me say I'm open to that idea. Um, how do you how do you um how do you deal with the opposition you get from the business community when you want to consider which I agree with you consider as an option a dual tax rate when there's a lot of reactionary um built-in reaction to that idea.
>> Sure. And yeah, um I would expect that right. I mean, I think what's the what's the ratio now? It would take something like an increase of $9, right, for a commercial enterprise to offset a dollar of residential something something like that. I don't know what the next governor is. I mean, again, this is a this is a messaging conversation, right?
Um and I think there's two elements to this too, right? There is the um large industrial side of it. There's also the small business side of it. Um, there is a small business exemption that we could enact um that we can I think uh I don't know what the exact number is. I forget the exact number, but we can offset some of those taxes for smaller businesses when they qualify um to make it easier for some of those small businesses. Um I think sometimes business begets business, too. I think um if we start to have a town where there is more activity and there's more going on, it starts to be more appealing for those people and it might justify our ability to ask for a little bit more to do business in a town where they can do more business.
Right? So it would be complicated. I know it's not easy. I am not suggesting that we do it. Um but I am suggesting that perhaps we should explore it. Um perhaps we could sort of uh float it with the business community, have conversations with the business community, get their take on it, get their feedback um before we did anything. Um we'd also have to I would say pretty be pretty transparent about what we plan to do to make other parts of their life easier um as a community.
But um yeah, that would be my approach to it.
>> Any followup?
>> Thanks. Yeah.
>> Okay, so let's start the uh minute wrap-up. Mr. Stra guy, we'll start with you.
>> Uh, nothing here except I I do I just I want to be clear. I'm not uh recommending a split tax. What I'm saying is it is um amongst the many many things that we need to consider to try and put us on the best economic footing possible. I think it is something that we should at least explore.
>> Mr. Jones.
>> Yeah. Um budgets are big, deficits are large numbers. when the first number you get is gee we're going to be facing a million and 800,000 override or a 2 million or whatever the number it's really easy to get overwhelmed about a big number and then you look around and say well I don't have a million8 solution and you're probably not going to find a single million8 solution the approach that I take to solving these problems of flattening the tax burden includes finding small ways here and there one example being which the select board salary I know it's a silly topic because it's barely worth talking about. It's a little over 6,000 a year, you know, not worth really it which is like $90 a month per select board when you take out the taxes and stuff and uh but I don't think any we voted unanimously to zero that. You could say, well, that's only $6,000 a year. Yeah.
Every year from now into forever, that's one little tiny piece of the puzzle that we have to solve. And you only solve the puzzle with small pieces to solve the whole puzzle. forgot the 15 second on the phone, but you're right at the minute. Thank you, >> Miss Ziton.
>> Um I really I think I'm good.
>> You going to stand?
>> Yeah, I'm stand. Thank you.
>> All right, we are moving through efficiently. Uh that is topic number three audience.
Okay, on to topic number four.
Uh the topic is technology and we've touched on this a little bit already but technology for transparency and efficiency.
Uh the question primer question that I would throw out is how would the town use technology or improve it to facilitate transparent and operational efficiency?
Um and I think right Mr. Jones so your first 90 seconds sir.
>> Sure.
Uh, in my opening statement, I kind of as part of this point made a reference to something I got from chat GPT.
AI is a great resource. We use it in my firm. I'm a lawyer. We use it. We don't rely on it. We don't rely on it, but we expedite a lot of our processes using uh appropriate use of AI subject to verification. There's a lot of lawyers who've been sanctioned for citing cases to judges that don't exist. You probably know about that, Mr. Mon being at the working at the court. That's really bad.
A and you know, I've unfortunately seen some situations where AI is used and bad results come out of it.
We don't want to be doing that. But there's a lot of things that we can use it to improve the speed of making a financial spreadsheet report document which Jason does a great job. So this is maybe not a great example because he seems to have a good process but those are the kinds of things where we can save hours of our staff's time by turning some of these tasks into easier to accomplish tasks using and AI is just one example of technology. Other technology examples have been mentioned in the financial planning committee. I I like where those ideas are going. Um it'd be interesting to know, are they going to save us money in the long run or are they going to cost too much?
What's the balance there? Great questions.
>> Okay, Miss Siton, your 90 seconds starts now.
>> Thank you. I love transparency and anything that we can implement to make the information that we discuss more readily available to the residents is important and it's definitely an area that we can improve on. you know, we have a lot of great boards, including the financial boards that really go through nitty-gritty details. I would like for for those to be better communicated just that you're aware of what we're looking at so you're not surprised when you know votes come up for things at town meeting that we don't support. Just making sure that you're aware of the reasons why. Um there is ways I think through Zoom with AI companion that we can really consolidate the meat of our meetings to make it more readily available to you. I was talking to our town administrator just about what that looks like and maybe figuring out a way to highlight that. We have talked a lot, the town administrator has her corner where she'll put a lot of the highle stuff, but I think that we need to get even more granular in the detail that we do um provide to the residents.
Um at the end of the day, when it comes to transparency, I'm a firm believer in our charter and bylaws. I want to make sure that we'll continue to, you know, to focus on that. We're currently in the process of recodifying our charter for the first time since 1996. I think cleaning up that process is going to make it a lot easier for you to understand what these boards are, what they do, how they work together, and really understand the foundation of our government. Thank you.
>> Oh, that was just 15 seconds.
>> Okay, we're good.
>> You're good.
>> Just a reminder, that is a 15-second.
>> Uh, Mr. Ostag, your 90 seconds, sir.
>> Yeah, we've danced around the AI piece a little bit, and I want to be a little more specific about what I think we can do with it, and I think you started to to touch on it, Laura. Um it would be an incredible benefit I think to the people that either aren't attend or are attending or want to see a summary of a meeting. Um you can run that through AI in a matter of seconds and put together a a very simple bulleted explanation and rundown of what happened in that meeting, right? That doesn't mean you have don't have to look at it and make sure it's all accurate, but it's public information anyway. We're not at risk of of sharing any sort of private information or or doing anything like that. So even literally to your point, taking a select board meeting, running it through AI before you leave the room that night and posting it that night with a quick rundown of what was discussed, what the outcomes were, and what the next steps are. That would be incredibly simple to implement, and I think it would go a long way towards helping people have a better understanding of what's going on in town. I think the town meeting is another perfect place where we could implement AI to make all of that stuff on the warrant English, right? I think it's it's written a certain way and I know it needs to be written a certain way but I can tell you the first thing I did when I saw the final warn is I took it and I put it in it into Claude. I don't like chat GPT. I put it into Claude and I said can you please summarize this for me in a way that's makes it easier for me to understand these issues. So I think there's a lot of things like that. The last thing I will say too as well it is 2026. Our town website looks like it was built in 1886. Um, we could probably re-engineer that to make sure that a lot of the information that people want to get a hold of is a lot easier to find.
>> Thank you. Okay, Miss Ziton, I'm going to start the six minute clock and I think you get the first question.
>> Oh, um, sorry, I thought we were moving on to the next topic.
Um, so we're talking about transparency and >> technology.
>> Technology. I think I had read that. Did you have you talked about I can't remember there was something you were talking about. Was it a management software or something?
>> I read something that you had posted along those lines, but maybe I imagined it. Nope. Okay. Um I don't have any questions. I'm sorry.
I'm going to pass.
>> Okay. Mr. Ostagai, your question to either or both.
>> Yeah. So, um I guess question for Jacob.
Um maybe a slightly unpopular topic. Um but when we talk about technology and we talk about using technology to create greater efficiency, um would you how would you potentially look at doing things like town office hours, streamlining those office hours, looking at creating fewer office hours, using more technology to serve people and having sort of not necessarily a by appointment only, but streamlining some office hours and using technology more to deliver town services.
>> It's a great question and thought about it. Um, currently I think most folks know like Fridays they close early. Um, that's currently sort of like the um the schedule. The rest of the days they're fairly open. Um, it is something that would need to be addressed through union negotiation of course um anything that impacts municipal employees work schedule and and all that. But I look I I I kind of agree with you in a sense of like if it has a potential of re improving services to town and at the same time costing less money to town, I say that is a thing we should look into. Um and so I don't want to sound like it's a I'm I'm against it. I'm just like there are steps that you'd have to do to make sure every all the stakeholders agree with whatever um we're doing. So not a bad idea.
>> Followup.
>> Nope.
>> Question for Laura?
Okay, Jacob, your question.
>> Uh, yeah. So, I have a question for Laura. So, um I think as we've worked together, you I I've seen and maybe you've noticed it too. Sometimes we'll see a situation where um maybe this isn't under the topic. You can tell me moderator. It is related. Uh where there's a maybe an antiquated bylaw or a bylaw whether antiquated or not that doesn't seem to make sense today. And then we run into the situation we're like, gee, it looks like we're violating that bylaw. What should we do about that? I mean, what's your general approach to should the town be following its own bylaws? Maybe that's too much of a softball, but you know what? What do we do with the fact that sometimes old rules are outdated?
>> I will allow the question because it relates to transparency.
>> There we go.
>> But it does not at all relate to technology, >> including with technological solutions.
that >> it does. It happens a lot. Our charter is really out of date and it's confusing. So, if mistakes are made, it's totally understandable that there's confusion, but I think it's important that we address them as soon as we identify a problem. And if there's a problem with the charter, let's go back and fix it. You know, there's been changes that have happened and it's, you know, I'm going to go off topic. Um, back in 2016, there was a change at a select board meeting where they changed the reporting policy for police and fire and that's something that reports to the board of selectmen and it's created a lot of challenges for how we work with police and fire now because there's a lot of confusion. We need the charter to be very clear that this is how we work together and I feel more knowledgeable about what that process looks like now and I understand where the problem came from because the policy wasn't properly taken through town meeting. By comparison, when we merged the finance director position and we separated it, you had to go to town meeting and understand what that meant and why that was important to us. That's how charter changes should happen. So, I really want to make sure that once our our charter is recodified that we all understand it and we follow it. That was a softball.
Thank you though.
>> Followup.
>> I like the charter.
>> Yeah. I mean, yeah. So, you agree the town should be following its own bylaws and when the bylaws don't make sense, change the bylaws.
>> Yes.
>> All right.
>> All right. Let's move to closing statements. Thank you.
>> Uh Mr. Ostagai or not closing statements uh wrap up for this particular topic.
Mr. Ostagai, technology, transparency and efficiency. Uh I I don't have a lot beyond what beyond what's what's already been said except to say I think there are some very very very simple lowrisk things that we can do that can make communication and the distribution of information to everybody in town much much clearer and easier to understand.
>> Okay, Mr. Jones.
Um, yeah, I I think more information at more people's fingertips is an improvement. Um, sometimes I feel like sitting on the select board, you're only getting a piece of the puzzle. And it's not that you don't trust the person explaining it to you. You absolutely trust them, but you want to understand it. And sometimes to understand it, the way my mind works is I'd like to know the data and the process by which you're feeding me this information. and having an easier way to just exchange information freely whether that is um you know there's a lot of examples and some have come up recently in in in select board meetings but it shouldn't be a struggle for the select board to be able to find out how much we're spending on XYZ during the year. Uh right now it's a bit of a struggle. I think we can use technology to improve that.
>> Okay, again it's a 15-second bell. It's not a cut off. Uh >> I will finish this one up.
>> All right. So, I definitely realize that we need to do a better job communicating to the residents, but I will make a quick plug. You can sign up for town news by going to the website and getting notified about agendas and minutes. Town town administrators corner is also there. So, feel free to do that. And I definitely will hope that as a board we'll continue to prioritize better ways to get you information. Is that okay? Is that within the confines of the topic?
>> Go. Please go.
>> Okay, I'm good.
>> You're good. Okay.
>> All right. So, that concludes topic number four. audience.
Okay. So, we're going to move to our final topic for these uh individuals and that is accountability and performance measurement. Again, as I've done with the previous four, my primer question, if you want it, how should North residents measure whether town departments and town leadership are performing effectively?
Uh why don't we start with Mr. uh is it Mr. Ostagai? Did you start last time?
>> I think I started last time.
>> All right. So, Laura, please.
>> 90 seconds.
>> Okay. Thank you. Um, when it comes to accountability and performance measurement, one thing that I've loved about two of the recent members that have joined the select board is that they are very driven to bring more data to decision-m and I've learned a lot from some of what they've brought to the board and I'm grateful for that. I do think we need to think more practically around areas that can be streamlined, you know, in terms of our budgets. Um, I'll continue to work with administration to make sure that our estimates for projects are more in line with what the projects actually cost. We tend to overestimate and then it's nice when they come in less, but we need to figure out a way to get that money back to the residents, you know, without going through all of those steps where we have things high, they come in low.
It's creating a lot of extra money for free cash, but that's not helping in terms of the t tax burden. So, just looking at that policy a little bit more closely. I do think we need to budget honestly and make sure we're getting really accurate information for the costs of what we're doing. There's a lot of discussions from financial planning that came up this year about the very high price tag that we pay for projects and we will lean on prevailing wage and other justifications and from the finance people that I spoke to on those committees. They feel very passionately that there's more that we can do to save money along those lines. So, I will lean on those those folks way more closely.
And then last, again, working together, even as communities, like if you've got thoughts about what you want versus what you need, please reach out to the board.
We've really demonstrated our willingness to listen, so please be ready to send us notes with your thoughts. Thank you.
>> Thank you.
>> All right, Mr. Ostag Guy, your 90 seconds starts now.
>> All right, I think I'll be pretty brief with this one because I think I already answered it earlier, but um I'm a marketer. I love a good dashboard, right? Um, and I think if we can get to a place where we have our departments as well as our committees, our boards, um, are able to clearly articulate and lay out what their priorities are and what their goals are. Um, we should be able to have a very nice, clean, easy to read dashboard. Like I said before, even if it's red, yellow, green, right, progress status against certain uh, initiatives um, that anyone in town should be able to see at any given time, right? even if it's updated quarterly or weekly or even monthly. Um I think if we can put together something that makes it clear what we're working towards, um we should be able to make it clear how good a job we're doing working towards it.
>> Well done.
>> Yeah.
>> All right, Mr. Jones, your 90 seconds starts now.
>> Thank you. Um I want to be clear about what I mean when I say accountability.
And to me, accountability is a good word. It's a friendly word. It's a word that acknowledges that we're all humans and we all sometimes make mistakes. We sometimes miss things. We sometimes forget things.
And so being having accountability with each other helps us synergize better and work together better. Accountability isn't to beat someone up when they fall down. Accountability is to say, um, here's what we're working on. we achieved it. Check. Here's what we're working on. Here's why we can't achieve it right now and what we're doing to be able to achieve it or why things have changed in the process. Check. I I um I just came here from the uh fire station building committee meeting. Um I just got this financial status report um which is a great report that our owner's project manager gives us so that I can see um where we are at various aspects of that construction process. This is part of accountability. And to me, asking for accountability shouldn't trigger um the feeling that we don't trust. It is that we do trust each other and that we want to help each other, make sure that we're not missing things.
Um and I think that's important.
>> Okay.
So, let's uh go to the six minute portion of this with questions. And I think Mr. Ostagai uh you have first question.
>> Sure. Um, I will send this one. Laura, you can get this one. Um, so when we're talking about performance measurement, we're talking about accountability dashboards. If you were to say the three to five key metrics that the select board should be measured on, what would you say those are?
>> Oh, that's a good one. So, our job is to make sure that we're, you know, are we properly responding to the requests of the community? I know that the feedback that we get regularly is from people regarding the tax rate. You know, we are we doing enough to manage it? There's a lot of concern about the affordability of living in town. So, really making sure that we are focused on managing the affordability. working with the town administrator per the charter which we had said, making sure that we give her very clear guidance about what our expectations are and how we work together and you know making sure that Northro remains a town that people can live in, businesses can be present in and um I think just at the end of the day making sure that that those factors are acknowledged.
>> But I appreciate the question though.
Thank you.
>> It's worth thinking about, right?
>> Yeah.
>> Followup.
>> No.
>> No. Mr. Jones, your question.
>> Okay, the last one went to you. Okay, so >> we'll switch.
>> Okay, >> so um I I really appreciate this format and everyone coming here and and uh I appreciate both of you and you.
>> No closing statements.
>> This isn't it. This is a question. Okay, so I don't want this to come off the wrong way is what I'm trying to say. Um so um I know a year ago um you were one of the candidates for the sitting position and and I frankly liked a lot of the things you were saying. Um, they picked me. I'm in the seat. Uh, over the last year, I like a lot of your ideas, but help me understand what steps you've done over the last year to help the town implement those ideas.
>> I'm not sure I understand the question.
>> Yeah. So, so you've if I could clarify.
>> Well, I was going to clarify, but you didn't clarify. You asked it.
>> Sure. what I'm get I like your ideas but I hadn't heard them prior to the last couple of months >> um about you know particularly just the last comments you made for example um why haven't we heard them before >> because I hadn't decided to run yet >> okay okay so it's only you can only share good ideas with the community when you're running for office I I I would have appreciated you sharing them with us all along the way because I think they're good ideas.
>> Thanks. Um I have other things I have to do, >> right? Um I have plenty of uh other things that take up my time, right? And once I made a decision that I wanted to get involved, I got involved. Um prior to that, I had to decide whether or not I wanted to dedicate the time and the resources and the energy to doing that.
Um you know, kids and stuff at home. So that's why I I would imagine a lot of people prior not prior to uh running or getting involved. There's a lot of people that have a lot of opinions, but they don't necessarily express them day in and day out.
>> Okay.
>> Yeah, that's fair. I mean, >> yeah, I my followup is I I would hope people feel welcome to share their good ideas at any time.
>> Okay, your question, Laura?
Um I I don't have a follow-up question. I'm sorry. This format is definitely tricky.
So I apologize. I'm not good like >> it's okay >> this back and forth part.
>> It's okay. So uh if there are uh no more questions then we will move to the wrap-up portion of this uh topic. And uh who are we starting with? Mr. Ostagai.
>> Mhm.
>> Why don't we start with you sir? Uh yeah, not a not a lot to add. Like I said, I I think uh I've kind of beaten this horse quite a bit. I think there's there's probably a clear path to us being able to um you know, develop some priorities and goals that people can measure various departments against and and make progress against those. Pretty clear.
>> Okay, Mr. Jones, >> thanks. Um, being able to ask questions is so important. Even if you think, well, he should know the answer to that. Um, and and um, being subject to open meeting law, it's hard to ask those questions other than in your open meetings. Um, I wish we had a better way, but then being a body subject to open meeting law, it's really hard to circumvent open meeting law, and you wouldn't want to. It exists for a reason. Um, so sometimes accountability can be hard and sometimes it can be difficult to be held accountable. Um, but I hope that uh as a community we can understand the need for holding each other hold me accountable to hold each other accountable.
Okay, >> Laura, you wrap up on this topic.
>> I'm good. Thank you.
>> You're good. Y >> Okay, that concludes topic number five.
All right. So, unless I'm uh missing something, Mike, fill me in. I think we've arrived at closing statements.
Yes. And those are again going to be two minutes. Yeah. And um let's see. Did we start opening statements with you, Mr. Ostagy?
>> Uh Laura?
>> Yeah. I think we went like sometime.
>> One, two, three.
>> Yeah.
>> All right. Then let's go in reverse. Mr. Ostagai, you have the floor first. two minutes.
>> All right. So, um I'll keep it brief. Um I'll actually lean into to Jacob's question for me before and kind of address the elephant in the room, which is I have not done this before, right?
Um everybody knows that. Um but that doesn't change the fact that I think I bring the right skill set and the right mindset and and frankly the the the um glorious lack of agendas and biases to the role. Um, I have worked with and in very large organizations with very large budgets, for lack of a better phrase, managing other people's money for the majority of my career, right?
Um, I the approach I take to this is very business-like, right? I look at running the town like a business, right?
And I think that it's not the same. It's again, I mentioned before I wrote a post about apples and dump trucks, right?
They're not the same. Um, but the the basic fundamental principles are, right?
We have to do a better job of increasing our revenues to balance everything out.
And I think we have to just look at every conceivable option. There's plenty of options on the table. I know you guys have explored a lot of them. Um, and I know it takes a lot of time and effort to explore all those. Um, but there are certainly plenty more that we can explore. And I think we have to be thoughtful. We have to be creative. We have to have honest conversations. We have to communicate clearly. We have to make sure that everybody in the room or out there is is clear.
um on the things that we're debating and discussing um to make sure that at the end of the day, you know, not everybody's going to agree with every decision, but the the vast majority of the community is informed.
>> Good.
>> Yep.
>> All right, Mr. Jones, your two minutes starts now.
>> Thanks, Mr. Moderator. Shortly after I moved to North Burrow, which I moved I made a post about it. I moved to North Burrow for family reasons. Our roots are here. You can read the details online.
Shortly after, we had a frozen pipe that caused a bit of a disaster in our home.
Insurance covered it. We hired appropriate contractors who pulled appropriate permits and we thought we were doing everything right. Uh we were also installing solar panels on the roof at the time, which was a separate project, and that was all being done right. Uh solar panels had a full final certifi uh full final inspection. They were good to go.
Just connect them. We needed a certificate. Well, before I got the certificate, a a deputy um inspector who doesn't work for the town anymore gave me a stop work order for reasons that were insane. They were wrong. And that's when I felt the town should not be treating its residents this way. This is not a town that's working for the residents. And that's when my friend Laura said invited me to volunteer and I volunteered on the zoning board where I could have a little bit of impact of helping residents uh interactions with the B building office if they didn't like the outcome of a decision. Um and I feel like I have made some changes and and helped us make it more of a town where the town works for the people. And that's what I'm for is a town that works for the people. And that's what I'll try to continue to do.
>> All set.
>> Yeah.
>> All right, Miss Ziton, you have the closing words. 2 minutes starts now.
>> Thank you so much for hosting this. I really appreciate everybody coming tonight and I appreciate all the feedback that we've had. This has been a really neat experience just to learn a little bit more about some of the other candidates. Um, transparency in the future is going to remain a critical goal for me when it comes to this role in the select board. I have really enjoyed the work that we've done. You know, we've had some great projects.
We've approved 13 Church Street. That's a project that's going to be coming to fruition that's going to bring some livelihood downtown. We have approved Clickers at Town Meeting. Hopefully, that's made that process a little bit smoother. We went through a lot of ARPA projects as a board and I think there's some really great new additions to the town. I got to be a part of electrical aggregation, which is um helping the electrical cost for our community. I was a part of the support for 432 Barefoot Woods to bring more trails to town. I think trails are a great spot for North Burough's amenities and it brings people from all over. Um, White Cliffs was great. Being able to avoid an override is great and really looking to the future economic development, finding more creative ways to save money and raise money and really leveraging the relationships that I've built so far.
So, I hope you will consider voting for me. I thank you for the opportunity tonight and let me know if you have any questions. Thank you. All right. Well, thank you very much to each of you for uh what you've conveyed. Uh I'm sure it's been informative for those that have been in attendance. I am thinking to myself, I may have put words in my mouth that shouldn't have been there relative to tomorrow night's activity.
I'm not exactly clear whether it's going to be a Q&A from the audience. I don't know. Is it >> for sure >> options for question?
>> There will be options. Okay.
>> Yes, they will be written.
>> Okay. So I guess my encouragement to you all would be if you heard something here today that you're like hey I want more information about that then you have the option of writing a question that could be considered to be asked tomorrow night I guess with no will be asked and obviously all of these individuals are on the town social boards um and available for contact. I think at this point um before I allow you to give a round of applause, I think at this point what we're going to do is just take a two or three minute break so that we can set up for the second portion which is essentially a spotlight on me if that's uh something that you want to stay for.
Um so we'll take two or three minutes to set that up. Uh keep the cameras rolling online because we don't want to lose anybody. But otherwise, a round of applause for our three candidates.
Can Can we make a make a potty break?
>> Yeah. Two or three minutes.
>> So, Mike, I'd like to do just put all three at one table over there. I'll sit over there.
>> I don't want to stand over there.
scoop.
>> I don't know.
So, do you want to just quickly introduce this mic?
>> Yeah, I can introduce the >> right here.
>> So, we'll just wing it.
>> Yeah.
>> All right. So, hopefully hopefully everyone had a good time. The first first segment of this a little bit of a different format. We're, you know, trying something new here and hopefully it had some some excitement and some good exchange. It seemed like there was some good information conveyed. Now, we're moving on to the second segment, which is the moderator portion. Uh, unfortunately, as I mentioned, Fred George was unable to attend. So, we just have Erin here who's going to provide some color relative to a few different topic areas.
>> And um, I got >> without further ado, please.
>> I'll I'll take my uh, intro.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Intro. Do we get a bell? Ding.
>> Have the bell.
>> He gets to ring the bell. Can't we ring the bell?
>> Right.
>> Somebody got a clock.
>> I was put it right here in the middle.
Laura can ring the bell.
>> But God, give us the bell, man. That's the most >> Tell me Tell me when I'm on. Two minutes.
>> I believe.
>> I'll get the clock going.
>> Okay.
>> So, no, this is my this is my opening statement.
>> Opening statement.
>> Opening statement.
>> All right. So, I I I feel like uh the the individuals who are here watching this may already know much of this, but um you know, and I said a little bit about myself at the town meeting for those that watch that. Um what I didn't say is I have been involved in this town in a volunteer capacity since the early 2000s. So, essentially 20 years off and on. My first uh foray into town uh volunteering was on the little known cable TV committee where it was a committee of two. It was me and Kathy de Galich. Um, and I don't even remember what we did. Uh, and from there transitioned to the community affairs committee with Virginia Sims George, who's Fred's wife. Um, and then, uh, I think I was elected to the select board and which would then was the board of selectmen. And then uh I through the former superintendent of schools I was selected to participate on two or three principal search committees for principal changes uh in town. Um I recently completed a term on the town office feasibility study committee. So it doesn't matter. Oh, and also probably I should most noteworthy, I did the naming subcommittee for Alangquin, which is the committee that determines what portions of the building are named for anyone, if at all. We didn't name anybody uh during the term that I was on it, but anyway, um my point is I've served everywhere that I could. Not everywhere, but in as many different varieties as I could. I'm I'm no stranger to service. Uh so why am I running for moderator? Because those that have known me over the past 20 plus years approached me after the last couple of town meetings and said please would you consider running for moderator? So this was by invitation of those that have known me over these decades >> 15 that asked me to consider this role.
Um my employment is such currently that I'm prohibited from running for anything that has sort of a partisan view. So, this is really the only thing that I could run for uh in my current um employment status. So, that's why I'm running. That's a little bit more about who I am. Um so, I think that's my opening statement. All right.
Topic number one.
>> First topic. I'm just going to jump in here. Scope of moderators appointment powers. And I and I want to clarify. I don't think any of us would say we're partisan either, but I understand your limitation.
>> Yeah.
>> Agreed.
>> Yep.
>> No primer question. You just want me to roll into it?
>> No. No. uh scope of moderator's appointment powers. Uh before we pepper you with questions, do you have a preliminary 90 second comment on this topic?
>> Sure. Yeah. Um so my preliminary comment on the scope of the moderator's appointment powers. Um I am aware that the moderator appoints to financial planning uh appropriations personnel um the defunct municipal code and bylaw committee current defunct and uh also the earthworks board. I think those are the committees and boards to which the moderator has either joint or exclusive appointment powers. As I sit here today, I have no idea how that process works with our current moderator. I feel like I'm a pretty involved resident in Northro and over the course of my years, I can't recall getting communication through email, which I've signed up for all the possible email communications you can get. I don't recall any communication from the town saying, you know, Mr. moderator is going to be accepting applications for this position and, you know, interviews are on this date and, you know, come and observe.
I've never seen that to my memory. Uh I don't know why that doesn't exist where we have other boards and committees that maybe go through a more public process.
So I'm certainly open to that. Is that my 15 second? Um and uh um and anyway, so my first, you know, if I were elected as a moderator, I would meet with all the individuals on the current boards and committees because I don't know if any of them are going to jump ship if a moderator change occurs.
Um, but I'm hoping for a more transparent um, process relative to the appointment powers.
So, that's my opening salvo on that. If my opponent were here, I would ask him, you know, how he currently appoints.
I have no idea. I don't know if you all know as current members of the select board.
>> We don't. We're not involved.
>> Okay.
>> As far as I know.
>> All right. So, um, you know, it would be again my, uh, preference that the process be a little bit more transparent and public and open and that, uh, maybe the select board, uh, and I can work if I'm elected collaboratively to, uh, to make sure that these roles are filled.
You know, I also will acknowledge >> I don't know where we're at actually in the time.
>> Well, this is this is my six minute back and forth with myself.
>> Oh, we haven't asked a question yet.
Anyway, but I'm going to keep it very short.
What what I was going to say is I I recognize it's very hard to get volunteers in in town anyway, right? I mean, so to make it a more ownorous process for people to come in and volunteer might draw might might push people away rather than bring people in.
So maybe a quieter process is more preferable for some people, but you know, so we got to find the balance. I'm not sure how it operates currently. I know I've stated what I'm looking for.
Um, but I also recognize you take volunteers as you can get them because so many of our boards and committees are unstaffed. I will also say No, this is my six minute.
>> No, I will. She has a question.
>> Oh, we have questions.
>> Jeez, >> we're supposed to ask you I think >> getting Sorry, >> it's okay.
>> I thought it was a six.
>> I hate to make a point of order, but we are out of order, my friend.
>> I appreciate your answer. And I think town meeting is important, but the appointed roles are so important to the select board. They're the check and the balance to our work. You know, you said the defunct municipal code and bylaw.
That's a really important committee that I think needs an honest look at appropriations, finance. We have to be really involved there. So, I would love to hear what you would envision. Let's assume that people, if you're getting involved in government, you know, there's going to be a lot of transparency. So, you've got to be comfortable with that. In a perfect world, what does your appointment process look like?
>> Well, I think it mirrors some of what we have already, which is, you know, you put out the request for applications.
There's a due date and then it's all very public online. You know, in terms of my single interviewing of the individual or if there are others that can be brought in on the process again, as it stands currently, I don't think we have any basis by which to determine how it happens. So, >> but it is important. So, thank you for the answer.
>> Question. Um, at the last select board meeting, one of the select board members, not me, full disclosure, um, mentioned on the things to think about in the future, possibly evaluating.
Obviously, this would require a lot of input from a lot of people and a charter change, I think, which is a two-thirds vote at town meeting, but the idea of potentially combining appropriations and financial planning into a similar into a single committee for efficiency.
Certainly, that would affect the appointing powers of the moderator since the moderator appoints in the entire appropriations committee and about half plus one is through the appropriations committee. One person goes on the financial planning committee, you not you appoint the other three.
>> If your question is, am I open?
>> What's your what's your you have thoughts about that that you'd like to share?
>> Well, I all I can say is I'm open. I'm not I'm not going to be dismissive of it. Um, but I would I would probably want to explore other committee, other communities that maybe have that in place to see how it operates to see whether it's more beneficial than the than the uh current configuration that we have. So, I'm open to it. Um, you know, but quite candidly, like Mr. Austin guy said, I've never been in this position. I've been in a lot of other positions. I've never been in this one.
And uh, and you know, I wish uh, Mr. George had been able to make it because I would have learned so much about how this operates now. So anyway, I'm open to it. I would explore it uh, to see how it's operational in other communities and take it from there. Mr. Ostagai, >> I have no further.
>> No question. All right. I have no wrap up on that. And I think uh we've covered that pretty good. So you want to move to topic number two?
>> Sure. Uh this >> can I just note that topic number two is efficiency. Anyway, >> it is efficiency. Improving town meeting efficiency.
>> So my opening statement on improving town meeting efficiency. Look, my elephant in the room is what happened last week. uh if you watched or were there uh I mean look I got two out of seven pass so it's not like it was a complete waste of time but uh it was generally not wellreceived by the hundred or 110 that were left in the room when it finally came on night three at 10:00 at night for me to get up and and do my presentations. Um, so I just I just want to open and say what I had intended was just what uh this topic is is to improve the efficiency of town meeting. This was not an attempted power grab. This is me paying attention to the details. I put a post out online saying, you know, look at night one. We moved a report from article 63 to the first thing of the meeting. Moderator didn't say anything. Didn't say, hey, this is a report that normally would be in 63. we need to move it now because maybe there's people out the door trying to get in still for the White Cliffs vote or the the school committee people are here and they want to go home and they want to report now, you know, and nobody would have objected, but the bylaws require a twothirds vote for something to be moved and it didn't happen. So, you know, I made a petition saying moderator's discretion, remove the two-thirds bylaw. That's essentially what happened in our town meeting. The moderator had the discretion to move it.
He moved it, but there wasn't the required two-thirds vote that our current law requires. So, I was simply saying this is how we are doing it currently. I think we should continue. I think it makes good sense. The moderator's job is to control the flow and efficiency of that meeting.
Okay. So, I have a that's a perfect segue. So, I want to >> No questions.
>> I want I want to word this carefully. um how when you said control the the content and the efficiency of the of the meeting when someone's making a comment on something um I'm sure everybody has noted that far too often those comments veer far far far far from the topic at hand. Um sometimes they land the plane, sometimes they don't, right? How would you balance sort of telling someone like, "Okay, that's enough or that's we need to land this thing a little bit clearer without necessarily stifling someone's opinion."
It's, you see what I'm trying to say?
It's I'm trying to word it carefully.
>> I do. I get it. And I mean, obviously the big the big issue is everybody's got first amendment rights, right? They can get up and they can talk and they can pontificate and they can even insult and that's within their first amendment rights. Um, I think that uh that much of that can be allayed by the moderator's introduction of how comments are supposed to operate. You know, when when we hit the first article that that's going to require public uh communication in terms of, you know, if you're getting up just to say I support this article, don't get up. if you want to get up and say, "I don't support this article." Not that we don't want, you know, people supporting the articles, but really people getting up and saying, "I support this." I don't know of any individual that has ever said, "Well, because that individual got up and said, I I support it. I'm going to change my vote or that swings the table for me." People make up their own minds. And I'm not aware of any instance where somebody has been uh persuaded by somebody who got up and said, "I'm going to change my vote or I support this." The much more productive use of public comment time is I oppose this because of X, Y, and Z or I have questions about this that weren't answered in the presentation. And if those kinds of comments come up, that's an indictment against the administration, right? Why weren't these questions asked? Now, you could say, well, because the resident waited until town meeting to educate themselves versus all of the meetings that went on throughout the course of the year or the seven months leading up to town meeting, and they should have been more well informed. Um, so but again, if I were moderator at a town meeting, my encouragement to the citizens would be to uh not get up and say how much they support it, but rather get up and say I oppose it for X, Y, and Z reasons and let's discuss that. That's what it's for. Or I have questions about it.
Because just getting up and voicing support doesn't move the needle. Doesn't necessarily change how the vote's going to go. People come to these meetings primarily, most of them, with their minds made up about how they're going to vote on certain things. So, uh, anyway, I hope that answers the question.
>> Can you follow up?
>> No, sir.
>> Question. Um, so I think you are you aware of our bylaw that I'm not going to quote it exactly, but it generally stands for the proposition that a motion to end debate is not in order until there's been an adequate opportunity for those >> uh opposed and pro to have an opportunity to speak. You're generally aware of that?
>> I am.
>> And are you aware that sometimes that comes in conflict with a uh moving the question?
>> I am. Um, >> I can tell you, I mean, if I can interrupt your question, I can tell you adamantly that, you know, were I moderator at a town meeting, I would communicate to those present that I will not entertain a motion to move the question unless somebody's at a microphone. Number one, I don't I don't like and I don't think it's appropriate for people to shout from their seats, move the question, and then to have that acted on, which I've seen in our recent town meetings. It's it's happened. Uh, number one. Number two, I would educate the individuals because again, you heard at this last town meeting under Mass General law that the moderator is giving broad discretion about how he operates the town meeting. And I would I would say that it would be my policy that even if a motion to move the question is made, my understanding and I would confirm with town council, but I'm pretty confident in my understanding is that it's a procedural motion. It is not a thou shalt immediately consider the move the question motion. That is a question for the moderator then to determine has there been enough debate both good and bad before we move this question. So I've seen in our recent town meetings where the move the question has been vocalized and immediately the moderator has said we're going to act on that motion and it kills the debate because if the motion to move the question passes what do we do? We have to vote on the article and all debate stops. And I would also, you know, take into account individuals, even if that motion was made at a microphone, but there are six other people on the other microphone who haven't spoken yet. I would also take into account that we're not going to act on that motion until we allow these individuals are the last ones that are going to comment before we handle this move the question motion. So anyway, it's it's it's really just a an easy conversation for the moderator to have with those present to establish the ground rules and to stop what has been a practice of just seat yelling, move the question, and we immediately move the question.
Laura, question.
>> Is there anything else that you would see for improving the efficiency of town meeting? So, I called into the select board meeting the other night and one of the comments that I made was I am um I am anxious to eliminate the every article checking with every single board and committee about how they voted up or down. I think we can fasttrack that by changing the graphics that are on the screen to indicate with the traffic light signal like you proposed. You know, green, everybody's on board. You know, we have select board green. We have financial planning yellow. Okay.
Yellow means not unanimous. We have appropriations committee red, you know, totally opposed. You know, we can establish some sort of a color code system that just is up on the screen for people to see and we don't have to spend I mean, if we have 60 articles and we're spending 30 seconds or a minute on every article to ascertain whether these committees are up and down, that's that's an extra hour or half an hour or two hours that we're just it's unnecessary. It's a graphic on the screen. I think uh I think we can move beyond that. So I don't know if that requires a bylaw change or if that's just a discretionary control that the moderator has but that would that would be an additional thing that I would uh do.
>> Thank you.
>> Can are we still within our six minutes?
Oh >> no.
>> Probably about done six minutes. So >> move on to topic three or >> probably move on to topic three.
>> Okay.
>> Right. You want to do topic three?
>> Sure. Your turn.
>> Well, let me give my intro on this topic. Yeah. Go ahead. Go ahead.
>> Increasing resident participation. What thoughts?
>> All right. So, this again going back to the elephant in the room for me last week, one of my articles, you know, giving the moderator discretion about who's in the meeting and who's not.
That's the way the current bylaw is currently written. And the only thing that I proposed was that we remove the two-thirds vote from the body because if anybody, and we certainly have seen people just anxious to make motions, it hasn't happened yet. Doesn't mean it wouldn't, but if somebody made a motion and said, you know, I want I'm I'm not okay with this individual, you know, being in this room right now for our town meeting, it slows everything down.
Now, we've got to take a two-thirds vote. I mean, look, I am not I I did not respond to the commentary the other night because when you're facing a crowd that is clearly not friendly to the ideas, uh it's not going to do a lot of good for me to try and sell it. But I will just say those that know me cannot cannot possibly imagine that I would prohibit anybody from coming into town meeting children or you know non- voting citizens or or whoever. That is not the point of what I tried to accomplish the other night. I would never do it. Fred, our current moderator, never takes the podium and says, "I have allowed all of these individuals into the room." We don't need that. I mean, it's it's not a question. we just accept that they're there. But if the situation ever arises that somebody objects that we need to question somebody's presence about, you know, their participation or whatever, then uh we got to take a two-thirds vote. And it's just again, we heard the select board candidates talk about how arcane our bylaws are. I think it's an arcane bylaw. It's not about taking power away from the people. It's allowing the moderator to run the meeting as efficiently as possible.
Anyway, okay. Uh, so, oh, >> so we're on questions for increasing resident participation.
>> Okay.
>> Um, >> well, that's a question we all have. Uh, how do we do it? Um, >> well, look, I think >> I guess that's my question. How do we increase resident participation in town meeting? So I think I mean look at the risk of at the risk of creating another committee or group or study group there have been enough calls as a result of what happened last week to maybe suggest that we do need to take a hard look at how we run our current town meeting and whether it's accessible to as many people as want to have operate. Um I can tell you you know looking ahead to the next topic I don't foresee Northro ever getting to a point to where people are voting from home. It's not going to happen unless some other community introduces it or some other state introduces it and we see how it works.
Northboro, I think John Codair's, one of John Codair's famous statements, our former town administrator, Northro is not going to be the guinea pig on this one. Uh, and it's just not, it's not appropriate for us to spend time or effort to try and figure out how people can vote from home. So, if the question of participation is how can I vote without being there, I don't think that's going to happen unless maybe I think Mitch Cohen got up and said, "Well, there are some towns that do a representative uh town meeting." I don't think that I I personally wouldn't want to go to that uh format. Um so, really it it comes the question of do we split the town meeting into spring or fall like some have suggested? Do we find a Saturday town meeting? Um, and I'll be quite candid when I, you know, put the petition together. Did I consider that there were religious uh conflicts on a Saturday? I did not. Mayopa. Um, so maybe a Saturday meeting can never happen because of religious conflicts.
Maybe we are stuck on nightly meetings.
Um, but I think that in order to garner more public participation, the warrant has to be super tight. And we cannot come to town meeting and say, "Oh, there are six articles we're going to vote to pass over." and or you know there are three articles that you know we're not sure how the public are going to take them so let's just uh put them out there and see how how the public feels about it and we end up with motions to amend and now we're amending and voting on amendments and so I would say that town meeting again Fred's not here I wish he were uh I'm going to ask the two sitting select board members does Fred participate in the part the um compilation of the warrant articles at all?
>> No.
>> No. Can I ping pong one back of this crossfire format? Um, how would you engage with the select board in that process? When when and how?
>> So, uh, Warren articles, I think, start to take shape like around January, February, right? Am I right? I don't think any earlier than that.
>> Yeah, they're being discussed, but like they're not in a list form before that.
So, I mean, I would I would really start to get involved conversations with the town administrator, visiting a select board meeting, you know, whatever it needed to be to start taking shape to to start participating in the discussion because this is a meeting that I'm responsible for. And if I'm elected as moderator, I don't want people coming to the meeting and saying, "Oh, town meeting is the worst because it just drags on and on and on." I want to solve that. I want to be part of the discussion that says, "Do we really need this article this year?" You know, let's talk to the planning board. Let's talk to whoever. Now, of course, if if uh the audience were allowed to speak, I'm sure people would be like, "Well, then why did you put in seven citizen petitions?
You know, did we need those?" Um, and again, my response would be, look, I'm trying to improve the process. I saw an avenue to do it. I had a short window to do it. Um, and I got two of seven done.
So, you know, it's a I don't view it as a bad thing. I know some people are real go through the committees, don't citizen petitions are a last resort.
I don't necessarily agree with that viewpoint. I've seen citizen petitions from time to time in our town. I think it's great to allow citizens the the encouragement and knowledge that they can bring this forward without having to get somebody else's permission.
So, >> questions, >> sort of a question maybe. Do do you see any benefit in in breaking town meeting up into sort of, you know, if it's going to be multiple nights anyway? Ideally, it could be fewer multiple nights, but into sort of thematic sections.
>> Love it.
>> The idea that you could potentially have people come on those nights that are most important to them. I'm sure plenty of people have to sit through stuff that for better or worse doesn't really matter that much to them.
>> Again, one of my citizen petitions, allow the moderator discretion to move an article out of order. that would obviously not occur if we had this collaboration effort in advance. But, you know, without that collaboration effort and I'm just presented the warrant and I look at it and I think why is article 44 for West Main that's clearly as popular in my opinion as the White Cliffs. You know, people want to know what are we doing with that property? What are we doing with the downtown? And and they moved White Cliffs all the way up to article 4, but we left Fort West Main at 44. Why? Why?
the same people have the same interest in both properties. Why not put it? So, if we're talking about thematic nights, you know, town-owned properties are going to be on, you know, whatever night and we make sure that they're all there.
I can't uh I can't tell you how frustrating or sad or disappointing it is when we get through a big thing and then 800 people walk out or whatever, you know?
>> Any other questions on that?
>> No, you've answered fine.
>> Uh, next topic. Uh any closing remarks on that? I think you've covered it pretty no >> thoroughly. All right. Um modernizing through technology. Do you have an opening statement?
>> Uh you know I don't I don't have necessarily an opening statement or much to say about this uh because as I previewed in my previous uh topic answer, you know, I think the biggest thing relative to town meeting is can we vote remotely? And I don't think we're going to get there. At least I don't know how and it's not going to be Northboro that's going to be leading the charge on that. But I will say that, you know, there were some comments made at your select board meeting the other night. Instead of verbal presentations, let's put up films that the town has already put together. That way, we limit the time structure. I think that's great. Put up films. It's a pre-cut film. We know exactly how long it's going to be. It's not going to ramble on and on. Um, look, I am a huge proponent of technology. I would love to use it however and wherever possible, but in a limited moderator role at town meeting, I mean, it's really just the presentations and the vote tabulation.
Now, I will say, and this might be controversial uh for some, uh on the first night when we had the abstaining numbers that were revealed, whether through error or on purpose or whatever, I liked it. I liked it. Um I think it's important for residents to see that three people didn't vote and it was a tie vote. if that's what happened. I don't know if it was a mistake or whatever, but uh you know, if we had gone to somebody somebody called for a card count after that tie vote, right?
If we had gone to a card count, that would have forced people to put up their cards and say, "I'm look at me. I'm against this or I'm for this to all my friends." You know, that would have been an uncomfortable thing. But I think it's just as uncomfortable and yet productive to show the numbers of those who abstain willingly from a vote and how it impacts the outcome.
I liked it.
>> Are you Can I ask a question? Yeah, go for it.
>> Uh, this is maybe I feel like I I want to make sure we address this although I'm not aware that it's ever been an issue, but um you've mentioned for example the recommendations not being given orally but being written. What would be your process for making sure that any individuals who had accessibility difficulties would be able to have their needs met? I I'm not sure today what the process is. I'm I I assume we would make sure any accessibility needs were made in terms of, you know, things that come to mind, hearing, vision. There's of course others. U any thoughts on that?
>> So, I'm not I'm not sure specifically what you're looking for. Are you take are you saying like somebody's at home watching online and they want to make a written? I mean, if someone's blind and they can't see your recommendations, how would they how would you make sure that someone with a limitation of some sort can communicate ahead of time and know that that will be taken care of so they can still participate?
>> Uh, well, I think that's where our yellow cards or whatever color they are come into play. um and maybe asking before a vote is taken, you know, by by show of a a yellow card in the air, is there somebody that is not familiar with what we're working with or is not aware of the amendment? I mean, obviously, if it's up on the screen and everybody can read it, then everybody knows, but if we have somebody who's got some disability issues, that might be an opportunity for them to just raise their card and say, "Yeah, I'm not I'm not clear on that for whatever reason." Um, I'm assuming hopefully that we would be able to know in advance what what sort of limitations we might be dealing with on that night.
Like I don't know, those that are familiar with those individuals would come forward and say to the town administrator or to town council or to the moderator, hey, I've got so- and so here. There's this limitation, so I just want you to be aware. I think that would be helpful for us to be able to know what we're working with. So, >> thanks. And I'm not aware of any situation like that. But I can just envision it's possible and I'd want to make sure anyone who could participate with an accommodation could um feel open to reach out and and ask for one and let's take care of it. So you sounds like you'd be willing to do that.
>> Yep.
>> Any other technology >> final topic >> questions?
>> Final topic.
>> Who's good?
>> Yeah. Good.
>> All right. Transparency in moderator decisions. So, this again I think is something that's real easy to do for the moderator. I don't know that it's necessarily been done by our current moderator to the degree that I would probably do it myself, but um you know there's a lot of this is the decision I've made and that's what we're going to go with and there's not a lot of explanation that follows.
Um and again, Mass General law broad discretion to the moderator. He's got town counsel behind him whispering in his ear. You don't have to answer that or I don't know if he does, you know, whatever. But uh I am an overcommunicator and I think that the more information people have the more um the easier it is for them to to to to walk them along the path rather than just saying I've made the decision. We're going to move on.
You know, your time is up or or whatever. So I have no issues with the transparency in the decisions that a moderator makes. Uh no issues communicating what my thought process would be. But again, you know, all of that requires time, right? I mean, we're trying to save time. We're trying to make town meeting efficient. So, uh, trying to explain that in the quickest possible way while at the same time keeping the meeting going, but uh, I think I think I think the moderator could do a better job of of explaining decisions. So, >> I ain't going to ring the bell.
>> You're within time.
>> I ain't going to ring the bell.
>> Question.
>> Question.
So, how do you view the moderator's role as a check to the select board?
>> Well, as a check to the select board, I think the biggest thing is the preparation of the warrant, right? Um, and again, I don't know how much he's involved, if at all. Right now, clearly on the select board, you have no knowledge of his involvement. Maybe he goes to the town administrator directly.
I don't know. She's not here to answer.
Um, but that would be my biggest answer in terms of the moderator's check against the select board is the preparation of the warrant to make sure that, you know, we have the right warrant presented for town meeting because again, the town meeting belongs to the town moderator. That's who runs it. That's who makes the decisions in it. Not the voting, but the procedural and other decisions. So, I don't want a warrant that's going to frankly embarrass me.
>> Yeah. Thank you.
Um, do you think that the the residents of the town have a strong grasp on what the moderator does outside of the town meeting?
>> Yeah, I don't think so.
>> Yeah.
>> I mean, if I was to pull a 100 residents, could they say a whether they're aware that the moderator appoints to those various boards and committees or what those boards and committees are? I probably 90 plus out of 100 wouldn't be able to answer those questions.
>> Yeah. Yeah. I think that would it could go a long way to some some education. I think particularly as it result as it relates to your sort of administration over the over town meeting.
>> Let's I'm getting whispered. We should wrap it up.
>> Closing statement.
>> Closing statement.
>> Perfect. I love wrapping it up. Uh well, look, my closing statement is that um Fred George is a town treasure. I acknowledge that. Um, I think I uh in a in an earlier candidates night, I acknowledged the fact that my mother actually held many open houses to get Fred on a select board 40 years ago. So, our families have been sort of intertwined over the years. He was the select board member that came to my Eagle Scout Court of Honor and represented the town at my Eagle Scout, you know, hearing 30 years ago or how 40 years ago, however many years ago it was. Um, I am an individual who believes in term limits. I'm an individual who doesn't think that there's an irreplaceable person serving in public service. Um, we like certain people. We want certain people to continue, but that's never the way that our founding fathers envision governance, whether national or local. You come in, you do your part, and you go, you know, and live your life. When I was on the select board in 2011, I served one term.
I left voluntarily. Why? Not because I was going to lose. I mean, I made the decision before the elections were even opened that I wasn't going to run again, because I just didn't see a um good use of my time in continuing. The town was operating very efficiently at the time, winning financial awards year after year. You know, it was just like, all right, I you know, I'll go find some other things. And that's when I got on the principal search committees and whatever. Um, so I am not a power- hungry individual. I'm not somebody that's looking for control or, you know, whatever. I'm here to serve. And if people don't think I'm the right answer, then that's fine. They're entitled to their opinion. But I don't think having somebody in a position for 23 straight years is necessarily good either. I think that, >> you know, the person that took my spot on the on the board of selectman, had had I not resigned, would he ever have joined the board of selectment? I don't know. But he did because I resigned and he was beloved by the town. Jason um >> yeah town loved him and he did great things. Well, look, give me a shot.
Fred's been in for 23 years. Maybe I'll do great things and maybe at the end of however many years I decide to serve 1 2 3 4 5 after I say that's it. I'm done.
Maybe you all will be like, "Oh, don't go." And I'll be like, "Sorry, I don't know. Sorry.
I'm not in it for 23 years. So anyway, thank you very much. Appreciate the opportunity.
That concludes this evening's event.
Thank you all for your attendance. Thank you very much to the candidates. I hope that it proved to be a fun and exciting time. Also want to make mention again that tomorrow you get to have it again.
Algangquin Regional High School 7:30.
It's going to be a different format, but should again prove to be very informative and exciting again. So, thank you all so much.
Thanks for coming.
Can we take a picture?
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