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Selectboard FY2027 Strategic Priorities and Budget Planning Session

Video

So we've got to find some time to go back so I can practice getting out of my vote.
All right, so I'll call this budget planning session agenda meeting to order.
If you want to join me in the budget meetings.
Two of the five, the United States, America, and the Interior Republic,
for which it stands, one nation, under God, and visible, liberty, and justice for all.
All right, so we just have a few items to review signature.
We have a use of facilities for duty.
field it's a birthday party for Amanda Hewock on the 29th and it's also the
recreation loading of fireworks on the barge for July 5th and that's going to be from
7 a.m. to 9 a.m. and then we have a use of facilities for the safety services
building and that's the Friends of Abbott Library's annual pancake breakfast
and that will be on July 4th from 7 to 11th Joe the the birthday parties on
Dewey field but the fireworks is at Dewey Beach correct correct I'll make a motion
that we approve both or if we want to call it all three use of facilities
I'll second any further discussion all in favor and then we have some
discussion right into the thing or this one here this is that one here so we have a
an application for the Sunn-Pee farmers market they are looking to make a path
from the town property to the buying property to store goods for the farmers
market through to what's the property the old building property would it
could help to I can pull it up if that would they did attach a certificate of insurance
did you see that
There's a file in there?
It's, I think it's blank if I'm not mistaken, but I can look at that right now.
Is that for the blanketed farmers market itself?
Yeah.
So this is us here and they, this is the wood buy in here?
No, no.
No.
This one?
No.
No.
That one at the very well.
That one and the one on the corner across with Prospect Hill.
Okay.
So they want it to go.
like from here across.
Would it be, I'm not sure if it would be that long, thin one,
or whether it would be the one that's right on River Street there.
That was the smoothies.
Yeah, so it goes across, like right here.
There's like a weird thing there.
And what do they want to do?
They want to...
A pathway.
A pathway.
They can carry that.
They can carry that.
Yeah.
But isn't that to the owner of that property?
So you are, the town of Centi.
Owns a woodbine property?
It's this.
So there's a weird jot here that would require them to go.
If you...
James and Matthew to, from Basem to...
Yeah.
So they're going to be able to do...
To the woodbine, that's fine.
But if I'm not mistaken, it's right here is where they want the path.
I said, I didn't want to...
I didn't want to go too far any one direction without getting guidance from you.
It just seems to me like it would be much simpler to driving around there with the pickup
and load up what they want and bring it around as opposed to walking through down to the shed
and grabbing, you know, part of it and walking back.
It seems like an awful lot of extra work.
Could it be that they want to bring stuff in in the middle of the event?
And so they're...
So they're going to go there and they're going through the way?
It's pretty vague as far as what they want to do.
So yeah, they say weekly market on Saturday mornings
for Memorial Day through Labor Day weekend.
We are currently using Ben Mayor Park site for market.
We are now asking the ability to create, cut,
and maintain a small path across from one of the gravel blocks
to connect to the Centip Heritage Alliance Woodbine Cottage site.
This path would allow market volunteers to transfer a day of support
from our storage shed at the rear of the woodbine property to the market site.
The path in clearing would be a wood shut chip base which would be donated by Harding Hill Farm.
So it's probably that little shed that you see right in the top corner.
I see.
So they want to go straight across instead of going on the shell, right?
Yeah, yeah.
And I think it's to store things so that they're not constantly bringing them back and forth.
Right.
And they say a small path of wood chips.
Yeah, sounds fine.
pickup trucks.
To me, that's a different story.
Right.
Because I thought they were talking about lower, not high-out.
And how long does this go for?
I mean, so that's the issue though, right?
So for them, it's Memorial Day through Labor Day weekend.
But if you have a path there, then it's there.
On to our...
Can I introduce Courtney?
Yes.
So Courtney is a resident of...
Use yourself so that, yeah.
Sure.
Hi, I'm Courtney Dickinson.
Dickinson. And I volunteered to help out with a strategic planning workshop together.
Sounds like some really great work was done in 2024.
And so I facilitate things professionally.
So most recently, I founded and I was the head of a school for the last 16 years.
But before that, I had a 15-year-long career where I did a lot of organizational development
and a lot of workshop facilitation to align people around shared.
around shared values, vision, goals, priorities, plans, etc.
So I've run hundreds of workshops, and I just met, you know, when I was chatting with Anthony
and Shannon and I said, hey, you know, if you want to come in and help this, it would be of use.
So I'm just here as a volunteer, and so this is an amazing town, it's a beautiful town, and maybe
it can be of use. But that's, so I was just thinking we can just dive right into thinking about
our purpose and our outcome.
for today.
Is that good?
Yes, sure.
Yeah.
Okay.
Awesome.
So there's two sessions.
There's this morning.
And then there's another one next week.
Both of them are framed up to be around, you know, four hours.
And we're going to get as far as we can.
So I, this is on a whiteboard.
I know it's behind you.
I apologize about that.
Oh, that's okay.
But the goal for this is that we're, it's sounding like,
from meeting with Anthony and Shannon to do some prep work together, is to
define a shared foundation for your work, right?
And this is whiteboard, so we can evolve this, we can erase it.
But I want to spend a little time to make sure that what we're focusing on is what you all want it to be.
Right?
So defining a shared foundation, the specific outcomes we're looking to get to today is to really identify,
but it's building from priorities from 2024.
But really, re-cl clarify what those priorities are that can
guide your decision making as you're getting into that 2027 budget.
Right?
And then other outcome is developing a mission statement, which you can use to help that decision
making for development of the future of the town.
So this will just be a draft, but starting and thinking about why you serve,
what kind of town you really want to help steward moving into the future, and then
revisiting priorities.
We'll see how far we get today.
But those are the main purpose and outcomes for today.
The agenda that we've framed up is to spend a little time
making sure that these are the correct outcomes
that we should target.
Then getting into values and hopes and why you've served,
that can then be really be the basis
for drafting a mission statement that you're using.
Then getting into revisiting priorities
and really hearing from you what you really see as,
really essential and hopes for the different priorities that are laid out here.
Again, there may be some new ones that emerge, they may evolve a bit, and then really talking
about different considerations, timelines, interdependencies, costs, we'll see how far we get here.
I don't know that we'll get very far here, but that's why we have a part two next week.
And then wrapping up with next steps and just really any observations or insights you have.
that you're thinking about for the town and for the next session next week is the plan for today.
All right.
Sound good?
Okay.
All right. So do you want to craft or change these outcomes at all?
Which is fine to do?
No. Not right now.
No? That sounds reasonable?
Yeah.
Okay. Awesome.
It's a place to start from.
Great.
Okay.
So then let's start off by just hearing from all of you about what a
what, I apologize, I didn't know how it's what I'll be oriented.
What, why, what does this town mean to you?
And why do you serve as select board?
I mean, it's a huge commitment.
So just really hearing from all of you about that is where we're going to start.
So what are you?
We wonder why we're served.
It's starting to have a loaded question in 9-15.
Yeah, it is.
It is.
It is.
Well, like that.
Okay.
Go ahead.
Go ahead.
Let the youngest...
The only be the...
The first one.
So I'm the newest member.
And my purpose is to try and foster a re-invigoration.
The harbor.
Okay.
Foster attracting people and affordability into the town.
into the town, and three, put together a budget, that it's something that's going to get passed.
Okay.
And not goes through a process of it would be interjected.
Okay.
Okay. So you said reinvigorate the harbor,
affordability and attracting a younger set of people
and creating a budget that can be passed.
Those are the three key things I heard from you.
Correct.
All right.
Cool.
Is that clear?
Yeah?
I would love to.
I'm the second oldest, like, board member.
Compared to Fred, I'm a baby, but that's okay.
All right.
Mine was kind of, you know, I've been on the board for almost six years, and I think back
in the day, I just saw some things happening with the town similar to what Dave just said,
that it's kind of unsettling, and I wanted to kind of join, get some insight, and try to help
woo this town forward.
We've done a lot of great stuff, and I think we're going to continue to do a bunch of great stuff.
But I was just seeing a lot of stuff that.
I didn't like, I haven't been here as long as Fred, but I've been here almost 18 years.
My kids have been through the school system.
You know, I was just disturbed by what was going on.
So I just wanted to join with these guys and obviously move forward.
I can go into a minutiae, but that would be like half an hour so we don't do that.
But similar to what Dave said, I just want to move this town forward.
You know, obviously concerned about the amount of young people that can't get into the Senepee.
Okay.
From a costume.
Okay.
Not just affordability, but attainment.
They can't.
I mean, I could sell my condo tomorrow, but where am I going in the Senate because there's nowhere I can go.
Right.
So that's concerning to me because the population is not getting any younger.
We want to influx the younger people, but like me, don't want to be part of the town, serve, and move it to the next generation.
Because we're not going to be around forever.
So that's concerning as well.
So primarily when you say affordability, it sounds like you're talking about housing.
Yeah, rentals.
houses, there's just not a lot of property that's available in Sondipi right now for the most part.
So that's concerning, which it might be a speed bump we run into as well.
I mean, there's not a lot of places we can put stuff now.
So that's something we need to work on, whether it's, you know, a couple years down the road or a year or whatever it is.
Okay.
I'm hearing a theme between the two of you.
Right.
I didn't want to call up you.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
This is your own view, right?
I mean, yeah, yeah, great.
So that's a...
Huge, that's the one of the biggest things then that I'm hearing from you was there was stuff that was going on that you were disturbed by.
I think that was your word.
You're not going to get into the minutiae of that.
But really, you've been here for 18 years.
Your kids went through the school system, and you really care deeply about affordability in the town for kind of the next generation.
And moving forward, yeah.
And moving forward, creating that sense of future and momentum.
Yeah.
Got it.
I've won some left on the system.
It'll be a senior next year.
Okay.
And after that, they're all out.
So, you need to have more kids in the school system as well, because it's a great school system to begin with.
Okay.
So storing into the future.
Yep.
All right.
Got it.
Anthony, do you want to go next?
Sure.
I mean, I, uh, people had asked me if I wanted to join the board, and I, at first I was like, I don't, I was not sure.
And then I was like, hey, you know what, I think I could help.
And some of the things that I looked at just from living here is just just,
how the community was growing.
And I felt like there was no real plan set forward to how that, how we would grow and grow correctly
and not grow at a rate where it's changing our community for the things that I enjoy.
I do like the things our town has to offer from national resources.
So it's important to me to protect that stuff.
But, you know, like what they had said from providing some opportunity for residents
who do live here and just looking into the future and seeing like how we could correct
some of the infrastructure stuff so we don't have failing roads.
So like I'm, like, I see aspects of the town that are failing, you know, and I don't think
we've invested correctly or set up's correct plans to basically ensure that that doesn't happen.
So it's a process to try to figure out how we do get there.
And, you know,
I was concerned that at times I think we do overregulate some stuff.
You know, regulation is good, but to a certain extent, I am a big proponent of like the free marketplace
and having that kind of adjustings naturally.
So, yeah, that's kind of where I'm at, I don't necessarily have a specific agenda other than really wanting to help the community
because I love living here.
That's me.
nutshell. All right. So what are the things you're hearing from Anthony? I summarized for you
too, but what are you hearing from him? Well, I mean, there's a, there's a bit of a theme
between the three of them of, you know, the affordability of living here, and as well as, as wanting to,
wanting to be, um, want to be involved in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, you know, in, in, in, in,
the direction the town's going.
Yep.
But I think we also have to preserving the rural nature of our community.
And as we think about how we pursue the various goals, making sure we're not over-regulating
as part of the process.
No, just like, because we all want to live in the town,
we all come from different backgrounds, and we all have different ways that we want to live in,
or choose to live a specific way, and I should, that's his choice.
That's just kind of how I see it.
Fred, what about you?
Why do you serve?
Well, how much time have we got?
Well, of course, I have a very long history here in town.
I tell people I'm not a native of Sunapee.
I was five days old, I think, when my mother brought me home from Newport Hospital.
Otherwise than that, I've been right here ever since.
And years ago, in grade school, actually, I guess it was junior,
they didn't call it junior high school back then,
it was just the middle grades, but they allowed us,
they allowed us the opportunity to come down to the gymnasium when they had Talmud.
There had to be a statue down there.
There was no play.
around or, you know, any of that business.
Otherwise, you were right back up to the school.
So, I mean, it absolutely fascinated me.
The, you know, what went on between the different people and the conversations and everything that went
along with that and how the moderator handled everything and so on, so forth.
And after I graduated high school and started in the work-a-day world, why, it was, you know,
you know, things were changing, and I didn't call it they were changing for the better.
And the old saying of, if you don't understand history, you repeat it.
So it was like, okay, I'm going to try this, and 35 years later here I am.
But, I mean, my primary purpose is to help us to keep from repeating ourselves.
and to, you know, to try to guide our town here so that we do grow and develop as time goes on,
but a little bit at a time, a little bit of the time.
And try to, try to make everything, everything that the town does for our constituents is important.
I mean, some people, the fire department is more important to, some people, the highway
department is more important to, some people, the operation of the town office is more important
too. So you got to, you got to try to work and weigh all of the different parts of the program.
And one of the philosophies that I've always had as far as our budget here was to
to point out to our department heads, you know, bring us a realistic budget that you can kind of justify,
and we'll work to promote it and get it passed, and then go save us money.
In other words, if you've got a million dollar budget and you can save us $250,000 by being able to get sales on stuff
and work together with other departments so we're not, you know, buying twice and different things of that nature,
so that at the end of the year, we have this, we have the extra money.
And, of course, it's a very difficult thing for some people to understand that, okay, yes, you've paid the money in.
The money hasn't been spent.
We use that every year to help to reduce what our tax rate's going to be.
And in the end, it ends up saving us money, number one, number two, we don't have to worry about borrowing money in anticipation of taxes
because we have money to cover ourselves until the next tax bills come in, and that sort of thing.
So that's kind of where I'm at, and just to sort of be the old guy in the room that helps occasionally to settle things,
although there are occasions when I stir it up, too.
So.
All right.
So the things I'm hearing from you are, what are you all hearing from Fred?
You wrote them up there, but I can't see them.
All right, so one was about, don't repeat the mistake, one was about you want to grow and develop,
but in a pace that is a little bit at the time, is your phrase you said.
And then you also talked about having a realistic budget.
Yeah.
And having that realistic budget in a way that can save much.
money as much as possible and avoid borrowing money.
We're borrowing money and be able to use the saved money back against our tax rate each year.
Yep.
But there are some people that we've been explaining this to for years, and they just don't understand it.
Or they don't want to understand it.
Right. So...
Just go back on...
I grew up in Western.
I saw the city.
Big decisions that affected the outcome of the city, Boston and Worcester, but their stadium in Worcester had they've done pre-decisions.
Now, that's like from a huge growth standpoint, nothing that I'm looking at here, but more in the sense that some of the decisions that were made didn't set them up for the future.
So when I look at us in Sonapie, you know, if we were 7,000, if 7,000 people lived in our community, what does that look like?
not saying that we would get 7,000, but that would be more like the New London number of residents.
And if that was the case, like, where would we put extra services?
Where would we, you know, where would we want that stuff, where we would keep the rural character,
but we could provide some of those services to our residents.
And if we have an aging community, where are we going to provide housing for them?
You know, where is that 55-plus community?
because I see us developing growing building houses at a natural rate where we are now with our current zoning regs.
And then we're going to get to this point where we're going to be like, oh, we didn't think about that,
and now we don't have any space to put it, right?
So it's just never going to happen here.
And if that's what we want, that's okay, but I think we just got to come up with that and make those decisions.
Or we've got to say, hey, in 15 years, you know, if we wanted a supermarket in town,
where would it go? Do we not want a supermarket in town? Then that's fine. But, like, if, if, if we want some of those things, we should kind of say, hey, in our planning zoning, this is where it could go.
And it's not basically just above the harbor, but how this 11 interchange works. Do we allow more business in an area so that's, you know, there's a gentleman starting a private medical practice in Georgia's Mills?
He's a community member.
And there's nothing available for extra office space.
There's nothing, there's just, there's not many places for businesses or people to have professional
offices here in town.
If my parcel and my offices sells, I could be looking for a place to put my office,
and I'm like, where would I even go?
And I think there's a lot of residents in town that feel that way.
And then we feel like for, we're.
We're, our backs against the walls.
So then it's like, oh, do I have to leave this community to then provide a professional service and make a living kind of thing?
So anyway, I know I went on a little tangent with it, but that's like having the vision of saying if it was or could we correct some of the areas that we're struggling with in those senses.
Because if you have some of that and provide the jobs, more people will live here, but they're
kids through the schools kind of thing.
So what I've added is, sorry, I'm sorry, I just thank you.
One was make decisions to set us up for the future.
And I think you're, you had an example of what about Worcester.
And then you brought up housing both earlier.
It was brought up more for bringing young people in.
You're talking about housing for the aging community so people don't have to leave.
And then you also talked about really thinking about what do we want in terms of, you know, for planning and zoning.
Do we want a grocery store?
Do we want more spaces for commercial activity?
Do we want more spaces to have professional services in town?
So those are things you're bringing up.
What are other comments and thoughts about all this?
I mean, there's a tension, right?
Maintain rural.
save money and develop and grow, it can feel at odds.
But I don't know that it needs to be.
It doesn't have to be.
It doesn't have to be.
I mean, we had a proposal, a lot of the planning, actually, you're familiar with Forward Centipede?
I've heard of it briefly.
Okay.
So it's a group of citizens that got together.
They had what's called a charrette.
Yep.
From that, they came up with different proposals.
And one of the committees for plans,
and zoning, was looking at this exact issue.
Yes, great.
And the proposal was, I think, of course, proposal there was some problems with it,
but the proposal was to rezone the Harbor and Lower Main Street
to allow more, better development of more affordable homes.
Okay.
Now, limits, I think, are an acre,
what you could build, a number of bedrooms are homes per acres,
are pivotly expensive.
It just, you can't make the numbers work.
And so we were proposing to bring that down to make it,
it wouldn't be affordable housing,
it would be housing that would be housing the middle,
the other middle class where we just could afford.
And the only place you could do that is really lower main,
because the other way to be,
I think the numbers work is you need a town sewer.
We didn't do a good job reaching out the community in terms of that proposal, so it's still sort of in abeyance.
It's been deferred.
But that, to me, I would allow for modest growth, creating more tax revenue for the town,
more opportunities for young and older people to have units that could be.
hopefully more in range and affordability and yet it keeps the real nature of the town and there could be I think other small business commercial properties as well that would be the numbers are worth better and I think that the harbor still has that capability so I think there's you're right there's tensions but yet I think if you're going through it it doesn't
I think everything can work in terms of everything is self-interest.
Now, there's always going to be some people that aren't going to be happy with that change,
but not to me is where the tension is.
I think another point of contention that Anthony kind of alluded to the whole Worcester thing to a certain degree.
Obviously we're not Worcester, but if we don't plan, you know, we talk about infrastructure all the time.
If we don't plan about bridges and roads and everything, it's going to be a moot point because everything is going to be a disaster area, basically.
So we set up capital reserves to plan for the future so we can pay for this stuff because it's not getting any cheaper.
You know, pavement's getting more and more expensive because it's oil-based.
So you have set up capital reserves? You're saying we need to.
A bunch of them, but we try to get some more because we're trying to plan.
And sometimes the residents, why do we need to put that money away?
Yeah.
Well, planning for the future.
And if we don't plan now and put that money away, you know, pavement could be double in three years.
So we're going to be in a hole.
So just getting people understand that sort of like we do, we save our money to plan for the future.
It's the same thing with the town.
We've got to save our money to plan for the future.
I've got a son that's going to go to college in a year.
I'm planning for him to go to college.
It's the same exact thing.
But it's the heart of exactly what you would think and hope a select board would be pondering.
It's a perfect snapshot, I think.
Yeah.
What would be?
If you create a mission statement that guide your decision-making,
that tries to hold these things in balance, what might it say?
From like a bird's eye view, if you didn't live here, you think of like what brings people to Sennepi.
It's our natural resources.
So I think we have to be very good stewards of our natural resources, the lake, the mountain, our waterways,
are what drives people here.
It's a big economic engine.
So, you know, we have to environmentally conscious in what we do.
Jane, is that the one we did last time?
Yeah.
I can't see it, but.
It's just, it's just the components of, I can go grab the one that we sort of modeled it after.
I was actually trying to go.
I think, you know, question, financial responsibility.
One of the things that a lot of people don't realize is our lake out there is a two-edged sword.
Yeah.
It's a beautiful thing, and everybody loves it, and people come here,
and they build their multimillion-dollar houses, which works real well for helping him to raise the monies that we need.
But it also puts us in a bad scenario as far as the county,
because we're sending, we pay right now, I think it's 30 or 32 percent of the Sullivan County budget,
budget.
Yeah. Because we are the biggest property owner.
Property values.
Property values in the county.
And it's going to be the same thing with the state education tax if that ever comes back around
and they start collecting it again.
And that, those two things in themselves, you know, are almost very close to enough
to put us in a situation where we just can't maintain ourselves anymore.
So, you know, 32% that's, that's, that's, that's, we're one out of 14 towns, and we take 32% of
that, that's a lot of people don't realize that.
Yeah, they don't. It's like, why, you know what, why is our tax rate so high?
And it's like, well, if you took the time to look at it and understand what it is, like a new
nursing on their building or whatever, anything.
And, I mean, I won't.
say that I won't say that the county doesn't need to do the improvements that they do.
But the taxation or the assessment side of it is skewed.
I mean, we've got 8% of the population.
We use 2% of the services.
We paid 32%.
We paid 32%.
At one point in time years ago, when Bill Roach was with us,
We attempted a couple of times to get some legislation through, and we called it the 2% bill,
and that was that you wouldn't ever pay more than 2% more than what your population is toward a county budget.
And the unfortunate part of it was that Sullivan County had, I think, three towns that would end up having to pay quite a bit more than they do now.
And I think there was enough representation and what have you there, that they were able to kill it,
which would have balanced things out quite a bit more.
I mean, the city of Claremont, I think, is paying like 12% of the bill, and they use 80% of the services.
You know, same thing with Charleston.
Do you want to put something in your mission statement about trying to crack that in the future as part of the
of this group's work, or do you want to, because I think part of the mission statement is
guiding your decision-making about how you're going to spend the money you have, but
is it this group's responsibility to try to crack that a little bit?
Is that a select board thing? I don't know if that's in the scope of your mission statement.
I don't know whether it is or not, but I think it's probably in our court as far as
attempting to get our state representatives and state senators on our side to, you know,
to make some adjustments in it.
Okay, so it's about advocating for fairness.
Yeah, I mean, the, you know, the state education tax is administered the same way.
So it's, it really needs to be on both sides.
At this point, you know, the state education tax is administered the same way.
is kind of just sitting off to the side and whatever we raise, according to that,
goes back into our own school system.
So it's kind of one of those things, do you poke it and try to get it changed while everything is kind of,
I mean, the county certainly isn't simmered down, but the state one is,
and that could end up being nearly as much money as what we send to the county, which is three and a half.
So what this could be a part of it.
But this could be a part of Mr. Scott is advocating for fairness for the county and the state budget.
It could be a piece of what you're saying in your work.
And it might be something you choose to invest in.
I don't know.
Like I said, I mean, we worked on it pretty hard for a couple of years, probably 20 years ago now.
Oh, okay.
All right.
You see, so it's been quite a while since it's been Pope.
But like I say, at that point in time, we were dealing with the state education.
education tax and there was money going out of town that our residents and our students
got absolutely no benefit out of it all, none.
And so that was kind of the impetus at that point between that and the county to go after it.
All right.
So this may be part of what you say is in your vicious statement.
So if you say we need to steward, starting with where Anthony said a minute ago,
if there's a mission statement, to steward our natural resources, the beautiful lake,
I think there were a lot of themes coming up around housing.
So something about housing probably needs to be in there from what I'm hearing.
What are other themes you want to make sure are really in your mission statement if we're coming?
Fiscal discipline.
I was just going to say fiscal responsibility.
Fiscal responsibility.
Absolutely a theme.
Well, still maintaining services to the town for our, I don't know if I said that correctly, but.
Essential services.
And then there's this whole thing of storing a deal with future.
Yeah, I would say, while maintaining essential services and stabilized municipal government.
Stabilized, what do you mean by that?
Funding the jobs that we have available.
Well, filling them.
Yeah, filling them.
Seeds.
Yeah.
I would also just push and challenge.
though, that as you think about these things and what you craft into your mission statement
and in your priorities, is this current staffing that you have fit for purpose.
And if it's not, what are the operational needs?
Housing is a perfect example.
I hear you say in housing, it straddles, the select board, it straddles planning and zoning,
but we don't have, I would say, that professional expertise in house to help you through that.
to help you through that.
So as we know, the housing conundrum would probably be like a three to five year plan at best.
So what's the staffing that you would need to buttress that?
Well, the other thing about it, I'm not sure that, and I don't know exactly where it's all going,
but I don't think the town of Seneca needs to be a developer.
I think what our part of it would be would be to,
work on some of our planning and zoning and zoning, possibly subdivision regulations to promote.
I mean, it's creating a plan.
Yeah.
It's creating that urban plan. So I think whatever, but some themes I'm hearing are around
planning, urban planning, community planning, and I'm also hearing themes that kind of keep
backing, going back to really engaging the community.
Yeah, like, so I kind of, with Shannon, just from my thoughts.
A bigger board.
Are not, like, that's an opportunity, and whether that's a three to five year thing, but I do think that it's something that...
We try to crystallize this into a statement of some kind before we get into more specific things around priorities,
or should we get into some of these priorities and specifics, and then try to crystallize a statement before, after doing that of it?
Whatever use to you do?
Yes.
Where are your brains going?
Yeah.
I'm already thinking of writing it out.
Okay.
What do you have?
What do you have so far?
What I came up with foster growth in our community for an active harbor and more affordable housing options
while protecting our rural character, maintaining fiscal discipline with limited regulation.
That sounds pretty good.
pretty good.
But I was almost seems like we should have something in there about maintaining our services.
Staffing.
Yeah.
Well, services, everything in general, the, you know, our town office, our fire department,
our police department, highway department,
the highway department, yeah.
To maintain pistol discipline to support ongoing level service.
Yeah, something to that.
Sure.
Okay, um, David, could you read that again?
Okay.
The Tendom that Fred is edited.
How do you read this?
Schedule A.
C attached.
It's okay.
Probably a little bit like me.
He really was intended to be a doctor.
Foster.
My father.
My father was a better.
Foster?
Growth.
Growth.
In our community.
I should do it.
I do.
That's right.
This is a draft.
This is a draft.
For an active harbor.
It seems to be work.
For an active harbor and more affordable housing options.
For an active harbor and more affordable housing options.
And protecting a rural character.
While protecting our rural character.
Fiscal discipline.
Discipline.
Discipline.
Discipline.
Services or Central Service, work, the town's services, limited regulation.
Foster growth in our community for an active harbor and more affordable housing options
while protecting our rural character, maintaining fiscal discipline, and supporting our historical services with limited regulation.
I guess my concern is, if you just say for an active harbor, in a centipede, select board mission statement, are you alienating groups of people because we have people in Georgia's Mills who are quite active and who contribute in many meaningful ways for our community?
You have lower Main Street, but it's actively trying to come alive.
And you have other parts of the community that are also, so I worry, like, these are things that just like pop out to me.
I worry a little bit about active heart.
I also worry about fiscal discipline.
Like if we want more things, the fiscal discipline, like I think that we need to define that or I would need
to define that or I would need guidance on what does that actually mean.
And the town's historical services, again, I think we need to put some definition to what we mean because we're just sort of talking about if we want how we need to put some definition to what we mean because we mean because we're just sort of talking about if we want, how
housing, and if we want sort of some of this development that we're talking about, well, then we actually need different skill sets.
So we want to say that we're going to protect the historical services.
We want to grow when we want to evolve, we want new talent, or renew new configurations.
We want to be open to the ideas of how things have always been done at the same time of thinking about what are the different business tools or different business models that we could use or we could implement even though we're a municipal government.
what's a different way of approaching business that makes us smarter, makes us more nimble,
it makes us provide better services to our residents.
And the regulations, I would just, again, say that, you know, a couple years ago,
the full court press was to get a code enforcement officer in place because the community was
worried that we were not doing a good job of enforcing the ordinances that we have.
And there was this idea that we needed to provide a little bit more.
more responsibility to our residents so that the residents felt like that they were being
seen, valued, and heard in the protection of their property.
So again, I guess I would unpack some of that a little bit, and then also wonder, like, is it too much?
So I think it's foreign active...
Would you say harbor and community?
I think just active community, right?
You know, it takes a harbor right out of it.
The community, and Shannon is observing, right, with the staffing to support it,
Anthony said maybe it is time to have a full-time planner.
So these are sort of, because for me, these are the actions to support a mission.
To me, that goes down to the fiscal discipline section.
Okay.
Not fostering growth, right?
I mean, these are more, I wasn't really looking at these additions to the mission statement.
To me, this is more work on, like, what are you putting in the priorities?
That means, that's how I was seeing it.
So I kind of separated them out a bit.
Because they're, this is mission and vision of where you're
headed and what you want, and these are key things about how you're going to get there.
So your priorities are how you're going to get there.
Just to, from the limited regulations, like, we have a lot of regulations now, but
the enforcement, there is no enforcement, right?
So, like, I think a lot of times we see an issue and we say, let's create a rule,
and then it's there, so now we have a rule, but then it's not being enforced.
So, like, for us to simply...
to simply enforce what we have on the books, I think is a great starting point, not that we just keep adding stuff, because then that adds more strain on the town government.
So it could be that we put onto this phrase about limited regulations, but with appropriate staffing to support.
Maybe we say maintaining physical discipline while supporting
the services necessary to support the town's growth.
While supporting, you said services.
The services needed.
Needed for growth.
Needs is where it's good.
Yeah, you need to do both.
You have fiscal discipline, but you need to actually do it in a way that.
Yeah, and then I was thinking of doing that.
that as a more general comment and getting rid of the bottom room stuff.
Because that's sort of, what we do in terms of regulation is sort of subsumed within the overall goal
and trying to be basically disciplined, but supporting the services.
Yeah.
And then how we do that is, is the next level down.
And the real character, you could put it about, that would be aware of everything to come.
Yeah.
and stewarding our environment.
And they could still work.
I've seen a number of them, but are they generally just like one sentence?
Or is it like a full...
Paragraph.
Well, I mean, it doesn't...
I'd love to have a starting sentence and that bullet points.
Yeah.
It doesn't need to be...
I mean, you've seen these many times.
There's different ways to do everything.
People can get all rigid and weird about it.
But there was a sample that I think was in the
the work from the past that I thought was really interesting.
This is from Fairfax, Vermont.
What they wrote, this is just an interesting thing to look at that was in the notes from the
2024 work.
I think it might be something you had pulled out.
Sustain our small town feel with engaged citizens and to create housing opportunities for all,
a village center with businesses supported by infrastructure, increased recreational amenities,
and protected working land.
That's what they were.
And then maybe another example, which was also in the book, but you weren't at that one.
Like the vision, it says like Community X is a vibrant, inclusive, collaborative community where all can thrive.
And their mission is in the community, we are dedicated professionals who work creatively and collaborative
to provide exceptional services to enhance the quality of life and surpass the needs of those we serve.
And their values are integrity.
values our integrity, inclusion, innovation.
So that's one, another example that we went over on that same session that she's talking about.
The definition of the mission statement is to describe the essential reason why the organization exists, right?
So this one is like what Anthony was saying.
Like it's a paragraph.
So this community has a rich history in a genuine community field that makes our town unique.
Neighbors connect with each other at recreation.
programs and local parks and they use playgrounds and trails throughout the year.
It's a safe place to live.
In quality, planning communities offer a wide variety of home styles and price choices.
The vision for a charming downtown features areas to walk to queen coffee shops,
breweries, and locally owned shops several times a year.
The town attracts regional regional visitors to annual events, concert, and festivals.
Mixed-use land development along the downtown core makes Main Street a genuine destination.
So again, just like another example of the...
We put this one out because we felt like we haven't had one as a community before,
and that it was simple, short, sort of to the points.
Um, Havril Mass has, or Havro, New Hampshire's vision is to be a community
that holds dearly its heritage and prolific history while continually striving to progress
and their mission is to provide efficient, fiscally responsible,
accessible, and prudent local governance to all residents and visitors.
Are there any phrases you're hearing from those you want to grab and put into your draft,
or is there one that you'd like to use as your jumping off point that isn't what David had drafted?
So so far, what you, what you have come up with, what you started us now, was foster growth in our community for an active community.
So take out the first place.
Foster growth now for an active community.
active community.
Foster growth.
Do we want to modify the growth or quantify the growth?
Because people say that...
Foster is a measured growth or I want to somehow word that suggests
that we're not looking for crazy high growth.
Appropriate growth?
Reasonable? Appropriate growth or reasonable.
I'm more like sustained. Would it be sustained?
Foster...
What are...
modest growth?
Most they're consistent with our towns.
I did like that...
Historic character.
I did like the...
Something about the quality of life,
like enhance the quality of life of our current kind of thing,
I guess.
Also from the board, like, some of this is like
community vision driven, right?
and also principles for us as a board, like...
Yeah, you know, like...
The value, like the value.
Integrity kind of thing.
Yeah.
You know, so...
So we...
So...
Maybe we're going to set one down,
because that one is kind of what you're talking about.
The last time that you went that we did.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Can we...
The first Vermont...
to us.
Yeah.
They talked about a village, an active village.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That would be good.
Which one was it?
Is this the Fairfax?
Vermont one?
This is the one from the notes?
Okay.
Great.
Right right.
Yeah.
Okay.
Great.
Is this the notes from the last session?
Yeah.
Oh, great.
You can form decisions in established policy
as strength in municipal services.
We invest wisely in community infrastructure.
Okay.
civic participation and preserve the values that makes sense.
Yeah, those are slightly different.
So I'd love that maybe have one sentence, the stuff,
and then the next sentence, talking about values and how we approach things,
which I really like, that integrity,
sort of sending a message to some of our citizen to...
Yeah.
...or constantly like we should...
like we should just notes that we write and then have a local artist make it into a sculpture.
I was just at the community in Boston, we did the...
Could it look like a girl?
...art zone down there?
She takes candy wrappers and does exactly that.
It's very cool, but it's all candy wrappers.
This is where we left things.
For the drop, this was the...
Yeah, I mean, this is sort of, to me, this is kind of like...
like what we want to do, and this is more like how we do it.
So I think we've got, this is a slightly upgraded draft from this.
So I think we can get rid of this one.
Yeah?
Boy, I wish I was the guy that invented that sticky stuff.
I know, right?
100%.
I think that was 3M.
Yeah.
Foster growth for an active community and more affordable housing options
to protect our rural character
character and being good stewards of our environment, while maintaining fiscal discipline
supporting services needed for the town's growth with limited regulation.
I actually don't think that's bad.
I think that's pretty good.
And then down here you're saying some of our values are integrity,
forward thinking, inclusion, collaboration, environmental stewardship.
All right.
We've got this one from down here. This was from the 2024 session.
All right. To conduct the business of the town in partnership with our community,
promoting high levels of customer service to our residents,
we emphasize fiscal responsibility, innovation, economic growth, and environmental stewardship.
So that's good. It's just more of a matter of the
the character of how you want to say it.
Something that is different about this one is there's more of a theme,
there's more of this emphasis that came up in the opening discussion about housing.
That isn't really expressly in here in the same way.
I mean, there's pieces of this, such as the high levels of customer service that you did incorporate up there,
customer service?
Well, no, supporting services.
You could put supporting high level service that's needed for the towns, needed for the towns.
So the question is, do you want to build more on this one?
Or do you want to build more on to this one?
Which one feels better as a base?
Well, I do like the fact that that starts with what our basic function as selectmen.
Well, when we got there, is we've got a certain percentage of people that don't want to allow us to do that.
They want to do it by committee, including themselves.
And it's kind of like, no.
The idea behind having the bill of Selectmen is that you put your trust in the person you voted for
to make the appropriate decisions for your town,
and you leave them on let them do it.
Well, I think if you want to bill on this one, then you would, you could ask,
on the part about, I think we could add some of these phrases to it.
So maybe, what if we grab this?
There's no like preordained, like,
like, length of phrase that's supposed to have anything.
So what if it is this?
Using values of integrity, forward thinking,
inclusion, collaboration, environmental stewardship,
we conduct the business of the town
in partnership with our community, promoting high levels of customer service to all our residents.
We emphasize fiscal responsibility, innovation, economic growth, and environmental stewardship.
Towards growth of an active community, towards more affordable housing options, protecting our rural character.
But you could, right, we could also, well, one of them, like just at the end,
right, an environmental stewardship, you know, something like, wow, or like with the intent to protect our real character.
I mean, like that could be...
Like, uh, while making thoughtful decisions that enhance the quality of life for current and future generations.
Yeah, you could do that too.
And then the other things can become goals underneath.
Like, if you do sort of like what he said, add some of that there in that mission statement,
then some of the goals could be,
to provide affordable housing, to provide, or, you know, to foster growth by, da-da-da-da-da.
So this could almost be mission and this is almost fulls.
That's what you're saying?
Could.
You kind of said it the other way around.
Yeah, I thought this, well, I thought this is what we were wanted to do, and this is how we were doing it.
But that really comes to the values and how you conduct.
This is a kind of mix.
This is a, this one has a little bit more.
more like vision in it because it talks about the housing and it talks about future.
And this has a little bit more of like the purpose of the essential nature of what it is you do.
Well, and like, again, the definition of a vision, again, if that's where we're getting confused,
is the vision states what you want your community to look like.
It's, you know, in the future, it communicates the exit and the environment where you, what you want to achieve
and how the governing body sees itself in the future.
And a mission statement is, states where, you know,
the local government does now.
It communicates to businesses, business, not profits, and other groups like your poor values.
I still, obviously, the private ownership here.
I still kind of like this one, because it is, to me, more specific.
But I do think adding it, that could be one sort of paragraph,
and the next one would be how we go about that, which goes into the values,
how we conduct their business, in community,
in partnership with the community, emphasizing, integrity,
forward thinking, creativity, collaboration, that sort of thing.
I think would be really great.
I think, like, I'm a big opponent of public safety too.
Promoting public safety as, like, the founding principle
of, like, what we do and how we make decisions.
So if you say, you could call this mission, or, I think you could call this purpose,
purpose, like what it is you do and where it is you're taking things to achieve it.
So, and together it's at the mission, maybe.
This is what we do, is this, what we do, and this is where we're headed.
I think, but in that case, I don't want to get overly tangled in definitions of terms,
which is always tempting in these moments, and it isn't not initially all that useful,
But I think that, because if we did that, then we'd say,
well, the physical discipline then should be up here,
because that's a key part of what you're doing is the fiscal discipline.
Oh, we've got fiscal responsibility up there as it is.
Yeah.
No one's going to want to cross that out with anything anywhere ever.
But we could, no, we have to,
but we could say if this is where we're headed, David, up there.
It's also in the values, like the environmental stewardship,
So you can, like, think about what's left, right?
From that up there, it's about what's left.
So we could get rid of this?
In protecting the environmental stewardship?
We're starting to feel really uncomfortable with all this.
But it's up here, right?
It's up here.
With values of...
Do you like I didn't have both of these?
Or do you want to just have one?
I think we should work towards having one, but maybe...
So the affordable housing options, I think, you know,
I think if we had...
something in there that, because the inclusion statement kind of has...
Should you say inclusion and affordable housing is like one kind of value almost?
Yeah, but like, I don't want to sound, like, it's such like a, not
Meshay word, like people throw affordable housing around like, oh, we're going to support
affordable housing, but, you know, it's easier said than done.
Yeah.
Right?
So like, just to have...
have it in there and how are we actually going to do that?
Well, that's where we get into priorities.
And that's where you get into the plan that the forward, I'm sorry, what's it called me?
It's not a people.
It's not a peaceful.
Just, I don't know, it seems like we're throwing out a lot at it.
Like, yeah, how do you, so the way that I think about it oftentimes is the elevator speech, right?
I'm in the elevator or someone, I got to explain to somebody what I do and like, what's the mission of my organization.
I need to be able to explain that.
explain that. So the mission of the time of Seneca P is to provide the highest quality
of service in efficient, cost-effective, and courteous manner that focuses on safe,
livable, and sustainable community, right? Like that's kind of where, that's your guiding
light. The rest of this is going to get us into some of our goals, right? So one of our goal,
one of our goal, one of the organizational goals, could be our key focus areas, you know,
could be what you're talking about, the affordable housing.
Because affordable housing isn't always going to be.
And again, your mission statement is the core of who you are.
And we want to be able to provide that.
We want to continue to foster that core element of who we are as we move forward.
Your focus areas are going to change.
But you really kind of want, like, this vision, this ethos of how we show up for our community,
how we serve our community, is the core.
of who we are. And for me, that's really what we need to be talking about. Like, why do
we serve? We serve the centipoe residents and we're trying to create the best possible
environment for our residents. And that should be the key focus of the vision or the mission.
And then you get into your focus areas. And I hear, for me, I still feel like affordable housing is,
it's a focus area. Some of these other things you're talking about, those are focus areas,
because you're not always going to have those things.
as part of your mission.
And so I don't think you want to tie your mission statement to affordable housing issues.
Well, it's also, whose mission statement is this?
Because I think these are things about planning for the future and stewarding into the future
in these ways that are going to build, potentially create more future housing in an
environmental, in an environmentally intentional way,
is kind of, might be more the role of the mission of the select board.
And I think the.
role of the office, the town manager office and the staff is more on the customer
service side. But they're the boss. Like they're the leaders. And so sort of
forecasting out what their guidance is. Let's just say illustratively, the town manager
comes and says, hey, we need you affordable housing. But the vision or the purpose, mission
of the select board is to conserve more land.
Currently, let's just say the NRI says that we have 20% conservation land and our
aspirational goal is 50. And the select board really buys into that.
Me coming in and asking for affordable housing to be part of what we do is going to be
contrary to what they're looking to support.
So anything.
that they have as the umbrella, then I think we know how to plan underneath.
And so really, they're providing the overarching for then the rest of us to fall in line
and support that mission. The mission should be, I'm going to advocate again,
it's like the mission should be resident-centric. Like the reason we serve is to serve our
community, the community is the residents.
with two parts. Is that okay with people? And we might decide by the end of the session
next week that we want to or we can consolidate it, but I don't want to get too stuck on language
tweaking because I think that a lot of the conversation we're having, there is a lot of
alignment about it. So if I try to put it all at least on one piece of paper and we use this
as kind of the purpose part of what we do and then we have and how we're doing it and
these are things about where we're headed. Maybe we'll do this for now. So conduct the
business of the town in partnership with our community, hard to argue with that, promoting
high levels of customer service. They're the boss, as Shannon put it. You're building
on the one that you did in 2024 to our residents. I don't know that
that we need to say to our resident. That may be an extra phrase that is self-evident.
Well, I just wonder, instead of saying customer service, resident services, like getting into the meaning of the words are just...
It is different, because one is I take your phone call and the other is maybe more about the new investments you've made in...
Oh, it's a customer would say town service. Highlaws of town service. From there,
I like that. I would then go into the, you know, we approach this through integrity,
forethinking, inclusion, some of those like public safety. And then lastly say our goals are,
and then we can get into this stuff, foster growth or housing options, check road, craft,
we approach this with values of. Yeah.
We're thinking of the integrity, collaboration, forward thinking.
And then you're saying then we get into here, because this has the environmental stewardship. Is that what you're saying?
Right. Our goals are to foster growth, community, housing options, character.
Start protecting our rural characters, character, distorting our environment.
Yeah. And lastly, public safety.
Physical discipline statement.
Do you have the plan in limited regulation?
Yeah.
have to be. But so now we've got a, should we call it mission? Go back to the word
mission. Yeah. Mission is to conduct the business of the town in partnership with our community,
promoting high levels of town service. We approach this with values of integrity,
collaboration, and forward thinking. Our goals are to foster growth for an active
community with more affordable housing, protecting our rural character,
stewarding our environment, maintaining public safety, doing so with fiscal discipline,
and limited regulation. I think these definitely would give you guidance.
I think instead of limited responsible regulation.
It's a limited response. It's not limiting what you need them. If you need a regulation, you need it.
I think even, you mean, like, instead of limited, responsible, it's not as
limited or so.
Okay, got it.
Part of, we need some regulation, but.
But it's not over there.
Yeah.
Great.
What are you thinking?
Do you feel like this is pulling in from 2024?
I mean, it's not addressing the how of, like, you've got to have the right stock and you've
able to do all this.
You've got to have, it doesn't yet address, like, exactly what's, how do you, how do you,
maintain a budget in order to do this, but it gives guiding kind of concepts about what's
important. So if you're trying to do all these things, then what does that mean about how
you do it?
I have a question about regulation. How much regulation is in your bailiwick?
Oh, so you're wondering if this should be on that. It's more of a philosophical tenet,
but it may not need to be on this list.
Well, short your mouse would we regulate that, right?
I would argue to say you don't, but yes, there is a short-
short-term regulation in place that allows us the, that affords us the ability to know where
they are and to know who the emergency contact is so that when we have problems, that we can reach
out and contact them.
Your zoning ordinance does have a bit more of a robust hug on that.
So, and again, I'm just talking about regulations.
I mean, we have the ordinances and those are, some of those ordinances fit in.
in your place, but sometimes I feel like when I hear you guys talk about regulation, you're
talking about land use regulation, and that isn't in your necessarily.
We can talk about how we use home property.
We could, you guys have that purview, but if the planning board is putting forward, let's
say, only green trucks on Tuesday can be parked and maybe that's not a good example,
but my point is, it's like if the planning board is putting forth potential zoning ordinances,
that's the planning board's role, not the select board's role.
And so you guys were talking about housing, again, that sounds more like land use.
So where, I just want to be clear about, like, where is the touch point?
Right, but we can, you're right, that's to be, in collaboration, maybe they'll end up taking the lead.
But I think we can also have, as our goals, to work with them and set priorities.
and they can ignore it if they want, we can't control them.
But I don't think that to change our...
Because, like, even when they put those articles forward,
we either support it or, like, this is supported by,
or recommended by the select board.
So, like, if they put regulations forward,
it's not recommended by the select board.
Right.
Or this doesn't go along with our...
Do we actually do that?
No, we don't do that.
Not anything that doesn't have money in it.
I don't think we do that for zoning.
Let me just double.
It's also true that if you've been on the playing, Zoning, yes, they can, well, Zoning can, they disinterpre.
They guard their independence, but they do listen.
They do listen.
What is this like what they just follow us, but.
There's some weight.
A big part of...
That's like a little bit more about just then, like how you conduct your meeting, right?
And how you set that up, that relationship.
for what you're asking for to be delivered to the planning board and then vice versa, right?
Yeah.
It is interesting, like, when you do talk to people in the community and some of those
regulations do come through, they say, hey, why are you doing this to us, right?
Or it's like, hey, I didn't do that.
No, this and me, you voted for this.
You know?
Like, this was talked about, and this is on the ballot, and the community voted for it.
So, you know, it's not me who made that decision, but, you know.
From a ton of you guys, may not be worried this one of the forward ten of the meetings, we conducted a survey.
You know, do you want to redistrict the harbor and make it more vibrant?
And, you know, you support public.
And consistently, people that came back and said, yes, we don't want a lot more regulation.
We're happy to have changes to make things better, but we don't want, you know, keep the regulation line.
Yeah. Very consistent.
I sometimes, like, from what?
Where I said, though, I think sometimes regulation is misunderstood because a lot of people don't recognize that some of these ordinances have always been in place.
They're not new.
A perfect example is of the boat launch ordinance.
We didn't change, we didn't change the timing on that boat launch.
That has always been the rule, and that policy has been in place for many, many, many, many years.
And it's also true that they hate regulation.
it affects their property, but they love it more affects the neighbor.
In here, I think most people just view it as any rules that we're being imposed on us,
whether it's technically a regulation or nor not, whatever you call it,
I think people just, in the vernacular, think of that as regulation.
So are we putting responsible regulation on here or not?
You're saying it's in scope or out scope, for what you want to say is one of your goals?
It's more regularly not technical, knowing people always do it.
So you want it on?
there for that reason or you don't need it on there because it's not one of your
essential goals? I would say I'd say let's leave it off for now.
Yeah.
Did I take the wrong one down?
No.
Okay.
Here.
All right.
So this is where we are.
All right, people.
I think we make the progress.
Let's read it one more time and then we can actually have a break.
How do you something about this?
Mission.
Conduct the business of Sonepee in partnership with our community, promoting high levels of town service.
We approach this with values of integrity, collaboration, and forward thinking.
Our goals are to foster growth for an active community with more affordable housing, to protect
our rural character, steward our environment, have public safety, and do so with fiscal discipline.
Okay, I got one more suggestion.
Why, I think we just go conduct the community in collaboration with our community.
And then we go to, we approach this with values of integrity and forward thinking, because
we're saying collaboration twice, partnership and collaboration of the same thing.
So if we just move collaboration up there, it flows through to our values.
I don't know. Right? It's just simple.
Oh, yeah, just take the cloud up for our approach. This way.
Yeah.
Because I think, like, collaboration to me is more friendly than partnership,
because not every partnership works, right?
And collaboration to me is more welcoming, I guess.
And that it's not needed down there.
Integrity and forward thinking.
With integrity and forward thinking.
Yeah.
So that's it.
We're going to lead it there.
Both of those quick values, if you had, let's say, the other values,
the other values, were.
We're thinking inclusion, collaboration, environment, stewardship.
So environmental stewardship is here.
I think the inclusion part, we have got the collaboration piece here,
and you've got the housing part here,
know exactly how you operationalize the word inclusion, per se.
And you're talking about an active community,
so you're wanting participation, so that that's an inclusion thing.
I think the spirit of isn't in there and a slightly more,
I agree.
Like, specific.
specific way that means something rather than just having a vague phrase, which is hard to know how to...
No, because it means so many things, right?
Yeah.
But this codivising, this, this, this, they all, I feel like they're all connecting to English.
Yeah.
And they collaborate, just the word collaboration is...
Is its own as well.
Yeah, right?
Because it's like civic engagement where...
Yeah.
We want the community to engage.
And you're also seeing high levels of service.
I mean, that's for everybody.
It's not just...
So I think...
Integrity, honesty of what we're taking?
Integrity is honesty.
I mean, I think.
Yeah.
And integrity also, to me, is about the fiscal discipline piece.
Integrity is also about the rural character and the history piece.
I think the very nature of us.
I think the very nature of a select board should be integrity.
Mm-hmm.
And forward thinking.
I think those are the two most important things.
Okay.
Let's not colliderate then.
Yeah.
No, I think this is really good.
And I think these actually, when you get into priorities,
are going to give you guidance about what you said you wanted to do.
And then you're like, okay, well, let's, like,
talk about how to deal with the tension
between fiscal discipline and affordable housing.
And what does that turn into in terms of priorities?
and in terms of, but this is, but it puts it all there.
That's important.
I think, I think it's really, it captures what you guys said.
And it can involve, right, and then we have our next meeting.
So we should still on it.
I think you should still on it.
It's a draft.
Yeah.
And I think what makes sense to do is have one, we're going to get to next, we'll get to next step to the end.
But we should have somebody do a sit down with Aaron, because he's not here,
ahead of the next meeting.
ahead of the next meeting to talk him through the process and talk him through where you are so far.
I think the next meeting he's not going to be here.
He's not going to make it either.
Okay.
Well, you still want to include him, because of course.
Do you want this through AI?
No.
I think saying it isn't through AI is part of what makes it.
Yeah.
Most people have great disdain for AI, at least certainly in the United States.
There's not a lot of love.
I say that as a son who is a master's a computer science focus on AI.
We spend a lot of time.
There's a lot of perspective.
Yeah.
No, this is good.
Yeah.
We don't need AI.
I mean, this is, yeah.
All right, so should we have a break?
15 minute break.
Do you want 10 minutes?
You want 10 minutes?
What do you guys want?
Whatever.
I'm good.
10. Okay.
Right now it is
1045.
So we're going to reconveneat it 1055.
According to which clock.
Okay.
According to Apple Time.
According to Apple Time.
All the computers say 1045, so we're good.
Yeah.
So you've...
Yeah. All right.
Can I get you anything?
Courtney, do you need anything?
I'm okay.
Here's the other stuff.
Oh, there's the paper.
Where did it go?
Sorry.
Okay, we've got one, two, three.
So I had a contact there.
Donation asked me if we were actively looking
actively looking for people
or going to law
and they were
and it closed
and it went to United.
We, so the, there was our
Pito House.
It was public.
Everybody was invited to bid on it.
Only three people that fit on a
tech panel was
Jeff Lazott.
You said you went to school.
I found them.
They chose United at the
where you were you at the
oh you weren't at the last meeting
and we talked about that.
No, I didn't miss that much.
Yeah, so we talked about it and
have you
Aaron had asked a lot of questions
about the process
and the process
the reasons they chose United is
are
and we're going to
do a good job doing
the district of time.
So we just finished.
So we just finished.
Because I guess there's a lot of, like,
you can wrap all these rocks,
and put in this whole base thing.
It's about,
um,
I know Aaron asked a lot of questions on it because
really well and in ways that actually work.
So that they actually want to go to school.
So specifically we have measured results in
reducing absenteeism
and increasing parent participation.
character discussion
Yeah, Brendan Stocker.
Oh, he didn't apply.
No, he didn't.
He got wind of it, but didn't realize that there was
and he called me and asked me about it.
It's like, I don't know anything right now.
But I think the disruption is interesting.
I think he had to have.
There will be more, so it's good to know.
We are working right now with CMA.
But I don't know.
A whole for-profit and I just find really offensive.
Because we have to address the FERC stuff,
but since we're going to address the FERC stuff,
there's like other things that need to get addressed along the way too.
So the parking lot up there, there might be wall work up there.
There's other work around here.
So we make sure that we reach out.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Or make sure that they're signed up, because we send everything through the website.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think from the way he approached it while it was something that he had heard through the grapevine
as opposed to having seen it.
Yeah.
Each child has their own goals.
I'm sorry that they didn't see it.
Yeah.
So they're all in different places.
And you're really empowering teachers to create paths for kids that are where they actually
are.
I'm disappointed in the Fire Academy for dragging their feet.
It's a time based on time based on them right now.
It's based upon.
readiness and interest.
I was half open to have that process started
by the time we had some new fireworks.
Yeah.
I mean, again, like they met with them, for sure.
And I know they're all at a funeral right now,
so I know that they've been working on the funeral
because it's a line of duty.
So I know all those things have an agency
development leadership.
But still, yeah, that was hoping.
That's the way I've drafted.
in all those documents because I had hoped that it would just provide
the ability to edit versus create it from new
and that they would be
Yeah.
Well, I, I, we've, we've, yeah.
Yeah.
So we do, like this.
We are pretty much out of the fire wards program
at this point.
You don't have to be, though.
Oh my God.
But it's a lot of being out of,
and it's just when they're learning a lot.
Um.
I think I would offer the part of one of the
interview program.
You know, you want to be great at math, not because
sounds great.
Because it really helps you like home
to think about things.
Right.
So it's, it's
So we're at the time I should be back.
As far as our choices we're concerned.
Let's see where we are we are.
Are we 65?
I'm sure there's chatter on the community, but...
I haven't noticed anything.
Oh, we've got...
That's pretty interesting.
So, we're moving forward.
Is it time?
Not yet, but we could start early.
Oh, okay, sorry.
I just thought you were like, it's time.
I know.
I was worried it was time because I lost track of time for a moment
because he was asking me about my school
and the work that I do in that regard, and I tend to...
I'm watching my girl as Shrigger, thank you.
No, smart.
I'm not really smart, but I'm just trying to act like I'm
but I'm just trying to act like I'm sorry.
I'm good, thank you.
I'm going to reach in and grab a couple of it.
Right, by the way, how was the Pennsylvania train?
Oh, it's absolutely fabulous.
I mean, the viewing part of it for us was on Monday.
Our tickets were 9.30.
We got there at 8, and we were an hour and a half to get to get to
to the gate where they scanned their tickets.
And then we were another hour getting through the parking lot
and the maze and everything.
It had to have been 50,000 people there.
And, oh my God, the place was absolutely,
it was just wall-to-wall people.
I mean, you got some pictures of it,
but it was hard to, it was hard to get a picture without it being full of people.
And so it, but it was well worth the trip.
I mean, we went to a place called, I'm pretty sure it was New Haven.
And we saw two of them go by.
One, of course, was the 4014, which is the big boy.
The other one it was at 2102, which is another restored steam engine.
It's the base of steam.
It's steam.
Oh, yes.
Yeah.
And so the 2102 is basically one-half of the big boy.
The big boy is a four-eight-eight-four wheel arrangement.
Okay.
Who's that?
Four guide wheels, eight drive wheels,
eight drive wheels, and then four trailing wheels.
Okay.
The 2102 is four guide wheels, eight drive wheels, and four
and four trailing wheels.
So, they're very impressive.
I'm confused.
But it's just an absolute marvel of mechanical engineering.
Is it on a narrow gauge?
Is it a regular?
Regular, you know, standard railroad gauge,
because they've run it all the way across the country
right on the active rails.
Really?
And the really, one of the exciting things about it is they started building them in 1941,
which was right at the beginning of World War II.
Steam engines?
Steam engines, yeah.
Right.
Aw.
I know, no, no, we can push, we can go back there later,
about push pause on that.
All right.
Okay, this is extremely exciting because now we're going to talk about the specifics.
specifics, which you've already gotten into some, but now you get to put it up.
So what is up here are seven different priority areas?
Over this time, you may, we might, we might end up refining these priority areas, right?
Because these are built from the 2024 conversation.
But the categories seem pretty enduring, to be honest.
I don't know that you're going to need to do that.
But there's environmental concerns, infrastructure improvements, community engagement, economic and community development, public service enhancement,
public service enhancements, organization and staffing and housing needs.
Okay?
So those are seven different areas.
Now, what I'm going to invite you to do before we get going as a group in a discussion is to look at your postage.
You've got a thick marker.
Good Sharpie markers.
marker and you're going to say, you don't have to do the yellow, okay?
You can do the yellow, but that's essential.
What is really, really critical in this area, a lot of times people really need to name that.
Some of that stuff is going to be extremely self-evident.
So you can do this part if you want, but you can skip this part if you want,
because it may really be self-evident.
Then the green one is going to be your hopes of things.
So this is a little bit more future-oriented.
It might be in a year for.
from now, might be in three years from now.
But don't think so much about time, think more about what do you hope for in this area.
And it is, there's like a really, like, audacious thing, oh wow, I love it if you do this.
It's your sort of inspire.
That's the high, okay?
And so you're going to think about in these seven different key areas.
So this is your pondering on your own.
So we're going to put a post on each one.
No, you don't have to put a post it on each one.
You don't have to put a post it on each one.
Whatever you feel is most important, whatever it is your, you really care about, or you think it's like to work.
Oh, so we're writing it on here.
Yeah, you're going to write on your Post-it with your thick marker,
either an essential need, a hope, or an inspiring idea,
and you're going to put it in the right category.
You're going to do as many as you want in all these different areas for all these different categories.
Okay.
And you've got like five minutes to get started.
Okay.
And then we're going to talk.
So, go, this is the key.
Okay.
I want you to use the heavy marker because otherwise people won't be able to see it.
Okay, but like I said, I don't think there's something missing.
Okay, it is there broken?
I think so.
Oh, the marker's not working.
Yeah.
I bought markers from my house.
It wasn't trying to be tricky.
Here's one.
No, it's not going to do real well, isn't it, right?
If you think about the conversation we had before, so if you want, actually, I will uncover this from this morning it has to be.
this morning it's useful to see that part again.
What's the first one that down there?
I can't remember.
Environmental concern.
Environmental concerns.
So the pink one's like maybe one that's not up here.
Is that the inspire aspect?
Or is it just, we inspire to do one of those?
I think the inspire thing that you guys said earlier this morning was you talked about the forward
Sunnipey thing and the community housing unit, community housing deregulation plus that could happen.
that would be hard, but it's possible if you plan for it.
So I would have put that on either a green or a pink.
Or you might say, we've got incredible housing for people who are aging,
or it might be we achieve this level of cleanliness of Lake Sunapee.
Or we reduce our percentage of the tax burden towards the county and the state.
It would be an incentive.
But I hope might also really be like a goal.
But this is something it's really important we do, even though it is an essential basic town service.
Second grade, we've got to be good for me.
If you run out of a room on one post-it, you can add on the same idea on a nut, on multiple post-ist,
and you can hang them off of each other.
That is allowed.
Just on the seven.
You're focused on all seven of these areas.
So, and sometimes it's, you don't have to do something on all.
to do something on all of them. It's what's most important for the town.
This is a way.
It is a way.
But we don't think that be more pertinent when we're getting into the harder
about some of the next session.
But it's here if we...
There's stuff from the prep that you think there.
Maybe they look to it.
But we don't believe it's here.
It's here.
Okay.
They want to look at what came up before.
All right.
So, friends, it was in your prep materials.
These are...
Shannon pulled up the ones from the work from 2024
that I know she was a key part of stewarding also in these areas.
So infrastructure, public service, they're here.
There's some comments about these different areas if you need to catalyze your thinking.
to catalyze your thinking.
Assuming I could read that.
You can walk around.
Do you want me printed?
I know it was in the book, and I know you guys had your book.
I actually went through last night.
Yeah.
But you're allowed to walk around.
You just put them up there?
Is that what we're going to do?
Yep.
All right.
Let's make sure I put them to that box.
Lots of things are going to connect to multiple priority areas, so.
Oh, so you're not supposed to put them all on one sheet?
That's why you have multiple post-it's like you've got really specific idea for each one.
Oh.
I did it wrong.
I know he's serving resources.
Yes, I'm trying to have to save some money.
I think that's why I got a whole stack of them.
I have to put your second letter two, because I know Aaron's not here, but he is also an A.
He did W.
This one says, David is saying in the community specifically.
I mean, I'm assuming I mean more, but right now.
Is there a specific idea or a method or a concrete?
The concrete is you want on the operational, if you'd like.
So you think about stewarding the future of the town, what's most important to be creating, building, doing, managing, steward things the way you hope.
What's the most important thing that you think needs to be happening for the town for its future?
Maybe it would be managed or planned or stewarded it.
What would be done?
What would be done?
different in 10 years?
Or 20 years?
One of the things that's difficult as far as being a selectman
is that we end up, unfortunately, being a reactive program,
as opposed to a proactive program.
And that's exactly, and that is the opportunity right now
is to try to think about future what you want to push forward
rather than just what you mitigate against and react.
It's hard.
It is.
And I mean, there are certain aspects of it that to me is kind of like, okay, we'll deal with it when it when it comes along.
You know, like the economic and the housing needs, the community engagement kind of stuff.
That does, I mean, yeah, it's all part of the picture.
picture. But it, to me it's not as essential as our environmental things, our infrastructure,
public services, and organization and the staffing.
So that may be where you emphasize your thought.
Well, that's pretty much where I have.
And I think we have a pretty good amount of community engagement as it is.
it is. And there are times when I think we have a little more than I'd like, you know what I mean.
And the economic development part of it is more on the planning board and or developers that want to do something here.
Well, we're going to, we'll go into each area in a minute.
But Fred, something that you said earlier, though, is I would offer back.
to you, which is you made this point about, I mean, maybe I'm, like, stepping in it when I even bring this back up, but it's the 32 percent.
Like, if you, that could be a thing in the economic development category of we want to advocate for a different fairness level about where our dollars go.
Could be, I would, that could be a select board activity in the economic development category.
Okay.
Because we're thinking future.
Okay.
necessarily look at it in that light.
Well, I'm just offering that back to you.
Okay, so did you put all your post-its up?
I did.
All right. So where should we keep going, but like...
Where should we start?
Which has the most number of yellows?
Yeah, which has the most number of what?
Yellows. Work staffing?
I encourage people if you wanted to that you could skip the yellow altogether.
Because in my mind, those should be like things that are so self-evident.
They may not even need to be mentioned.
But sometimes you have to mention them before you can think about the future.
Because part of what we're trying to do with this is strategic planning and budget for the future
to really do what is new that needs to happen in order to do an essential thing,
which maybe isn't being done as well as it should yet, right?
Might be.
But it might be.
So that could be you put it as yellow or it could be you put it as a green.
To go to where Fred was talking, though, like, developed.
This should be on developers and this should be on planning.
But from our standpoint, you know, if we were looking into the future investing in the infrastructure of wastewater management and water,
so water and sewer, like we have to fix a failing system.
But, you know, what signals to the developers or growth patterns is when municipalities or cities invest in that infrastructure or expand it?
So, like, if as a town, we expand that infrastructure anywhere, that invites developers to come in.
So did you put that on your thing?
It's over there in infrastructure.
Infrastructure. Okay. So maybe we could, this is call me crazy.
We can all huddle around here. So you guys want to come over here and look at the same?
So infrastructure, mindset, improvement, and future orientation, right?
Because you do this with values of...
Forward thinking and integrity.
So be in the space of forward thinking when we look at this.
So what have you got so far?
Share your share, if you put a positive here, share what you put?
I put water infrastructure, the failing water infrastructure and repair it,
and then expansion of wastewater treatment lake.
I would love to expand it all the way over to Mountview Lake and to Mount Somervy.
That's like kind of like.
A pink one, too?
I'd say this is also also.
pink one, yeah. So what do you want to call that?
Fix what's broken? What's the thing that would be there that isn't there now?
The money for the expansion. So expansion of... Right now, we're having a hard time to get people to commit to money to fix what we got.
In terms of what? You mean? Water, water and or sewer. I mean, we've got a lot of...
Maybe we just replaced the lower mainstream? We did.
So give me... Forgive me. Forgive me.
Because I don't live here, right?
So expansion of water, what?
Expansion of water, what? Is it water?
Infrastructure, water. Treatment, water.
Water infrastructure.
I think it's replacing the aging.
That's what it is.
And then, of course...
So replace aging water infrastructure.
Yes?
Town water life.
Replace?
This would be the varied ones, not
like on town water.
Like, there's some that's seasonal.
Yeah.
I mean, the seasonal ones might be something to look toward putting permanent
frost-free water into. Of course, this day and eggs.
Is there any more? Oh, yeah. There's seasonal in Georgia's Mills along Joe's Creek Road. There's seasonal on Garnet Hill Road. My brother could probably
tell you. Okay, so water is a big one. Roads. Mine is, of course,
has got roads and bridges on it as well. It's DSA. So what about the roads? Infrastructure
improvements? Better roads. What needs to improve with roads? The pace of
repaving. Ah, repaving pace. And I would just argue that it's not just about repaving. I think
that it needs to be looking at a whole of the stormwater management perspective.
Because the way that you protect your water resources is making sure that we're doing the roads correctly, that we have the right under infrastructure, and we're not putting enough money into our roads to be able to do that. So we are just putting the coat on top and saying, calling it a day. But that, as you can see, if you just looked around town right after the, it was at the Friday storm, there's lots of examples where we're just eroding into all of our lakes and streams, which is detrimental to do it.
overall environment and that has a lot to do with the way that we approach infrastructure and
paving so with the would would a paved road next to the lake be environmentally better than a non-pay
it was put like if you put the catch basins in with the rock that catches you know you're basically putting them in these like little
septic systems that can be cleaned out sewer systems there there doesn't have silt in it doesn't have silt in it
there in lies a lot of it doesn't have silt in it there in lies a lot of
of the problems with any of these developments or what have you that have a stormwater
management plan it's only as good as its maintenance right okay this is where again
I'm like really but aren't these the kinds of things that in theory you might be able
to go back to the county and the state and get some of your money back to help with
oh there's there are there are grants and and if somebody who write for the grants so then that
falls into organizational and staffing well I mean we have there are there are
members of the staff that we have now that are you know are working on some of that
do very well in writing writing for these grants you know they would have
grants just to repay existing roads I don't believe I'm not sure that there's
there's anything there but like the the lower Main Street replacement waterline
replacement
As far as I know, there's a, there's a grant that covers part of it, and then there's a low-interest loan arrangement that we've taken out in order to cover the rest of it.
Okay, so.
I think some of the problem with the grants, though, is that they're quite cumbersome, and I think we're having a hard time.
And so the idea is great, but we have to...
Yeah, what I'm trying to articulate kindly is that like we've gone out and we've applied for grants and stuff, but then we've got to make sure that we're not like trying to get too many because we can't manage them.
Right? We're getting behind in the grants because the grants, it's not just, it's the easy part is applying for it.
The hard part is managing it, right?
There's all kinds of documentation that has to go through it and so the bandwidth or the level of effort that's required
by managing multiple grants on top of your normal duties.
It's complicated.
It does.
So sometimes in that sector, people won't even, will only want to get big enough grants.
Sometimes a lot of the money you get for the grant, you're just spending on the staffing to manage the grant and you don't actually end up getting any of the benefit.
Because it is so much work to do all the reporting back that's required.
So it's its own little messy problem.
That's very real in every sector.
Right.
So roads are big issues.
But roads, yeah.
So infrastructure improvements, so water and roads.
But what you would love to see would be replacing the agent system.
You'd love to see roads manage in such a way that they are both safe for travel but also
also stewarding the environment appropriately because that's one of your primary goals was environmental stewardship and public safety, right?
So this ties directly back to those two priority areas.
What else do you want to say about infrastructure improvements?
Count property deferred maintenance is one.
So we have buildings that require funding and money to fix, like hydro.
Yeah, and it also boggles my money.
boggles my mind and I don't know if there's another solution and I don't know, Fred, if you've been dealing a longer than anybody else says, but it boggles my mind that the highway garage has so much equipment in it.
We don't have a lot. We don't have a fire suppression.
No suppression.
Yeah, that can go along with, you know, a water and a sewer extension.
Up to like Mount Royal and then beyond, right? Yeah.
I mean, it's not like, it's not something that we need to do all the way.
at once.
So the town base building is not on town water?
No.
So if they're going to catch them fire, we lose every single piece of equipment.
Pretty much.
And like they're not insured to replace them for their toll value, right?
So we look down for sure.
You know, there's a well there that services them as non-potable water.
It didn't come up and test real well.
So is this a fire?
suppression system for, is that what you're saying?
Yeah, the highway garage.
And I mean, our nemesis there, Mr. Whitehouse, who's an expert on everything,
says we can do it with a, you know, with a water tower or a system.
And it's like, it's not, number one, a water tower,
that around here doesn't work.
Because in order to keep it,
from freezing it either got to be heated or it's got to be a tank that's insulated which increases the size of it.
And I don't believe his, I don't believe his estimate on it.
It was anywhere near what it should be.
You get the water and the sewer service up to the highway garage
and there's plenty of water or a sprinkler system at that point, as well as
they'll have potable water as opposed to non-potable water.
Right.
So they don't have to be in at lower main.
So that kind of goes into the library.
It's right.
It's right at the library.
It's right at the library.
It's like, it's like 3, 400 feet out through there.
Yeah.
So fire suppression system for the highway garage is something you're talking about here.
Also one of these other things before we leave.
What else you want to talk about?
Just at least briefly.
Briefly, is town property deferred maintenance is another whole topic.
So what would be your hope there?
Well, I'm not sure that we're terribly behind on that because of the capital reserve that we've got.
We just don't have a plan.
So I think it's hard to know.
Capital reserves to meet these needs.
There needs to be a strategic plan for every single building.
Like, what is your building plan?
A lot of it is in Craig's mind, which is great.
But if we started to map out all of these things,
and you would be able to better finance them.
We can ask that management plan, right?
Like, we have 12 propane heating systems and 10 of them are coming toward there and the life,
so we're going to need X.
Right.
Right.
So capital.
research town planning.
Scott had
building management.
Scott had
something written down. He seemed to do very
very well at
speculating on that kind of stuff
and making up some
spreadsheets and things of that nature that we had
for, well, we've got one for
the paving. We've got one for
the bridge program. We've got one
for
dirt roads to asphalt.
And I
thought he had one for the buildings as well that, you know.
Just needs to be updated.
It needs to be like the library's not on it.
So updated and complete.
And people are aware of it.
That's one of the things that happens.
There's like a spreadsheet that exists somewhere on somebody's like personal laptop,
but nobody's ever seen it.
That happens all the time.
It needs to be socialized and then it needs to be like put into the budget planning process
and then you need to do something.
it, right? So,
and then it goes into, goes into budget planning.
If it's in somebody's head or it's in a spreadsheet on my lap.
It goes for water and sewer, for building management and maintenance,
for things like this that are just like forgotten about.
Yeah, and like for highway expansion of water or sewer.
If they expanded up that road and then like going back to more places for commercial.
Yep.
development. So if you have the water,
well, the water in the server, if you change the zoning a little bit and have a belt where you do offer those services,
then would certainly helpers will come in and bring that up.
So plan for expansion for housing and new commercial.
Yeah. I also would love for you guys.
Then we tap into it. Right. If you have water and sewer, it makes a big difference with it.
To talk a little bit about when we're talking about infrastructure improvements,
and we're talking about building maintenance plans.
like what is the level and I can give like a couple of like examples even if you just go to the harbor
if you could envision the harbor of your mind you know the the railing in front of the railing on the way to
blue could do that's ours there's a sign that's being held up by u-bolt there's if you look at the
brown I mean if you just like look at it with a critical eye the question
is what is the level of here that we're talking about so just again a couple of other
illustrative examples like I was done at George's Mills this isn't a yesterday
thing this is a right hold on that just somebody red paint over there no it's just again
like right yeah so it's again I just think of the standards these are this is like not a new
issue like that this is here right sorry this is the thing she should be there but um
like something like that and I think this is like a really good example of where
we live like this is the world we live in but like that's kind of finage around it's
just like a example of so a hope would be that there's an agreed upon level of care
and standards you've seen yes and with a budget to match right particularly for the harbor
which is a new idolization it's like the beautiful updated harbor area because
that's the center of the community
funny we talk about the harbour and enhancing the harbor and that sort of thing i avoid it like the plague in the summertime
you would have loved it on sunday i'm sure it was the first i like it wasn't fireworks we had i mean that it was like you were going
just so we need you know we need more parking in the harbor we need more parking in the harbor one thing that
everybody seems to forget is the harbor is finite yeah there's only so much room there yeah and
and until we start walking up and the people were doing until we want to start doing something like building parking garages
there why you're never going to you're never going to have enough parking spaces for everybody
okay so a lot of this has to do with planning so how do you i mean i have no idea again i'm really ignorant how do you do your urban planning right now do you have what you need to do the urban planning well like i was saying we have some
capital improvement programs that are that are already in effect that were drawn up 10 years ago
we have a part-time position for do you have what you need to be able to check back on how you're doing
with that and also plan for a future that would support your goals of housing and fragmented in my mind
like that goes back to over here to the people and organizational means like so
this is why i feel like we need a full-time planner yeah i think you're the one so let's let's put that as a hope as a full-time planner is that when we put that as a green or a pink how like how is that like a reasonable hope that it's like oh we could do that in a year or is that oh my god that would be almost impossible but like let's aspire to it and it's a big
audacious no i think it's something that we could drive for but it's going to come down to budgetary needs and yeah because if you already have a house person there seems to be a
faction that doesn't have a problem with adding police officers or adding
pretty in firefighters or what have you but there's some kind of a phobia about adding
personnel in this office well they're happy to add fire and police so long as the budget's
coming down you don't do that without the budget's going on exactly at the risk of sounding a little
it's like combat of which i'm not trying to think that the land you
office has the ability to be reimagined offered us to get a consultant to come in and
help us reimagine so that it could take us through the exercise of almost like what we're
doing right now pin the paper new jobs descriptions because the internal capacity of our team
right now doesn't have the skill sets to do that or quite frankly the time the select board
said no outside consultants to do it and so
it will remain stagnant and so there's an approval level that recognizes that we can't like we just physically
don't have enough time in the day to do the things that need to get done i'm over you know i will
have fits and starts so i've taken the three different job description and reviewing them right now
but there really is a whole math equation to this that nobody on the team have the time to do the math equation
I feel like the community is willing to have a different kind of conversation if you can
show them a business case and we don't have the ability to do that so I'd say all I'd say
that this is possible I'd say it's a need for us I say like we're going to do
elementary things inside another band-aid solution on what we're hearing as a problem
but the holistic problem is the one I just sort of outlined but is that is that like just
for the land use office
thinking of the whole organization needs to be really up to me i'd reimagined a more organization
because i would do a lot more cross-pollination of the ways that we work and i get rid of a lot of
the ways that we're siloed and i think that would make us a much more nimble and a much more forward-leaning
organization but when i speak like that it makes people concerned but if i say growth-minded they
think that what you had just sort of said and i'm actually just talking about the more like
fixed mindset versus a growth mindset that's what i would do if i had it about me but that we're not
ready for that we're not ready for like that kind of organizational gymnastics so i would say for the
land you could start with land use and do that and the reason why land use sort of works is because there's
a revenue stream that comes in and again you can have a business case for that that coming in and
and again it would sort of maybe go against your guys conversation right now in terms of what you're
talking about in terms of regulations and things like that but there is the potentiality that if you
presented the business case some of the permits could get a little bit more expensive and you could do
a little bit more um revenue sharing i guess you will with that office so that it doesn't look like
it's so much burdened on the taxpayer to diversify in the way that you're talking about so it sounds like
is pretty specific ideas of what you think could be done so that sounds great because nobody
can do the actual work like there's not not like again in that sounding combative i can't take on another
single job and there's most there's nobody else in my organization that we can have to take another
single job i mean you have people right now that are really stretched thinly and are are are it's too much we're asking
too much of a really really skeletal staff that's here.
I'll walk me through what the work is because I'm thinking just an org chart
it's like this looks like this and now you're going to change it to this so what's the work
that needs to get done by the consultant to make this. So one would be to take you to
really look at what is the function what are the current functions of the office today
what do we want the functions of the office to be and what do we know we're not doing well
right now that would fit into the office map that out figure out what is the level of effort required
what's the skill set to match those things and then start to create a budget can we afford a full-time urban
planner for example again i don't know how much a full-time urban planner is but what if a
full-time urban planner is 200 000 maybe we can't afford that but without knowing the level of
that we're talking about without knowing what are the tasks in front of us that's
a little bit hard the other thing that needs to get done is i don't know how you call it like in terms
of your business but there could be a general gna layered on to every single permit that we do
so that it would take into account like a general administrative fee that would take into account
the fringe of our employees the time of our employees it would take into count the
square footage that that office has and then what it costs for us to maintain that office from
from internet to electricity right all of that in a different sort of context you would have a cost
for that but we don't have a cost for that so you can't charge very much for those permits if you
can't say exactly how much time or effort
it's causing you or it's taking you to do those permits so how much does it cost
for michael to review them the code alison me like there's a cost and all that but you need
somebody to sit down and really like look at that to be able to then create a revenue structure
or a cost structure for those permits right i was saying it's really sort of a structural
organizational issue but it's also a systems issue oh for sure
but it's all of that like all maps together and how much do you do you think it would
cost to get a consultant to focus on that specific task i so like i i look at it in two ways
though like yeah um raising revenues through the permits but some of the permits are going to
equal so if i just don't think that we're going to be able to move the needle on any of these
because i don't think he's about to say if there's a very specific task focus task
to me that's a much more justified checking and so so your the the hope might be to have the
a consultant who comes in to create this or this assessment and this organizational
plan and if it was a organizational and system and if it is a finite really specific
project with predetermined outcomes and in a container that isn't going on into perpetuity
then that does seem reasonable to you is what i'm real to me if i can get some sense of
what the scope what the scope the cost and what we think the payback would be in other words
are we just fishing to see whether we can reorganize and save money or free up money or be more efficient
or do we really think and i know you it sounds like you're convinced in your mind that there's
definitely a better way to do it i'm still trying to struggling with like what are we
going to be able to do more with the same number of people we're going to is it going to
mean would have more costs by reorganizing this because we're going to just have to add more people
that's why i think clear i think at this point we've run our string out about as far as we're
going to with the staff that we have now if we could fill some of the other positions
with people that number one are competent number two are willing to stay and not just use this
is a stepping stone for a year or a year and a half until they can move on to something else which is
i mean we're going to fight that forever because we're a small town and there are other places
that are probably willing to pay more i guess my concern is we go ahead and we we we do just what you're
saying get very specific about it hire a consultant that comes in and says okay if we if we rearrange this
this office to look from what it is to this over here and it requires two more people
you know it's going to make the office run exceptionally smooth and actually end up probably costing
less money in general but still probably not pay for itself that that's where it's going to end
because you know why do we have to have all this staff for the little tiny tamasopi
right that's why i was open to get some sense but like so the downsides to not having that though right if you think
and it's sometimes i feel like our residents don't understand is when you think about how many land use
disputes we've had and lawsuits we've had because we didn't either we didn't have that stuff in place
when some of the stuff was approved to go forward or um people have done these projects and have created these
disputes because this stuff is just not or hasn't been in place so that has cost the town
money and lawsuits and legal and consulting fees what i'm hearing and seeing which could be avoided
if the office was functioning 100% is that there's real alignment here across there's multiple
initials saying one person is saying um org staff fill open positions one person is saying
bring office staff back to full strength
one person is saying um that's the open positions but it's a different person so i think
there's a real like understanding that that the office is understaffed to be able to do what it needs
i think that this is a specific different idea to help make sure that the staffing is the right
staffing which is maybe to do the a short-term consulting project to design a different organizational
system plan process well to do to make sure you
you're doing the right thing right another another thing the other another problem that we've
got is that the town of sennapy bumbled along with three people in the office forever and um
everything kind of looked okay we were getting lousy audit reports because the information
that they were looking for just wasn't there because we hadn't we hadn't recorded it i mean it was
it was available here but none of it had been recorded so that
it was available to the auditors to compare with and they know how to write that one
and it's more like skill set what she was talking about like so we're running an office from the
the 1980s and 90s instead of an office from the 2020s and an office from the 2020s and I mean we're
essentially at 25 million dollar business here and you go pretty much to any any business anywhere
that handles that much money they're likely to have an office staff of 15 or 20 people
so there's an org design question and then there's an up having the appropriate staffing which is fit to
purpose which is a phrase that i've i've been hearing so there's an organization design question maybe that's a
precursor to doing this
Maybe they're happening concurrently, depending on who you're hiring.
Is it going to be flexible?
There's a question that came up about, is there the right person to write and manage the grants for infrastructure improvements?
So that was kind of over.
That's also related to staffing.
Yeah, and I mean, someone who's a good grant writer could possibly cover the entire town.
That person with an assistant to help with all the paperwork in the man.
management of it. But see, now there's two more people. And by the time we get, by the time we get things straightened out and figure it out to what we should actually have for staffing here, people are going to go, oh my God.
Well, but ultimately, I would think if I'm, I mean, I don't know, again, I don't know how this works, but I would think that it's your job to set direction about priorities. And it's the town manager.
and office and everything, you oversee the department to figure out exactly how things get staffed and who gets hired and how that works.
But and what might go on the ballot would be things just generally approving budget in order to achieve these goals,
but not necessarily getting into the operations of how they get achieved.
But I don't know how your governance is set up.
That's true.
What you said is just true, but we need general buying if we want a full-time planar because you say you want infrastructure improvement
and you want greater community engagement to be able to move the projects forward that the community is putting forth.
And again, we've talked about how that's complicated because there's not a natural person to be able to do that.
But if you want walkability, if you want rightability, if you want some of these other things to be brought in, that is the job.
And create new commercial opportunities that then funds the taxes.
Yes, if that is what the mission says.
And again, that's why I think we're having the conversation about the mission.
Like, if the mission says we want to do those things, then that's okay.
If the mission is, hey, we're just going to maintain status quo, we're just going to maintain people care about getting their roads done.
They care about having water.
They care about, like, just the basics, then we should focus on just the basics.
And maybe that should just invest in bolstering our maintenance plans and driving money to maintenance.
But I would say, I would argue, that there is a community that's pushing to grow.
Has that always been the case?
Over the lifetime that I've spent here, our community has grown.
A bona fide campaign type scenario of saying, come to Sonopi and build your house.
It's happened a lot because of our schools.
And back in the 60s, when they built Kyrsat's Regional, they wanted Sennepie in the worst way to get in on that deal.
And I don't remember it because I was still somewhat out of the political program, but I remember my folks talking about it.
And there were some pretty,
bitter, knock down, drag out arguments over whether to go. And they made the decision
to stay with their own school. And I think that, I mean, right today, it pretty much proves that it
was the right decision to make. Is it, I think it's costing us less to have our own school
than it would be right now to be part of care section. Oh, for sure. Like I see. And,
you know, they're all about, why are we spending all this money on our school when we could go in cooperation with another school?
Then when you first go, they're going to give you a really sweet deal, but that's going to last for a short period of time, and then we're going to renegotiate this contract.
And by then, you're committed.
So two things that keep our property values high, well, three, actually, the low tax, the schools, and tourism, keep our property values high.
Because people want to come here in a big case.
to this town because we have access to the lake.
Like, people will go vacation in New London and Newbury, but Sonopi is preferred to vacation
because of the harbor.
George's Mills and the access to the lake.
So those three things keep our property values high.
You remove one, and it kind of becomes unbalanced.
So.
Right.
So how do you want affordably?
I think.
I think there's a lot of alignment about this, about getting the organization, like, appropriately staffed to be able to do what you need to do.
There's some discussion about could there be a consulting project to help redesign what that could look like.
We're not here today right now making decisions on this, but we're thinking about what are priorities.
But so these are clear priorities to ponder organizational design.
There's different ways to do that.
And having appropriate staffing that's fit to purpose is sounding really clearly like a very,
a lot of alignment around this purpose.
And I think the one nut we didn't even throw out there that we got a crack,
we don't have an HR manager for that.
So if you want to grow employees and open positions and all this other stuff,
Ms. Shannon shouldn't be doing that.
Somebody else should be doing that.
But is there an appetite for that?
It doesn't seem like it to a certain degree.
Not from our standpoint, but on the standpoint.
We kind of got the position there.
But to find somebody that would...
Well, part of...
We were headed there and then our budget failed.
So now we're basically got our feet back under us
and we've got to get back up there.
You got to get back out.
But that's part of that whole...
But I think if you're, when you're selling things,
you're not selling how you're getting there.
You're selling what you're doing.
Like, we have the mission of growing for foster.
and growth, we have an active community, we're building new options for housing,
we're stewarding our environment, this is what you're, this is what you want to communicate
about, are new things. I don't know that, I mean, I mean, nobody, ultimately, it isn't
up to an individual vote. No voters ever going to vote to, like, hire a new staff person.
They're, they're going to vote to build the community. Well, if you want to build the community,
you've got to have a correct person.
to write and manage the grants and the right organizational design.
We have that because of the financial responsibility.
Right, right.
You need...
We could do that without the grant writer and throw it out the window.
Right, but if you want to manage your, you know, you've got to have the right plans.
You need the right urban planner to help you have the right plan.
If we have money to fix a bridge, but we don't necessarily have the people to manage the project.
Right.
Right?
We're talking about a million-dollar bridge.
Yeah.
Well...
Because of all the other stuff, all these people are already responsible for, and then you throw a million-dollar project on someone's...
Like, that's like building a house, right?
You have a contractor that their sole job is to do that one thing.
So it kind of falls on her...
So she's got the HR hat one day.
The bridge manager the next day.
Where are we at with the grant writing the next day?
Well, I mean...
When we were meeting the plan, I think you were, like, in there managing, like, specific deposits and withdraws, like, managing, like, an inaccurate deposit.
And I was like, you're doing, what do you, how, your budget's $22, $25 million for the...
Like, you need, you need help.
Oh, my God!
And these two things here, I think, you're right, if it all ties into, you can't make any progress.
You can't make any progress of this unless you got that.
Yes.
Without that, community engagement.
Yeah.
Without that.
And I think the way you get the community engagement is you're showing them, that's part of why you're getting out with the consultant.
I think, if I'm listening correctly, is that they are creating that case that you then
can go to the town and say, these are our goals.
This is what we care about.
This is the business case to really build, you know, and grow as a community and have these housing,
and this is, and we want, you know, this is how they engage, you're engaging them in that way to
understand it. But you need to be able to have the new tools for communication. Is that kind of what I'm hearing?
So, but like you're saying we have the money to fix the bridge, but not the bandwidth and money to actually manage the project.
I think that's very telling. But like in a project like that, because I found it and I ran a school, right?
And like we recently bought a second building and then we had to do that.
Like half of the money is not buying the items.
the staffing to manage the process and deal with the regulations and deal with the inspectors and like that's at least half the cost.
So, or maybe sometimes 75% of the cost is all the administration and management of it.
That's just the way it is, especially because the government thing because there's so many constituents.
So I wonder if when we raised the capital, we didn't include that in part of the project management of it, right?
Project, yeah, it can't be the, like, the budget to pay for the stuff.
It's just the tiniest part of it.
I mean, I can hear people in the audience now.
Why do we need to, why do we need to hire a project manager for that?
Can't the highway, you know, the highway directed to do it?
Or, you know, can't manage to do it or can't?
Who controls what goes on the ballot?
Like, I don't know that.
Well, we do, for the most part.
But are you, do you have to put each position on the ballot?
Like, what can't, can't you put, like, we're going to do a bridge project?
This is the overall encompassing budget.
Well, there's the overall budget, but there's also separate items.
Okay.
But it's up to us, I'm sorry.
But it's up to us, I think, to be able to explain to the voters why we're proposing the budget we're proposing and what's behind it.
And why it's in the best interest.
So a hope might be in the community engagement category is a new business case to communicate needs.
New business case ends.
New business case ends.
And plan.
Yeah.
Like I mentioned earlier, the reason for the capital reserves, we need to plan now where we're going to be in trouble in the future.
Yep.
You got to understand why we're doing this, where this money is going.
Things are not getting cheaper at all, any more and more expensive.
They just see the big number and they're like, why the hell would we need that?
Yeah.
Well, I was, you know, who doesn't understand that, but I think you need...
And it sounds like you've got...
It sounds like you've got, again, don't know a lot, but it sounds like you've got community forums that exist.
But not necessarily, but not necessarily with the rest of the, you know, with the rest of the program in mind,
it seems as though it's more of a strategic planning program to combat what we're trying to do there.
Yeah.
So a proactive...
future-oriented strategic plan, you can communicate.
It's also, it tends to be a very vocal minority.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yeah.
We don't have as much access to the broader community to explain what we're doing and why.
Other than what's a year, right?
The delivery session, I guess.
Well, and the other thing, right, is that seasonal residents don't have a vote, right?
Correct.
Unless you're actually, like, have your permanent residence in the town, you can't.
don't get to vote on any way.
Well, that's the like issue, yeah.
But we've got 3,000, you know, citizens.
Yeah, 3,200 and some odd, and, I mean, for a 30% vote.
Yeah, for an annual town meeting while we're at 1,200, something like that.
Yeah, I might be stupid for asking this, but I wonder why I get it for state and national.
in national elections for the local elections and budgets.
I don't understand that either.
Why, if I owned a property in that town, right?
Like, I don't, because that's something that could be changed, I don't know.
20 years, and illegally you can't do it.
Yeah.
It's just something about the state and I've been down this road and I've been.
It sounds like there is clarity that in order to achieve community engagement
to actually approve a plan that fits with this future-oriented approach.
you're wanting to take. You really need a strategic plan, which is future-oriented,
that you can communicate needs to the community around. And then that will help hopefully
elevate their understanding. And it isn't necessarily all just coming back to this zero-sum game.
It's just more taxes. There are ways to develop the community such that with, whether it's
permits cost more, or there is new commercial development brought into town that is going to create
some new tax base or, you know,
There are more grants that can be sought if you've got the right person to manage and run the grant process.
There are lots of ways to get the economics you need, but you need to have a better way to communicate that to people to get the approvals and to kind of fix some of this struggle spot you've been in now.
Like illustratively, and I know this is way more operational than you want to be, but we did do the request for proposal or request for qualifications.
We've got some really good firms that are willing to work with us on.
community outreach we just don't think again yeah yeah they saw they saw that
out there and like why we're spending money on this yeah but it is actually a good
thing I mean I know well the good thing about consultants is you don't have that FTE forever
you know you can have it be a specific short-term project and I'm not a consult I'm free
I'm just a volunteer so I'm not pushing for consultants I'm saying one more time I'm free I'm
volunteer no one's paying me okay so just one quick logistics question
we are at noon we have just like one one hour left yeah so do you guys want me to
order you lunch yes okay you don't want to have you don't at all okay I'm going to go
upstairs and get sandwiches ordered is that fine yeah okay from just pizza shop okay
or do you guys want pizza or something else okay can you do the bed I would do the
Ben for sure 100% but they're close today.
I'm not a big fan of the Ben's so they're on today Tuesday but still they're
close on Tuesday no I was going to say pizza chef is they back open on Tuesday they
are Tuesday okay Monday is they're not open so I don't open my office and I'm not sure
that they're open next to work because if I go into my office on Monday everybody
thinks it's open and I just see him go good gun good gun kind of like they're not open today
you're not open today
um all right
So we talked a lot about infrastructure improvements and we outlined some clear categories
and then which led us straight to organization and staffing to be able to address infrastructure
improvements and having the right capital plan.
Do we need it?
It seems like maybe we need a quick break now to get ready for, so let's have a five-minute
break to order food and have a quick bio break.
Is that good?
Yeah.
Okay.
Did you call it a bio break?
You've never heard that before?
No, I should have said it.
Yes.
No, I hear them.
I thought that was pretty cool.
I hadn't heard it.
First time I've ever heard it, but it's definitely biology flowing down the Merivac River.
Oh, yeah.
That's like, whoa.
It's a bit scary.
Anthony, are there things, Mom, that's the thing that you recommend?
Do you eat there often?
Where?
Pizza shop.
Um, I don't eat there often, but I do eat there, but I do eat there.
Yeah.
My daughter gets the meatball sandwich with all the peppers.
My wife gets the turkey.
I know exactly what everybody was.
Paul and Anthony will...
First I have her call.
We'll have to seven o'clock.
So then the order has to change.
Winchester, Massachusetts.
Winchester, Massachusetts.
Which is my primary residence.
So I had a seasonal, I had not seasonal.
I have, we're here part-time in Newburgh.
Oh, okay.
So I'm one of those people.
I vote in Massachusetts.
Massachusetts.
I'm good with just a small hand, so.
I think I'm just going to do like what we usually do.
But I also, I'm focused now more on my, the education, innovation, outreach, than the
catalyzing changes.
So we're now growing to be in 23 schools next year, which will include some rural towns
in New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine.
So that's more of a consulting business.
It's also a nonprofit.
I'm a volunteer.
I was a volunteer of founding and running.
I'm a volunteer, founding, and running the school, and now I'm a volunteer and the founder and the board, the board chair of the SREI.
So we're donors to it.
But I, you know, I'm more of an operator than really a philanthropist.
But in the time since founding the school, my husband is a biotech guy, so our economic situation changed,
which is how we now have this house. It's a lovely home in Newberry.
Cool.
Where about is in Newberry?
We're on high meadow.
We're on.
road? Where's that? It's like off of Rollins Road, across the
Overfield, so we're like a mountain. We have a mountain view. We're not by the lake.
Yeah.
We have a gorgeous house.
It's quite lucky.
We built part of that road back in the 80s.
Yeah. With the Bells.
Bob Bell.
No, this was before Bell.
Oh.
It said their new province.
Yeah.
We built the road.
Did I send you the last part of it goes up the hill and then it goes around.
and then it goes around the corner to the left and follows down to a cul-de-sac at the end.
And Bell did the right-hand turn off of that road and the rest of the way up on top.
So if you're above us, like, how do you get to your road?
You go north on 103A for a little waves,
and then before you get to like Blodge at landing, you're going to turn right onto Rollins.
to Rollins and then Rollins goes uphill.
Right before the fells?
Right before the Hay estate.
The big stone barn that's there.
Yes.
Right before that big stone barn.
That's that funky fresh barn.
Yeah.
The guy that I was working for.
You got a sense of you.
We got a sense of you.
The guy I was working for.
They have a view.
They have a fight the view.
Yeah.
Up on.
Up on.
The other lady had.
No.
That doesn't.
That's a lower.
I love that.
I love that.
The reason I ask is that my mother's folks owned a fairly sizable piece of property on Lakewood
Banner Road, which is off of 103, where you get to New Murray Harbor.
Yeah.
And it was actually, they were the ones that named it Lakewood Manor because it was the Davis estate.
Oh, no, excuse me, not Davis estate.
Excuse me, Mount Davis. King.
All right.
So we had good discussion about infrastructure improvements
and about organization and staff.
And then we started to get into some community engagement.
What do you guys want to do next?
Do you want to do environmental concerns, housing,
economic community development,
or public service enhancements?
The public service enhancements is probably something that kind of
in with the organization and staffing.
Because?
Well, it all has to be administered.
We've got...
It sounds like you've had some big wins here, if you will, right?
Well, we've moved forward a little bit, but there's also some things in the,
kind of in the means that at some point,
some point, we're going to have to address and it's not going to be small, small dollars.
Like what?
Like dispatch and ambulance service.
Cooperation with New London?
It is right now, but I know that New London is in the process of
studying whether or not it's worthwhile to keep their dispatch center
as well as New London Hospital and New England.
and the ambulance service.
They're not sure whether they're going to continue with that.
All right, so there may be things in the future.
But right now it sounds like for what we've got here is,
okay, you've got town planning of EMS services may be a hope,
and that's what you're talking about.
Move forward with fire and police advances in ambulance services,
public service enhancements, improve,
fire service for growth.
So what do you all want to talk about with this?
Public safety.
In terms of being, and then I would also,
I was just talking about this last night at the fire wards,
meaning just emergency management services.
So our long-standing emergency management director
has been advising me now for three years
to almost make that position full time.
We still have it.
We're lucky.
We have great to volunteers.
and are building the role of the emergency management director
and the deputy emergency manager director.
But as you think about building out the public services,
that has to be a part of it.
And so again, at the risk of being a broken record,
all that also goes back up to staffing and to capacity,
right?
So I think thinking through what could possibly
look like an ambulance service for us.
if we needed to do something like that.
I'm doing that analysis and presenting it to you guys, essentially,
because the wards would be involved in that, right?
But it would still be, the ambulance is actually
under the sloth board itself.
So as soon as you get,
as soon as you establish an EMS service,
if you want to call it that instead of an ambulance service,
you've got to have some, you've got to have
a director to organize and, I mean, then you get into, I don't know whether you can
even get away with it being a volunteer or a call type scenario anymore.
I'm pretty much convinced that that's a 24-7 affair.
And, you know, the fire for our fire guys paid?
Well, I mean, if our, if our, our,
if our department goes to a 24-7 situation, then, yeah, we've got a better ability at that point to staff it.
But.
So right now, it's a blend.
Right now.
So we are an on-call department.
So for every single call you show up to, you have a rate, you have an hourly rate.
And you, what's a rate?
Because I was just going to.
transition into that. So that's how that works. And then we just recently started
per diem shifts. And so the per diem shift, we're doing 12-hour shifts right now. And so that's
a different rate. So you could potentially be a per diem individual and say, let's say,
for example, you take on per diem shifts 12 hours on Mondays and Fridays, even though it shouldn't
be a set schedule, but let's just say that. You do it Mondays and Fridays, but on Thursdays,
morning there's a call and you just happen to be home and you go to that call, then you'd get your
different rate for that. So currently, we don't have any full-time people working within
Senepea fire. Of course, we just have the ability to hire a full-time chief, so we'll have a full-time chief.
But right, coming underneath the full-time chief, I would say, I would project in the 2027 budget,
you're going to have to have a full-time, you have to have a full-time something. And I think I'll leave it to
the world to figure out what they call it.
Is it a chief staff?
Is it a executive assistant?
Is it a dual-hearted individual?
But there's going to be more administrative capacities required
in that department to build it up and then to, again,
to absorb the things that we're asking for.
And if you listen to the fire awards meeting,
they'll talk to you about just how nervous they are
because they don't have enough people showing up.
And just the volunteers,
are not able to or the on-call individuals are not able to get to all the calls because
you know they're at full-time jobs during the day and it's not like before where if you were
working at Ruger and there was a call you could leave and you could go attend the call and go
back to work those kinds of systems aren't built into what we do anymore and so we're
going to have to figure out gradually and I get I understand that's on the wards to figure that
out but gradually how are they going to throw that and how is our budget going to handle
of that and it we will have to have shared talking points on this because
those are big additions to our budget and that's where as you go through your
mission statement and as you go through your priorities figure out what that's
going to look like because growing a fire department is expensive and the
idea of using the per diem people is great because then we don't have to we don't
have to provide all the extra benefits and so on
and they basically come and they work for their hourly rate and go home but we're
not going to we're not going to be able to staff our entire department with per diem
it's going to ultimately we're going to have to have full-time full-time fire
and EMS people and the station will be staffed year-round 24-7 but those are big
ticket items we're talking about ambulance and dispatch are really big
ticket items so part of us that's like together and I want me to look at
and achieve to have somebody who hopefully has experience with that and
when does the contracts expire with different right now we're we're pretty much
an annual thing and so they may decide okay yeah we're we're we're we're pretty much an
annual thing and so they may decide okay we're we're we're
We've looked at the different options and what we're doing now is the best one.
So if that's the case, then it becomes a move point, but by the simple fact that they're
looking at these things, then it's...
Do we know when they're going to make a decision?
No, I don't know that we do.
But it seems like defining a budget and having a plan if Newberry changes their approach is what you need.
Sorry, New London.
Sorry, New London changes their approach.
Do you like a contingent plan?
New London Hospital, because there's also potential opportunity to look at it from a tri-town,
like the MS services from a tri-town thing, but that's another whole.
I mean, bunch of hoops to jump through, but that's just like...
I mean, New London is going to need a solution, right?
This isn't the right solution, but they're going to need some solution, maybe we can grab up or whatever that other service.
I wonder if they continue serving to London since that's their home base.
I'm surprised they have a hospital there that they would.
Well, the other front of New London already has quite horrible time firefighters.
Not only that, but this is New London, the Dartmouth hip-top has a $50 million expansion plan
in the New London Hospital.
I believe they're going to put their entire Armpedics group into London.
That's what I heard.
So they're hitting me on their money.
So definitely that's it going.
So that.
But, I mean, I don't think that Dartmouth-Hitchcock themselves has any ambulance
short of the death moth, aka helicopter.
Right.
But it just means that that hospital is going to need an ambulance.
There is a, I mean, I think...
There'll be a solution there, right?
I think when I last saw the numbers for Sonopi, they built close to a million and collected
and $700,000 of the million built.
So there is a revenue service to ambulatory services that gets collected per the ride.
So 70% of our rides get paid, where a community like Newport, 40% of the rides get paid.
So, you know, there can be revenue that comes in, but the model can't be created saying,
oh, it's not going to cost taxpayer money.
It will cost money, but we're going to be providing a better service, meaning we have to be.
EMTs that can get to your house that are here just for our community.
So you need the right person to model that plan and to come up with a contingency plan.
And right now you don't really...
Is there any grants to get the system going, you know, are there, you know,
and that it's purchasing ambulances and, like, that's...
But it's...
Those are all big-ticket items, so they can be in the way.
And it's the type of thing that right now is we're just speculating on something that
could pop up...
May or may not happen.
on this year and it may be five years down the road or never but if we're caught
with our pants down it could be what are we going to say the same exact thing right
literally is it is it a public meeting for New London considering what is
a dispatch and ambulance no they're private they're private entity well the the ambulance is the
dispatch is all part of the town of New London look at a copy of the report yeah
So the report that they're doing right now, we'll get a copy of.
Okay.
So, I'm sorry, I interrupted you, Shannon.
Go ahead.
We're going to copy the report.
The dispatch report, and I was just going to add tag on the guy to advocate that we advocate to keep them, but...
Yeah, sounds like there's agreement on that.
It's a lot about EMS, a lot about there may be a need for some one or maybe more.
High on lunch.
So is there more stuff that needs to be talked about in terms of public service
enhancements besides the E&F and the fire service pieces?
Well, I mean, the police department, you know, they voted to add to the police department, you know, we, they voted to vote it to police officer.
That's the first one since like 2002 or something like that, but we've added to the size of the force.
And, of course, they're up against the same thing that everything else is.
The calls for service are continuing to go up, and it's much more difficult to come up with part-time officers to cover some of the shifts.
Full-time officers and things of that nature.
I think they're okay right now, but it's the same as everything else.
It's only going to continue to be more demand on it.
You know how to do you have a new guy with him today when I was in Chan's office trying to introduce some chance.
So he must have found somebody.
I don't know if it's part-time or both of me.
Just a sign.
Do you guys want to come in together?
Okay, how many is this meeting?
Is this a Eric?
Got a.
Your sports?
I don't know.
I said it wants food to be a minute before to concentrate.
You can eat some of it.
Just like, hurry up so we can get back to it.
We're running out for us.
She's got her own goal since she's not ahead.
If I look at the agenda, it's doing all right.
Facility.
And probably a lack of just awareness about some of the mechanics of how the budget and the
how the budget and the town things work on Forward Sun,
it's not a piece part.
is kind of what I'm here, just from that one little example.
But a different way to align together is important.
So that is a priority area because it sounds like there's a lot that can really be leveraged and tapped.
I mean, 60 people is a lot of people.
And kind of a runway to private funding is really essential, right?
So that's one area.
We've got an area of that that's about try talent.
on optimization.
Maybe these are just general comments about economic community development growth.
Then there's a comment I'm going to stick here on this side because it's not housing.
So 55 plus housing, high density, housing zone.
Okay.
Affordable housing.
Okay.
So multi-family development is a hope.
So who could zone there?
Who could zone there?
Who's in charge of that?
Zoning.
Planning.
Planning.
Yeah.
And are any of you on that group too?
Aaron.
Erin.
Multi-family developments, because right now they're not allowed.
What's that?
They are allowed in specific zones.
And most of those zones, the land is already spoken for, and they are already multifamily
or single-family dwellings.
So some of that zoning change would allow to increase, like, if you had a two family,
you could then add a third family based on your setbacks and land use controls.
So that was one of the things that they kind of put forward, but could have pushed back on.
Which I think they're going to try to do again, but
got pushed back on a lot.
I think there's other opportunities in our town for it also, right, to keep some of the rural character
And if you look at like, New London has some 55 plus communities that you would never know where there.
It's a road that goes into your green belt and then behind it there's 30 condos that are all 55 plus.
Maybe right across from Hanifurts is one that is desirable for people.
Yeah.
You can get it too bad for 300,000 so they can sell their house here for 800,000 and go into that.
Stay in the community.
Stay in the community.
The 800,000 house might bring in a new younger family who's going to go to the school.
Right.
And then they're able to stay in the community.
Or the other way around?
Yeah. And then providing, you know, housing for, like if it's multifamily,
those could be rentals that, you know, so supply and demand.
We don't have a lot of supply for rental units.
So you get a two-bedroom in Sanofi, which is 1,800 to 200 to 2.
$2,000. If you go to Newport, you have more supply so you can get a two-family, a two-bedroom
for $1,300 to $1,500.
So gross supply of rental units would be a hope for the housing,
which directly links to economic development. So these two are next to each other.
Correct.
And when you do that, you have to improve your water and sewer availability to those zones.
So while looking at that, this is a little bit of that,
looking at that, the zone should be close to your water and sewer treatment plant.
But for those areas that do have water and sewer, the constraint is your density in the ordinance?
If you put high density, let's just say we took Dewey Field, right?
And that was rezoned for high density.
What's a chicken egg thing, right?
But if you did that, right, so we want water and sewer highway.
If you change that zone to high density, I'm just, because other things,
communities in a lab they did this and the town wanted improved water and sewer
like to go out.
They changed the zone to high density and the developer bought the land
and wanted that water and sewer there, so then they brought it half a mile up the road.
They paid for the infrastructure to get to their development.
So that's how we could use zoning.
When you say they can?
The developer.
developer, even in Newport, so Captain Gardens has a 21 lot subdivision.
And they want part of the approvals to build that out.
They had to bring water and sewer up Elm Street all the way past Kathand Gardens in order to hook up,
which is another $500,000 that needed to be invested into the development costs,
which is being done so they can sell these units.
But now on that street, all those houses will...
all those houses will have the availability to connect to water and sewer.
So developer pays for the individual needs needed in order for them to be able to do the project.
Correct.
But in a high density zone, it makes it feasible where the developer could then do it and sell stuff
where the cost can be absorbed into the developer costs.
That's right.
So, that's, to me that's longer term, near term.
Yeah, yeah.
is where you have sewer and water already.
But that's where, like, a planner could look at opportunities like that
and say this is how we could, you know,
if you were paying somebody who had the aptitude to look at it from that standpoint,
say, you know, if we want X, Y, and Z, we can do it by bridging these things,
use some zoning, like we're doing it through three or four things,
and it's not a huge burden to the taxpayer,
and we're anticipating the growth.
Most master plans that you look at have that 5, 10, 15 year in and they have, like, marks in
that say, you know, if our community goes from 10,000 to 30,000, what are our infrastructure
needs, where will we need to invest in that infrastructure,
and what types of zoning changes would be required to get there at what point?
And that's really, like, the roadmap of our future, right?
And if we don't want that, that's okay, too.
And I'm not saying we'd be this 30,000 community, but, you know, we very really, I mean, we could easily become 5,000.
We could easily become 5,000 with the way that the building permits are coming through.
If you adjust, I mean, what were the numbers in that one plan to that zone?
Was it to add another, what they say over time, like another 900 residents?
Yeah, it's like 1% a year over 5 years.
was, you know, I want to say like 500 and 900, I had a range.
Yeah, it was two-bedroom, three bedrooms, how many units got developed?
But you look at like Granite Ridge is now all developed out, right?
There's not an empty parcel up there.
For years, that's that empty.
It's that empty.
Whizgerge?
Prospect Hill Road.
Yeah, and then you had Prospect Hill and then we have all those units that are coming online there.
You know, yes, we had apartments there before, but those are
going to be, what was the target price, I think, like $750,000 for those mackos
of what that sale price.
That's what the manner used to be.
Yeah.
So those will all be potential new residents.
And those are a great, I think, template of what you could potentially do.
Yeah.
A minute ago, you were talking about other ones that were like the 300K option.
That was by Hannaford.
Hanifers.
I hope so.
Oh, yeah.
different price points that make sense to ask.
Correct.
That makes sense.
And what's the template you just said was good to follow?
Learning from which template?
I was on Prospect Hill Road.
I don't know anything that's third.
Yeah.
So I know the interest to see if the chiefs at the price point.
Are we selling them?
He's on rent them?
I think he's selling things.
Oh, I thought he was right.
Condos that work are parking.
I kind of a death through cell and creates a pulse along like a PUD plan to urban development.
Yep.
Yep.
So you've got add the option.
So growth five rental units.
We've got more housing here we're needed.
We had the high density housing zone.
We've got that you need to improve water and sewer in order to make that viable.
But developers can help pay for.
developers can help pay for that infrastructure, but the high density zones are the things that make them be able to absorb those costs and make that viable.
There's a range of options that price points needed.
There's an opportunity to learn from what the Prospect Hill Road is as potentially a template.
And then you can go further, because there is state money to improve water and sewer if you're adding housing.
I believe there's $150 million dollars to upgrade infrastructure.
infrastructure and water and supply.
I know I'm dairy and have taken advantage of that fund.
It's just when you apply for grants, you also have to include in the grant money,
the staffing costs to manage the grant.
Yeah, and it just might be worthwhile.
It's like homework is to look at the master plan and see what the master plan says about some of this as well.
Okay.
And then there's the build the roadmap to get there.
which is adding a planner who stages the five to 10 year plan to fund the housing and the infrastructure,
which maybe starts with what is available currently for building,
but then potentially add high density zone with improved water and sewer infrastructure as well in the future.
So there may be some opportunities now that don't need that infrastructure improvement to get going.
That's what I heard from you, David.
And then you could add.
add more later.
And that's like, some of that stuff doesn't, that's like,
what I use, for example, maybe we never have to cross that road,
but we should think about it if we ever had to.
Where would we want it?
Because that's how you would set up your zones and then you could set up, like,
I don't know, like if you did in the zone, say you did up the five units didn't require,
acquire and review type of thing.
But then we're adding more to our land use and building department.
Like in left, you know, they have 15 people in that department,
you know, just in the land use department.
I believe so, yeah.
So evaluate staff it needs to include the housing court.
What would that be to come up with some money for developers to get the numbers
get the numbers working.
In like the harbor area or in general?
Or like specific area, like specific geographic areas?
That was specific to the Harper Lower Street.
So it's, it's nothing, we haven't raised any money yet, but it's a, it's a goal.
We wanted something that would, owners would be willing to put money in where it's shovel ready
and the money is going to a specific number.
to a specific project.
It's not just going to, if something comes up, we're going to,
the amount sort of generally, it's very specific, it's targeted,
and bold.
Okay, so we should wrap up, and what I'd love to do for wrap up,
is I think that the main next step is that there's another session next week,
and that is, is it Thursday?
What's the date?
I don't remember.
Seven, is that right?
Which is it Thursday?
So it's next Thursday, and it's also 9 to 1, is that correct?
And I, um,
And I'm hoping that you're all going to come back for that.
I'm planning to be back for that.
And we're going to continue this work to try to get more,
we're going to concretize things more and more in terms of prioritization.
So we're going to be...
My infrastructure is, too, I forgot.
We have Blake Ave, water management.
What you said?
Lake Ave is a big infrastructure process.
You can add an extra posted.
Do you have a marker over there?
So you can add extra post this so we don't forget it for the next session.
All right, but let's, so that's the main next step is that we're going to continue,
and we're going to continue to build on that.
Is there anyone who's willing to be, kind of sit down with Aaron and make sure to include him since he missed today?
It'd be great if...
I'm happy to do it, but I'm no way to get him with Aaron, like zero.
I don't have a phone number for him.
He never answers his email, so I'm happy to see him.
He's got a smoke.
he's a man on the move okay so what will have to happen is we will have
minutes that will have to come out of this right so we'll share the minutes with
him make sure that he's come up to speed on that and then I can see if there's
after he reads the minutes see if there's anything that he wants to come to the
next meeting I know that he couldn't be at the next meeting or that was like
right right so we could do that but I think maybe
Anthony, since you're technically, I believe the chair of this board, is that correct?
Sure.
That you will make sure that in some way or another, you have a sit-down conversation with him about it to try to...
It's a lot. It's a lot, it's a lot, but I think...
Give him some of the texture and give him of some of how things landed.
You could also watch this video.
Yeah, well, I don't, but I mean, it's more, yeah. So if it's, but if it's a human, you're
you're connecting with and you're going to talk about it all, I think that's like the most
successful way to try to bring someone else up to speed, even if he's not going to be the next
meeting. But about both meetings then will be the goal. So you can decide how to time that
and whenever you're able to reach it. Good?
Awesome. So let's have a closing, like what's something, what's an insight or a reflection
you have from today? Like, what's an observation you have about opportunities for Sunapee?
or a reflective comment you have about today's session.
You can pick one or both of them.
So a reflective comment about today
or a hope or thought you have for the future of Son of you as a result.
Well, a reflective comment that strikes me is like this process has been super helpful.
Six of us.
So it's out.
We may have a difference in the venue, because that's okay.
That's part of the process, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I agree with Dave.
I mean, I think it was great to you volunteered your time to keep us on task.
Not that we get off task, but sometimes we get on tangents.
And we go down rabbit holes that we don't really need to go down, so I appreciate that from my standpoint.
Another point I would make is this is just a lot of stuff.
I mean, it's just it's mind-boggling sometimes.
And I think it was very constructive today, but, and I just told people realize that we're donating a lot of our time to
trying to put this ship in the right direction.
And there's a lot of sailors on the ship, and we don't know what's the thing we're going to do with them all.
But we're going to try real hard.
To your point, you know, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.
Right?
But you still need that.
It's still good to have a plan, even though you may get punched in the face.
Yeah. But then if you have a plan and it isn't approved, you can say, well, you know.
Yeah.
Well, nothing can approve, it's not going to approve, but, but.
I would feel bad if it didn't get approved that we just kind of fumbled around.
Yeah.
I would feel okay if we had a plan, we had a good justice.