Lisbon Charter Commission hears from former manager Jim Bennett

[0:09] Chair/presiding officer: I know what you're saying. All right, calls being to order to the budget of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right. We'll do a roll call. Ms. Eliske? Yes, sir. Heidi Dubé? Yes, sir. Mr. Mason? Here. Mr. Kuhl? Here. Mr. Smith? Here. Mr. Fellows? Here. Mr. Ward? Here. And Norm. Yes. Mr. Albert. I am here. I am here. Thank you. All right. Minutes for the, I believe it's the September 3rd meeting. Do we have those? [1:29] Speaker C (unidentified): I sent them out by email attached to yours and they will also attach to the prior meeting [1:37] Chair/presiding officer: motion to accept I have a second all those in favor and they are accepted alright at this point in time is there any statements from the audience like if you have any ideas suggestions things you want to get off your mind if you're just here to observe, that's fine as well. But we'll do, allow the audience to participate now, and then at the end of the meeting, if there's any follow-up, there will be time afterwards. So. Come on, Mr. Duby, get this party started. Go ahead, ma'am. I'll be there. Just for clarity's sake, if you don't mind stating your name and where [2:22] Kelsey Purinton: you live in Lisbon Falls. My name is Kelsey Purinton. I've been kind of observing this kind of in the background as I'm kind of working against the development that's going on in my neighborhood. I have a great deal of concerns about the way things have occurred in our government. As we all know, our tax property taxes have exploded and I am concerned about credibility for staff and council holding staff responsible. I feel if cash has not been balanced for how many years? Somebody just saying that cash has been balanced is not sufficient enough. That if you're a supervisor or manager, you should have something in front of you. And instead of believing that a staff member is doing this, that then the council needs to come in and say, it's my presentation that these things have actually been balanced and that's where I'd like to see that part go. I'm also concerned about more than one family member being on the council because I think that can sway a fairness in a vote and I hear that's in the elections coming up. I am also not in favor of going back to town meetings. That I would like to see a council work, because I don't think it's fair that everybody can go to a town meeting and everybody needs to be involved and everybody has different work schedules and whether you go to a Zoom, which I'm not for, but a lot of things to be thinking of, and that's why we're here. So, let's see. That's not concerning that. I guess that's all I have for right now. Yes, thank you. [5:22] Karen Stevens: Good evening. My name is Karen Stevens, and I'm from Lisbon Falls. I live on Binding Street. I would like to address some of my concerns and voice some of my opinions. I was going to do this the last meeting, but I was unable to attend. I have three that I would like to address. I feel town taxpayers should be voting on municipal and school budgets by ballot vote, period. Whatever the results be, the final say. Number two, change the form of government for the town of Lisbon to representative town meeting, which would divide our town into districts with several townspeople coming to represent us, not just the seven on the Town Council. They would work in collaboration with the Town Council, which would still hold meetings and chair maybe once a month or more frequently if needed. Number three, purchases or purchase orders for anything having to do with the municipal side, as well as the school side, anything having to do with a town of over $99,999 must be voted on or on a ballot for the town members or the town council both to vote on. [6:56] Chair/presiding officer: Nothing, Mr. Duby? Come on. You've been a loyal participant. Not yet. Okay. The night is early. The peak of the night is early. I just like that you're still wearing your hat and that you're not a fair-weather friend. I like that very much. It was a tough couple, yeah, tough games. All right. Seeing no, doesn't seem like there's any more statements from the audience, I'll close that portion and then go on to the next section, which is testimonies. And we have a guest here. Mr. Jim Bennett has graciously said he would come and attend more of our meetings, and I told him that we would come here and pick his brain regarding his municipal experience. So, Mr. Benner? Mr. [7:45] Benner (former selectman, resident): Benner, gladly a resident again of the Lisbon, live down on Goddard Street. So to just give you some framework and then I'll maybe ask me some questions. I started my career in 1982 in local government and I got elected as a selectman here in town. I'm convinced if I could have put Ginger's boy on there instead of Jim Bennett, I would have got more votes. And then I got re-elected. So I got to be part of the board that participated in I think the longest town meeting in the history of the state. It was three weeks. It was three weeks. And it was an interesting dynamic just to do the framework because we also voted And town meeting at that point, we had a vote. Town meeting had a vote on all the ordinances. They vote on the budget, line item budgets, school budget. And back to that in a second. I've also worked in every form of government there is in Maine. I've worked five and a half years in Westbrook in a strong mayor form of government where I only reported to the mayor and the mayor had all the authority. That charter was filled with what I would refer to as bozo rules and that is if the mayor was a bozo the council had the ability to control that and so that created things like anytime there was over a $3,000 expenditure the council had to vote on it twice and it had to be 72 hours apart and that created some interesting dynamics when we would have to do a general assistance burial because it would be more than $3,000, because that $3,000 was embedded into the charter from the 50s and the 60s. And so I give you that example just to think about sort of these things are usually pieces that go on for a long time. I've worked in a council, mayor, manager. I've worked in town meeting for governments. I've worked in all of them. I've got a total of about 44 years. I also had the pleasure of being the president of the Maine Municipal Association, the Maine Town and City Managers Association, but also the president of the International City Managers Association. Association, that association has about 15,000 members in about 40 different countries. And that particular year I spent over 100 nights in hotel rooms all across the world representing city management form of government and talking to different people that were involved in local government. And so I've seen a lot of different government and understand some of the dynamics. I'm just telling you that just so you understand in that I have some framework with some of this stuff. Coming back to the town meeting in Lisbon, school budget passed one night. All those that were basically supportive of the school budget didn't come back the next night. There was a motion to reconsider. It got voted down. All the school people came back the next night. Another motion to reconsider. And so there's a series of parliamentary process. Process and town meeting comes down to he or she who has the most numbers wins. I literally remember as a member of the board, because remember back in those days we had virtually two of everything. I mean, at one point we had three fire stations, three independent fire departments, two different libraries. Okay, so big. And in one town meeting in particular, we had bought a photocopy of Philism Forest Library the year before, and of course it was replaced in the Lisbon Library for the copy of the next year. And some people said, well, how come Lisbon's getting one and we're not? Well, we got them last year. Don't care. They voted to put in another one. And so this thought that town meetings are going to control things, control expenditures, managers, I think that's a little bit of a fallacy. I can tell you as the town manager, every single time I went to town meeting, we got more money from town meeting than was on the warrant, was intended in the warrant. And you think about that for a second. Local government, there's this interesting dynamic where the elected officials have to decide who is going to lose in the appropriation game. Only once in my 44 years have I seen a department head ask for something I thought was totally outrageous. Everything that people ask for or are looking for, there's a legitimate need and consistency for. And my experience has been the seven individuals elected are way tougher about trying to tweak that budget down and controlling the expenditures and the taxes than town meeting as a whole. Town meeting generally wants to have the services they expect [Chair/presiding officer: and] you think about the dynamics of the budget. So much of the items that we have no control over at the electoral level, which have been mandated by the feds of the state, are items that some people would say, I don't necessarily want to have my taxes spent on, but you're required to do. And it's often the discretionary items that are the most important. Think about the police department for a second. There's one employee in the police department that's required. In every single community, only one. And a patrol officer, every community has to have one. Everything else is discretionary. Every community gets to decide at the level that they want to have for fire and EMS. You can have a total 100% volunteer fire department, total volunteer fire, I mean, EMS system. I used to be a volunteer member of the fire department when I was living in the community. I was also a volunteer member of Lisbon Emergency. I know what those services were. You think through that, I think it gets a little interesting when you think about whether or not town meeting is really going to control things. Just some opening comments, the charter is designed to end up being the absolute rules of how things are going to get done in the community, and generally you want to put that into a place where it's specific in the items that you need it to be, but generally leave it flexible enough so the people that are elected to do the job can be able to maneuver based on how circumstances change. So it's going to cover a couple things. Obviously, it has the basics in terms of, you know, how's the elections, you know, what are the terms, what might disqualify somebody from being an elected official. It has all the finance pieces, which is how's the budget related, how's the budget adopted, what are the requirements for that, how do ordinances get passed, what's that process. How about borrowing and bonding? Who has that authority? And who has the administrative control? Every time, so again, let me take a step back for a second again. I had the pleasure of having a meal with Jim Collins, who wrote Good to Great, and with other managers. He's one of our keynote speakers, he usually did not speak, you know, he wouldn't do local government, but one of his best friends' dad was the town city manager in Boulder, Colorado growing up, and so he had a particular favor warm spot for local government, and he spoke to our international conferences a few times. He made two points. One point he made is that in local government, if you're in private sector, whoever the chief decision-maker is probably has 90 or 95 of the decision-making points. Local government, whoever the chief administrative person is probably has 10. And what you do is you spend all your time trying to help a community make good decisions. Decisions other people are trying to have the same decision makers make a different decision. And so you have a lot of this process piece that gets done behind the scenes in order to help people make the decisions, whatever they are. And so that process piece that goes on, it's particularly challenging in the business today, the professional, particularly when you think about all of the business side of things that need to be done. He also made a point that any really good city manager could easily run a private sector business because you'd have so much more ability just to make the decision and thou shalt. The business side of trying to do local government is pretty complex. And if you have your elected officials worried about doing the business side of it as opposed to overseeing the business side, they're probably not going to pay attention to the bigger ministry and bigger policy issues of the community. Think about what sort of policy issues. What kind of economic development in the community does the community want to have? What's your growth strategy? If you make the investment in extending the water and sewer line in a particular part of the community, what's that going to look like? How does certain land use decisions end up impacting the tax rate that the community is going to see down the road? So every time, and those decisions are not easy decisions. They're not the ones we tend to make in our daily lives. So with a limited time frame and a limited ability to be able to focus on the items they have, if you're doing the, you know, think about the magician, it's like when you look over here instead of paying attention over here. So if the elected officials and the plaintiff board members and the finance committee and other members are 100% focused on whether or not you can afford $250 or $350 for a pickup, as opposed to those bigger policy issues, you're sort of floating around out there without really thinking about what are the big decisions that are being made. The charter will drive some of that process. In Westbrook, because it's a strong mayoral government, there were a whole lot of regulations and a lot of things put in place because the mayor had so much authority. So those members of the council had a lot of responsibility with the day-to-day purchases and decisions because it was a check to make sure that the mayor wasn't running off. Because they couldn't fire the mayor, right? But for them to try to do long-term vision and items, that really took additional effort and time on their behalf. So let me stop there, and just some introduction comments. Oh, by the way, you ought to fix the staggered term piece here. Having three people up at once and one at a different time, you know, I've never seen that anywhere. Where you probably ought to have a 2-2-2 and one or whatever the case might be. It's a little weird. It just changes the interest and dynamic. But just a personal comment. Let me stop and see if I can answer any questions or clarify anything for you. I [21:12] Speaker I (unidentified): have a question. Go ahead. Mr. Ward. [21:17] Chair/presiding officer: Mr. Mett, I heard one of your pieces is the fact that when you were talking about town meeting back in the day and you actually over exceeded, Topson, Standish, Yarmouth, they all have a clause where they actually allow them to vote. Have you had much experience with the fact that the communities that actually do allow participatory vote to be able to rule, is it the case that they all have some sort of provision where they can approve but they can't increase is that what I'm seeing the trend yeah I'm not familiar I haven't looked at those [21:59] Benner (former selectman, resident): Alan I haven't looked at those particular communities in terms of the way their budget [22:06] Chair/presiding officer: has to be approved yeah and they have strong budget committees and everything else that's why [22:10] Benner (former selectman, resident): I was asking the question you know there could be I mean you have a whole range of things. So you could have a situation where there could be language in the charter that said, ultimately, the council has the final say on the budget, unless that budget triggers something that goes beyond a certain place, right? And then it would have to go to the voters. Bath, for many, years, had a cap on their budget. And if they wanted to go over that, they had to send it to the voters. Right. Right. And so I think one of the things that's interesting about a provision around that is that it forces the community to be a lot more communicative with the community because they may have to vote on it. Right. And so my sense is that there could be some improvements in this committee in terms of the way that they're communicating what's going on with the budget, why things are, what's going on. If you knew that you potentially were going to be able to have to have a potential vote on it, would drive some things differently. I think you could strengthen the role of the finance committee in terms of saying the finance committee has to make a formal recommendation on the budget. Right. And so then you have this other set of eyes that are looking at that or something. There are a lot of different ways, Alan, that you can try to tackle it and think about that. You just want to be able to think through what are the measures that go through that. So, I mean, I've been in a place where the budget's gone up millions of dollars or a million plus dollars or whatever, but because of some dynamics, the tax rate, not just because of a rebound, but because of economic development and some other components, the tax bills were actually going down. On the other hand, I've seen where the budget's gone down significantly, but because of loss of revenues. You think about a few years ago when revenue sharing was being cut. Wisconsin. [24:42] Chair/presiding officer: You have a sizable, that scenario plays out. [24:46] Benner (former selectman, resident): Well, I mean, when I was in Presque Isle, the way the revenue sharing formula works, it takes the highest full value tax rate communities, takes that number and multiplies it by the number of residents and that becomes your fraction of the share of revenue sharing. Presque Isle had the third highest full-value tax rate when I got there, and they had a community of about the same size, too. It was about 9,700. They were the highest receiver in revenue sharing when you compare it to the budget of any community. When revenue sharing was cutting from 5% down to 2%, that was almost a 3.5 mil impact that particular year. Community, even though the budget went down, they basically took a perfectly good indoor pool because it wasn't being used but much more than maybe a couple hundred people shut it down and tore it down because of the expense and so under that scenario, depending on how you wrote that particular provision, you may not have had to go to the voters because you actually were spending less, so you want to think through the measures. That's all I'm suggesting to you. [26:02] Chair/presiding officer: He made an excellent point early when he was responding to that question about forcing the voters to be able to vote on what's being presented through a finance committee or some mechanism. Our neighbors to the left in Thompson had the privilege that their who is it? Is it the council? We reached out to somebody associated with it. The response, town manager's response to the effect is we've spent one meeting where we were talking what's the percentage to be able to drive it. His whole take, he didn't care. If they bothered to show up, that's the statistic that was there that day. It ruled because the 900 people or whatever showed at the town meeting. Right. So Jim gave me the opportunity to be able to share that is that we spent a lot being been able to get in the minutiae associated with something burying it in the charter I'm not sure that we need to in that regard is because the point that's actually been raised locally is those that show up get the chance to be able to decide if you chose not to come that's just you've made your vote right there as well too so anybody else have any other questions because I'd love to [27:21] Speaker I (unidentified): I know what you said about the charter in the town form of government that we have. [27:29] Chair/presiding officer: Don, can you move the mic closer to you? [27:33] Speaker I (unidentified): I don't know. I'm sitting in the basement. Do you have experience with other forms other than town meeting itself, like representative town meeting? So I've worked in [27:50] Benner (former selectman, resident): communities of a town manager,, town meeting, selectman form. Predominantly, that was Dixfield, New Gloucester. I worked in council [28:02] Chair/presiding officer: manager form, Orchard, Lewiston, [28:10] Benner (former selectman, resident): Presque Isle, Bedford. I should have included my little interim gig with Sabatos in the town meeting form. In Westbrook, it was strong mayor, former government. and all of them had their own little quirks they all had differences that were in there and often these little quirky things are in there is a reaction to something that happened that people didn't like and so then they go in and they might try to swing the pendulum too far and then you get stuck with these things that become a little difficult i mean that But the $3,000 thing in the charter in Westbrook was unbelievable. And I had department heads who were constantly splitting purchase orders. I'm like, no, you're violating the charter. We're not doing that. Yes, it's painful. Yes, it's stupid. But if they get to come in three times a week in order to get through that, I was finally lucky enough to help them with a charter amendment. I think we get it up to $7,500. So they have these little quirky things [Speaker J (unidentified): that they have] Benefit rewrote their charter, had a full charter commission in and I was working there from 15 to and they had 22 item changes and they had the voters vote on each one of them as opposed to individually as a package, and they all passed except for giving the elected officials the raises. And they had a lot of different things in there because they had some old throwback stuff before they had a city manager. So they had the police department and the fire department had mayor appointed police and fire commissioners and those commissioners often were retired firefighters and police officers who then had control over the budget, had control over the personnel decisions, and it just was a little crazy, and they ended up getting rid of that and moving that in and moving all the control of the employees into the city manager's office. [30:38] Chair/presiding officer: Go ahead, Mr. Fellows. I'm reading that [30:42] Speaker I (unidentified): that in all of this, that if I were to say Jim Bennett's opinion on which form of government, it would be some form of council or town manager type of government, whether it's exactly like ours or some other. [31:00] Benner (former selectman, resident): Absolutely. I mean, you know, one of the pieces of the city manager form of government and our professional organization We believe that is the right vehicle to get things done. Because what happens is that city management came out of, we're 125 years old now. It was really back when all the jobs were political favorites. It was interesting to hear the story about the way it used to be in Westbrook. I think they still do have partisan elections. So you have to get nominated by the party, and then you have D's and R's that go on the ballot. And so if the D, prior to some, this goes back at least 30 years or so, but if the D won, then the D senior person became the police chief. And if there are one and that person lost this police chief and then he had an R that was the police chief same thing with fire chief and my sense is that when you have the elected officials that involve with those kinds of decisions they're not making the big policy decisions right because the focus on that and those that was back when personnel stuff was easy. One of the things I think people fail to recognize is that in the state of Maine, after six months, government employees have an ownership interest in the job. What does that mean? What that means is that you cannot fire them like you could in the private sector. They have to do something to prove that they've given up their ownership interest in that job. It's a different standard. And so you are going to suspend, take any kind of a disciplinary action, corrective action against employee, you have to demonstrate one, that you've done everything to train that employee, and two, that you've provided them all the resources and everything, and that the employee either is incapable or unwilling to do the job. You think about that as a standard. And then you think about somebody that comes in, and I'm just going to use the mayor for one, because the mayor in Westbrook had all the authority. So the mayor could go in and go, you're fired. Guess who pays if that's a bad decision? The taxpayers. Now, if you run it a little bit farther down the road, there's virtually almost everybody's in a protected class now. And so you know, you think about if I'm going to make an employment claim for somebody doing something against me as a municipal employee, you have a whole bunch of things that you can do to be able to do that, and you can't buy insurance for employee claims. It's virtually impossible to get that. So you know, you know, it just, I had a conversation, I was invited and had the conversation when the city of Portland was rewriting their charter. When they went to the strong, where the mayor was full time and all that. And one of the points that I made is, I think one of the worst decisions they could make would be to give that person control of the employees. Employees. So Poland's charter, unless it's been changed, full-time, 100,000, full employee, you know, with all the benefits and everything, has no direct seat over the employees. They have a lot of control over the budget but not the employees to protect the taxpayers from making really bad decisions. So yes, I think it's really good to have a professional there to help guide so that people don't make bad decisions that cost the taxpayers money. And bad decisions aren't because people are bad people, it's because they don't understand the rule of the game. And most of the time what I find is that the elected officials that come in want to want to make a difference, and they try to make a difference in that area which they know, and that which they know is usually administrative items, but they may not know those administrative items in the in the world of local government. And so having this what I call the shared leadership model between the manager and the council, where they work together to be able to provide the leadership with some really clear lines about [36:17] Speaker K (unidentified): how to get that done. [36:19] Benner (former selectman, resident): I think it's pretty important. I think it's really important that all the department heads should come to the council for a confirmation vote so that the council has some buy-in to who the people are there. It shouldn't be just a manager gets to appoint. In Lewiston, I got to appoint. I didn't have to go to the council. But I always involved the council in the search. I've always had them part of the process. One of the flaws, I think, in the benefit charter is that anybody who is going to be disciplined by the city manager as a department head is entitled to a hearing before the council. And so what happens is that as you're trying to get the organization, and particularly the employees, to roll in the same direction that the council wants, one or two powerful council members can come around behind the scenes to try to get into a role in a different direction. He or she who's most dynamic on the council can work behind the scenes to try to get staff to move in a different direction than what the majority of the council wants. And that kind of provision in the charter will create those kinds of dynamics. Go [37:44] Chair/presiding officer: ahead. So you touched on some things, and I just kind of want to back up a little bit. Because there's one thing that I heard throughout the not most recent budget process, although it was brought up, but the more contentious one prior to that, and that the council was not hearing the public. And so I think that as we sit here and talk about what we're moving to, I think the other thing that I heard very clearly from the majority of those folks is that they're not interested in making a change to the council form of government, council manager form of government that we're in. But they wanted to have some more significant, I'm going to use guardrails, but I don't necessarily know if that's the right term, and now to get into the detail of it, that particular budget that passed, the more contentious one, I think it passed five two, but, or it might have, might have been four three, I don't know, even say I think it was actually six one, sorry, my brain's a little foggy right now, but the point is it's not so much about the pad that passing of the budget is the fact that we've seen Really contentious budgets pass 4-3, and I think that the mechanism that I'm thinking and where I sit right now is I'm still very much in kind of encamped with the idea of going with a councilor-manager form of government, but I want to see a mechanism that if a council vote on a budget, a municipal budget, for example, is 4-3, it triggers a mechanism for the voters to be able to say we want that on referendum the only way that ever doesn't have an option like that I'm not saying that it should Ever be removed is if it's a unanimous 7-0 and I think then that way you're probably if you're drawing that kind of consensus it's a pretty safe bet that the community's offered up some pretty significant input at that point if you had that kind of buy-in because it's very rare but you know 6-1 one, you could debate whether or not that should be the right threshold. But I think that 's when I think out loud, I think that's a mechanism that we could put in the charter that allows things to breathe. But it would also give, it wouldn't put a burden on future councils or future folks in administration. It would just be another safety net, if you will, to ensure that the taxpayers are getting an opportunity to be heard. And it also gives councils a chance to maybe, hey, we passed this four to three, but it's very clear that there's some folks here that we maybe should circle back on and listen to. [40:17] Benner (former selectman, resident): Yeah, a few things, a reaction to that. One would be, I think back to my days of being on the board here, that taught me to form. And one of the most powerful groups at that particular time was the advisory board. Because the advisory board had such a specific role the way that the town meeting had voted to make them and give them authority and that advisory board every item that was on the warrant had to have the advisory board's recommendation and when the advisory board was different than the board the taxpayers really kind of paid attention to the advisory board on most of those items. And if you had over expenditures or you had a transfer or something, you had to go to the advisory board to get authority with that. Because it became a different group of advisors looking at that, and they were considered sort of the citizen's eyes. What I've seen is that if you can give some real meat, some significant role, something like the Finance Committee may get the best of both worlds without necessarily having something that creates these additional burdens. I'm not a big fan of super majorities because what happens is when that occurs, it's my politician or somebody that's particularly skilled in understanding the dynamics, that minority member can end up influencing the budget in a way that was not intended because they're not part of the majority. So let's just say we use the 4-3 example, right? And you have, you know, three members that really want a particular program or road, they want something that want they really want, they can hold up the budget, they can hold up that process and not be by the majority. And so a lot of times, so super majority things sound really good in paper, go sideways pretty quickly as you think about that. If you were going to have something that you wanted to have a trigger mechanism, I think it would be something that is driven objectively by the numbers. Okay. And so it becomes like a tax cap or a cap on things, but it's not as hard as some of the tax caps have been put in as an overreaction. I think about like the Pileski potential tax cap and some of those other things. And you really want to be thinking through that. Let me give you an example. When I went to Bedford in 2015, they had over $200 million in capital assets. They had appropriated $180,000. And they were really in a lot of trouble. [43:41] Chair/presiding officer: Yeah, because you're not buying it. [43:45] Benner (former selectman, resident): I'll tell you, know, the last audit from Bedford, They had a $7 million fund balance and over $11 million in designated capital funds. So, I mean, and those designated funds, other than the ones that were borrowed, were really fund balance that had been shifted by capital. They put a provision in to charter because I staffed the entire charter process for them during that process. And the town clerk, the city clerk did all the hard work and all that. But I was there to help them make good decisions, so they put a provision in and said that every annual budget had to include a percentage of the state valuation capital. So, you know, was a really small number. It turned out that what it ended up requiring would be about two million dollars though. If you paid attention, it's economic development in terms of from 2015 about 2022, and I mean, it's still going on, changed pretty dramatically. I got there, three quarters of Main Street was empty, and now it's very full. You know, it has become a really popular place to live. The rents have gone through the roof, the state valuation has tripled from the time I was there. [Chair/presiding officer: Because that formula] that was driven in the charter, nobody anticipated that state value was going to triple. You know, that number would probably now require them to spend $5 million in capital. For fixed assets, the price has gone up, but it's, you know, capital assets are about the same. So instead of being about $200 million, maybe it's worth 300 million, but it hasn't gone up threefold. And so as you think about the mechanisms you want to, you want to do some what-if modeling to think about how that would, if these things happened, what would that do to that cap, and how does it make sense, and is it that way you want to really want to do that. What-if stuff is really important. That's how Auburn got in trouble when they used to, they'll have the incinerator. Back when they built it, they built it on the price of oil, and for those of you that are around, remember some of that. And so as soon as it was going to go up, and of course some of us might remember there was this sort of thing, the recession, and the thing went sideways and the numbers went down, and Auburn now was paying almost 50% of everybody's trash cost because they never did the what if. What happens if goes down. So if you decide to put something in the charter, make sure you think about trying to do some what-if modeling. [46:39] Chair/presiding officer: Mr. Chair, he said it twice. Can I just delve into a clarification question? Okay, very quickly. Finance Committee, you've mentioned it twice, strengthening the role. I'm going to say it because Norm and I, the first year we were on council together, dumbfounded to see the fact that a finance committee was written right out of our charter because of personalities. The fact is Lisbon does not respect it. We put it back in, but then I've also seen it during its existence to actually be a political tool of the council. In your experience working with multiple different finance committees, do you have any feedback on how to strengthen that role to be able to get what we need. Clearly I believe we're going to have to have a conversation here that accepts some level of voter input on the budget, if not voting on it. The charters that I mentioned with Topsom, Standish, Yarmouth, they all have strong finance committees. Your experience working with multiple, what do we do? [47:47] Benner (former selectman, resident): New speaker Thank you. New speaker I tend to answer questions with stories. New speaker It's not just me, then. Thank you. New speaker For about 35 years I was teaching how to the budget program for MMA. It was one of the highest rated classes that they offered. And one of the things that I talked about with the managers and elected officials department go through there is what you really want to try to do is have credibility and you want people to have comfort in what's going on in the budget and that really drive that and for me when I was a manager at town meeting and you know whether it was advisory board or the budget committee or whatever it is because if we could get them to agree with what we were recommended tell me was it easy right and so if You had a situation where the Finance Committee had a role when they had to make a recommendation on the budget it changes totally the dynamics of what's going to happen and how you go about that so it's it's not isolated to the seven individuals you have another whole set of independent eyes that look at that and have a role in being able to make recommendations on that. And anybody that understands those dynamics, particularly given the challenges today, I think that they would use that in a way to make it so that people understood the budget more, what the budget decisions were, what it did, what it didn't do, why are decisions being made. And so I would really, in lieu of trying to build some sort of tax cap or something else that triggers this referendum all the time, I would really try to use that vehicle as the way to be able to make it so the citizens feel like they have somebody that's not the elected officials that are overseeing this and give them real strength. And so it may be something like, you know, if the council is considering a budget that's X percent over what the finance committee's recommended, then it has to go to the voters. And then you take out all the other interesting dynamics that are going on about, you know, I mean, one of the challenges of the budget that I just worked on for the community, this community lost a million bucks in state funds, a million dollars between the school and the municipality. Yet we figured out a way to pass a budget that decreased the municipal side by six cents and at the same time went from zero capital to $640,000. That's a pretty goddamn good budget in my eyes given the casualty held. In terms of dynamics and what happened in there, but there's a lot of moving pieces, and if we could have had the Finance Committee also be involved with that and understood that a little bit more, Alan, I think it would have been more helpful for the community. I [51:22] Chair/presiding officer: didn't know, my experience from Wilson, I didn't know if the fact that they make a hundred percent of the purchasing decisions in Lewiston, they're not a [51:32] Benner (former selectman, resident): finance committee, they're purchasing committee. Yeah, and that, and that does, I [51:36] Chair/presiding officer: Which is why I was glad you went the direction you did. Yeah. [51:40] Benner (former selectman, resident): Realist, purchasing finance committee is a throwback to the old mayor form of government. Right. And it's because the mayor had a lot more authority before they had the city administrator that came in and tried to, you know, do that. So that's the person, that's how they control purchasing to make them comfortable that the purchase is made. That's not a finance committee. [52:04] Chair/presiding officer: You answered the question what I was hoping you would say. Thank you. I just want to verify Sir, I'm sorry. Forgive me. I just want to make sure that everybody gets a chance to ask before we go on [52:15] Speaker L (unidentified): So Mr. Smith, do you have any questions? I'm just gonna ask a hypothetical. You were involved somewhat in the process of the 2024 budget. Is that correct? Or is that you here after I submitted it? Okay, so [52:29] Benner (former selectman, resident): No. I submitted this current year's budget. I reviewed what happened in the last two years and reported out on what occurred. Why that happened. [52:43] Speaker L (unidentified): What can we put into the charter that would help prevent what we just went through? I understand there was an error. What can we do? Would the finance committee being involved help that? I think [52:57] Benner (former selectman, resident): I think they would have, because it's just, it's a different role, right? And they look at things a little differently. I truly appreciate elected officials are supportive of the employees. It's so difficult to be a municipal employee nowadays, right? And it's so tough in whatever the case may be. Be. Sometimes that I want to be supportive makes it a little tough for them to ask the tough questions. The finance committee members don't have the role of having to be, their role is really just the finance. They don't have to deal with the personnel side of things. They're not, you know, dependent on the staff to help make recommendations about, you know, does it make sense to change the zone on, you know, Route 9 and up the Ridge Street? What does that mean, and how does that impact things? Is it really different? I think it would have, because I think there would have been a more intense review of some of the things that just didn't make sense, right? I mean, I wrote about it in the report, and I'm just going to say it again. And I think in the, I can't remember if it was the 24 budget or the 25 budget, but one of those years, the town got reimbursed, I think you get reimbursed like 65 cents on the dollar for general assistance. And that particular year, the general assistance budget was something like $70,000 that was going to be spent, and the expected reimbursement was $65,000. Somebody would have picked that up. Right. Right? Somebody would have said, that doesn't make sense to me. Right? And that's just wishing for revenues and trying to plug a hole and trying to make it work to the tax rate and a bunch of other items happened. And the council, in my opinion, not this current tax bill that just went out the last year that I was there, but the year before and the year before, had garbage information most of the time and made it almost impossible to make any reasonable decisions. [55:34] Speaker L (unidentified): That's what I understand so [55:44] Speaker J (unidentified): Having served on a couple committees but never finance committee, it's always been our experience it's hard to get full slate, full recruit in the towns where they've had a strong finance committee. Is it like us, Lisbon, you know, please apply, or do they actively recruit and go out looking for people? I think [56:02] Benner (former selectman, resident): In all places they're actively asking for people to apply, but I also know now, even here, even though you have applicants, people are going out and saying, hey, why don't you think about joining, right? Why don't you think about, we could really use your help on that. I think most of the time, people are willing to get involved if the work they're going to do is meaningful and important. If it isn't meaningful or important, and you're just going to go through the exercise and it doesn't make a significant difference, I think people quickly queue out of those committees. [56:46] Speaker J (unidentified): In those committees, I don't know how other towns are structured, are councilors or select people allowed to serve on these advisory committees in other than a liaison fashion? Not normally. [57:00] Benner (former selectman, resident): And the other thing that I'd say is it's interesting, a couple of communities, and they were actually, the council was appointing members of the staff to the committee. It's all like, no. No. Staff already has too much influence. So, you know, as you think about makeup, you may want to be very specific about who can and cannot serve on those as you do that. [57:25] Speaker J (unidentified): One other quick question, if I may. Have you ever seen the case, so when people look at charters or constitutions or anything, they think if they write it big enough and tight enough it covers everything, it solves all problems. My concern with these things is that we write something that is such a 300-page monstrosity that it ties the hands of the town government. So I guess what I'm looking for is a happy medium. I think what you want to do is [57:53] Benner (former selectman, resident): you want to be as specific and as quite on the things that are important and on the things that are not, or you're not certain what the future is going to be you leave that into the hands of the elected officials with some broad guidelines, right, so just take an example, we always have budgets, we'll always have the requirement to borrow money, we're always going to have, you know, those kinds of things, I had some pretty specific stuff on the budget kind of things. You maybe want to be a little less specific, just thinking about who the heck knows what's going to be around five years now from an AI perspective and how that's going to influence things, right? The positions that we have today are probably going to change, right? And, you know, in Bedford, they had an auditor. It was one of the required positions. It wasn't like an auditor. The position came in and Ellen and I worked [59:11] Chair/presiding officer: TOGETHER IN LEWISTON. NEW SPEAKER I USED TO BE LEWISTON'S INTERNAL AUDITOR SO IT'S A LITTLE PERSONAL FOR ME TO HEAR IT. [59:16] Benner (former selectman, resident): NEW SPEAKER SOMEBODY CAME IN AND JUST LOOKED TO SEE THAT THE CHECKS THAT WERE BEING ISSUED MATCHED OUT AGAINST THE WARRANT. IT WAS LIKE A $5,000 STIPEND POSITION OR SOMETHING. And it just, it lost its effectiveness and it was left over from the strong mayor form of government before they had a city manager and it never made the change. And then, you know, they had other provisions where, you know, this person had to be a resident of the community in the charter and it was just, it's no longer as appropriate and so that's the kind of stuff I'd say that you may want to be as specific on. Mason? [59:59] Speaker K (unidentified): A LOT OF EXPERIENCE. ANY EXPERIENCE WITH THE REFERENDUM TOWN MEETING? NEW SPEAKER NOT THE REPRESENTATIVE, NO. [1:00:10] Benner (former selectman, resident): SOME OF THE COMMUNITIES, STANDISH SAW ME, SANFORD WAS THE FIRST COMMUNITY TO DO THAT. I REMEMBER WHEN THEY PUT IT IN THE 90s. AND SO YOU HAD LIKE I THINK IT WAS 50 PEOPLE they had to run for office because the representatives get elected oh no i have referendum town meeting so where the budget needs to be approved by referendum yes the budget ordinances it yeah i haven't i mean i'm somewhat familiar with it where THE FINAL BUDGET HAS TO GO OUT TO A REFERENDUM. [1:01:00] Speaker M (unidentified): NEW SPEAKER I THINK THAT I READ SOMEWHERE THAT IN 2004 YOU SAID THAT THERE HAD TO BE MORE OVERSIGHT OF THINGS LIKE THE DRAWING FROM THE GENERAL Fund, which got us into a big mess. And the person who did the double thing on the evaluations for the state, if we had in place a strong finance committee and accountability for like the finance director or whoever, would that have been prevented? taped? [1:01:47] Benner (former selectman, resident): I don't think there's anything that you could do that's going to be absolute. I mean, I had a trying to hire a finance director is very, tough. I was just talking to one of my colleagues in a fairly large community here in southern Maine about the difficulties that they were going through. Thankfully, they were able to catch it early enough in terms of the same sort of situation, things not being reconciled and whatever the case might be, I went through a lot of finance directives along with the city manager and I had one that lied and didn't reconcile and caused all kinds of problems for us. And the taxpayers didn't have the same impact because I knew the finances, I made sure the budget was fine and all that stuff, and they always had a surplus in the end and whatever the case might be. But I didn't, even though when I was teaching, I always said, make sure you look at the reconciliation. I was one of those doers. I say I didn't do, and I went through that process. I think what you would want to do is put those in, but you may want to end up having some things that you would require to have to be produced publicly in order to be able to hold something accountable. That's the way to do it. So one of the things in the report that I reckon I talked about was making sure that their the monthly P Ls or you know budget actual is presented to the council is one of my recommendations in that report that I wrote, and make sure quarterly it's really done well. You may want to end up in a situation where the chair of the council and the chair of the finance committee have to sign off on the reconciliation. So that reconciliation needs to get done, and they both have to independently sign off to look at it and say, yeah, I saw it and looked at it, and put something like that into the charter. Because it's about, I'm going to tell you, I bet you there's no less than 15 to 20 communities in Maine that have had issues with reconciliation of cash over the last five to six years. And we're getting more and more people that are jumping into the finance director role that really don't understand municipal finance. Those positions market-wise may even be more difficult to hire than a qualified manager. [1:04:25] Speaker M (unidentified): And do you think that, because I'm thinking back and like who I feel like dropped the ball. So when we're thinking about a town manager, should we be, whoever interviews for them, shouldn't they be looking at their background in finance and like everything that you have said? Would that help have taxpayers feel more comfortable where you seem to know like a lot about budgets because like you lost me a long time ago. But would that, because I think back and it's like, oh my gosh, like where was the town manager in some of this? And when you stepped in, it was like, boom, you were off and running. So I just, is that something that we have to look at and put in there or is that just something that needs to just happen because it is? I would say that what you want to [1:05:26] Benner (former selectman, resident): To do is make sure that the key products are being produced. So whether it's a reconciliation of cash, you know, the monthly report of budget actual, the quarterly full financials, which includes everything, accounts receivable, accounts payable, what's going on with the bond funds, all that kind of stuff. Requiring that to be publicly submitted and for the council to have that, have the finance director appear quarterly to be able to do that, potentially having to have, like I said, the chair and the chair of the finance committee, if you decide to strengthen that, have to sign off that's seen these documents. It's, it's, there are really great town managers who have done in city managers has done fantastic jobs that may not be as strong financially, but they know how to ask the right questions, get things done and they know, they know that because there's so much more to this job than just the finance piece of it. So I would caution you not to overreact to the requirement to have your town manager have to have, you know, like a, you know, you know, CPA or something, because they're probably going to lose so much more on the other side of this job, and then you end up having so many other issues. Hopefully that was helpful for you. [1:07:06] Speaker C (unidentified): So, we originally had a budget committee which was elected, and we switched to a finance committee that was appointed. And I think, to some degree, people don't have that trust that you want in the finance committee because they see it as appointed by the council and controlled by the council. Whether that's true or not, I've met several of them and they're fantastic, but how do you, how do you help shape that independence? How do you cut the council off from having so much influence on them? Do you make it so that the town manager is the one who puts candidates forward and that the council is not allowed to have any, you know, direct communication with them out some of the presentations and such? I mean, how do you, how do you give them that independence? [1:07:56] Benner (former selectman, resident): So I would say to you that town managers should not be involved in any shape or form with making recommendations for who serves in the bullets and committees. Actually, if a town manager is caught recruiting or signing a nomination paper for somebody that's going to be on the council, it's a violation of the Code of Ethics for both the main town and city managers as well as the International City Managers Association. It's a no-no. I would not recommend that. Because there should be this sort of independence for the from the administration piece. I Think that the key is not whether or not you run for the position Or you get appointed. It's what's the role and what's their responsibilities? You know, and there's some people, I mean, I think we still have a vacancy in the water department, the water commission, right? Yes, we do. Yeah, and when you stepped up to do that, 's kind of an important role right now, given some of the challenges, right, that's going on. So if you ended up having to have people run for the seven seats or whatever the number is, I don't think you'd end up having many people that would step up and say, I want to run for it. And then they would default to the council appointing them anyways, right? I would say that you're better off to try to make sure they have a role that's significant and important that's independent, by design. You don't have to be independent by appointment. You have to be independent by mission, if that makes any sense. It does. [1:09:33] Speaker C (unidentified): Which towns do you recommend that have set that up that might have good rules for it that we could refer to? I'm sorry, I can tell you. Which towns have you noticed that have committees like that we might be able to research and see if they have helpful suggestions for it in their charters? [1:10:04] Benner (former selectman, resident): Most of them, go back a minute again, most of these that I have experience with was in town meeting former governments. AND THAT'S MOSTLY BECAUSE, YOU KNOW, THAT THEY WERE AN IMPORTANT ROLE IN ORDER TO HELP PEOPLE FEEL COMFORTABLE WITH THE BUDGET AT TOWN MEETING. YEAH. REMEMBER, I WORKED IN SOME OF THE MOST POLITICALLY DIFFICULT AND CHALLENGING COMMUNITIES IN THE STATE WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT IT. AND SO YOU HAVE SOME INTERESTING CULTURAL ISSUES IN THOSE COMMUNITIES THAT CREATED THE dynamics over there and some of the stuff that's in their charters is left over from the days when they had they may have a lot more authority and give you an example since 1990 other than the five and a half years i was in preskyle all of the elected officials communities in those communities i served were all up at once every two years. And I can tell you I've had more than once where I have a complete 100% turnover in the council. So that gives you some sense about the dynamics of the political background of those communities. Certainly we can help you find some stuff or we can help you find a way to write the kind of language once you figure out what it is that you want done and what you want it to do. I mean, I'm willing to come back and help and do things that you're in, right, Morton, because I live here, I'm paying taxes here, I want to make sure I would give back to the community for everything the community did for me, and I would just do that because I want the community to have a good structure so that they can make really good decisions. [1:12:04] Speaker C (unidentified): I very much appreciate that. Yes. And then I would ask was there anything and feel free that this would be an individual thing for you and not doing it now but were there things that you bumped into when you were interim manager in the charter that you felt were awkward that didn't work what right or constrained things in a way that were inappropriate or just things that could have been smoother things that could have BEEN MORE CLARIFIED? [1:12:38] Benner (former selectman, resident): I MEAN, I MENTIONED THE WEIRD STAGGERING OF THE TERMS. THAT'S A LITTLE WEIRD. I MEAN, HAVING THREE AND THEN ONE AND I'VE NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE THAT. I DON'T KNOW HOW THAT HAPPENED, BUT YOU PROBABLY OUGHT TO FIX THAT SO YOU DON'T HAVE THAT KIND OF I TRY TO GET THE FINANCE COMMITTEE TO END UP PUTTING A BIGGER ROLE AND A STRONGER ROLE. ALSO, I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE WORKING 24 HOURS. I WAS WORKING A LOT MORE HOURS. IF I HAD BEEN HERE ANOTHER YEAR OR TWO, I WOULD HAVE TRIED TO TRY TO STRENGTHEN THAT. I THINK THERE'S A RELOAD BETWEEN BEING ABLE TO DO THAT. [1:13:25] Chair/presiding officer: NEW SPEAKER THANK YOU. [1:13:30] Speaker K (unidentified): NORM HAD A THING BEFORE. NEW SPEAKER I APPRECIATE THAT. [1:13:33] Chair/presiding officer: I really wanted to go ahead and just touch on a couple of things, but I'm not going to dive into all of them. I can always come back to you offline or at a different time. I do want to bring up something that we didn't talk about, but I want to make sure that I do touch on with you, and that is integrity issues, specifically around council's self-discipline. I know that there were some significant issues that were brought up, not just over that contentious period, but prior to that and the running up to that contentious blow-up because there were some significant in my opinion opportunities where Council interactions among councilors saying hey, there's no concerns here and then not having that be At least even considered and just blowing through it like it's a this is a red light But you're blowing right through it or this is there a lot of red flags here, whether it's perception or reality. And you have the potential for people who sit in the seat to say, I don't see it that way, and then keep driving on it and continue to make decisions that could be questionable at best. My question is about building in. We have a document right now that calls for self-policing and have an ethics panel that is advisory in nature only. And my thought process is to really kind of strengthen those areas a little bit more. So I would ask you to speak to more of a, not a self-policing model, but in your opinion and with your experience, maybe you could talk about other ways where you can kind of have those checks and balances to get people to maybe understand and heed the word on the front end when they're coming on board and realize that 's probably the best time for me to listen to those sort of things versus having... [1:15:19] Benner (former selectman, resident): Two things, Norm. The state statutes are pretty good in terms of what's allowed and what isn't allowed. There's a clear definition of when you have a conflict. It has it learned out, and it makes it clear that you are not allowed to participate in any format. I've always advised the people I've worked with that if you have a conflict, you ought to get up and leave the diocese. Announce your conflict and leave. It's a clear indication that you're not playing a role in that. There's also another section of the state statute that says even if you don't have a statutory conflict, if you have anything that appears to be a conflict, you should disclose it, even though that may not, I think it's not even you should, I mean, I don't think it's a, you shall disclose it even though you still may be able to vote on that one of the changes in the benefit charter was that it was required that they had to put in a the council had adopted code of ethics and you know within I think it was like 90 days or something like that passage and they did that and then it's been put in place you know there are other communities that have that it doesn't it just says you have to have one and it says you have to address these particular issues but it allows the body and the community to figure out how that's going to be enforced and what's going to go on. [1:16:52] Chair/presiding officer: I think that's super helpful because I think from where I'm thinking out loud, I'm trying to find a way and a place to bridge this. And so I think that is really good. Thank you, Jim. Mr. Ward? I just said something with Ms. Leask. The three examples that I keep mentioning, Topsom, Standish and Yarmouth, they all have a finance committee role. I don't know the specifics associated with it. My concern associated with this is the fact that okay we're engaging the conversation associated with how it looks for voting on our budget the strength of the finance committee to be able to make it effective to have that public voice in the last piece has been continuation of government in that regard is because you want to make sure that come July 1 that you're ready one way or the other. They all have an out clause associated with that. The piece I haven't had a chance to be able to explore is the strength of the finance committee because that is key. Being the guy that actually has administered Lewison's finance committee, his point on our engagement is 100% valid. It is a purchasing function associated with that, and it can be interesting at times to try to get a collective five to do anything, but in that regard, looking for that voter input on it, even if we have a baseline with, in all the charters, the League of Women Voters, it gives you all those resources associated. I pulled them down. If you guys want them, I'll get you guys jump drives and I'll hand them out in that regard, is, but it's a template. It's nothing more than the fact that we can strengthen or improve associated with what's there, but they all have consistencies amongst each other because it must be a baseline that other communities are not experiencing the same problems that we did. That's the only point that I make. [1:18:54] Benner (former selectman, resident): The city of Montpelier, Vermont has a their budget always has to be approved by the referendum. And they're a community about the same size. Obviously, the dynamics are a little different. I think both New Hampshire and Vermont have one sort of advantage in that there's one day, like New Hampshire has a town meeting day is the same date for everybody in the entire state. And I think Vermont is similar to that. So everybody knows that 's the day I have to go to either town meeting or vote on that, but it may be worth pulling one to see how that works with their referendum vote. My good friend was a long-time manager there, and they always seem to manage to get it passed, but they did a ton of work ahead of time. [1:19:50] Speaker K (unidentified): What was the name of that town? [1:19:53] Speaker J (unidentified): It's Capital City. I [1:19:57] Speaker I (unidentified): just a little extra here I know I was talking about super majorities and that thing sort of thing the thoughts have been moved around here of having a voting situation and various triggers for that and various quorums required for that type of thing in fact you probably know that in our town if we ever have a town meeting it has a quorum requirement of 250 150 people. But having said that, I hadn't really thought about incorporating mandatory finance committee involvement in that. And I think that even though you could do all those other things, my experience on the finance committee when I first was on it was the advisory committee, and it was a leftover from when we had a town meeting. The big difference is that we could never get the council to pay attention or even meet with us about this stuff so it became a lot less important and that's eventually why it disappeared the first time one of our counselors wanted a Finance Committee back and yet over the course of time over the many years we've had it council sometimes pays attention and most of the time doesn't so I think putting some teeth in the Charter might be an answer to fixing that if I made [1:21:15] Chair/presiding officer: just a piggyback on that I think that 's a valid point about the Finance committee because i think the one thing that was disheartening for me was watching a counselor not just be a liaison member but an actual voting member because the justification by council was we don't have enough people signing up for it so we need somebody to write but it just as soon as that turn and that lever was pulled everything that the committee is supposed to do goes up in smoke because it's not the oversight board that it's supposed to be so that was my take and I just [1:21:47] Speaker J (unidentified): One that kind of. That's a goal. So one small thing and first enormous thing. The committee I've served on in Lisbon the longest has been planning board. And I think we've benefited, maybe sometimes suffered, from council just is there to pay attention. They've never gotten into our business day to day. Granted we don't do anything nearly as controversial as budgets and what have you. We are more or less independent. We're quasi-judicial. So we make our decisions, we make our rulings sometimes bad ones but it is without counsel having its thumb on the scale when they're there for advisory we ask and they do respond and in the seven or eight years I've been doing it I've never found that any conflict of interest was there because we are independent in that way on a totally different track in the charter it says about giving notices and publishing warrants and what have you and it refers to newspapers as this is a 20 year old document, and with sort of the death of newspapers and the rise of social media in these other towns you've worked for, how do they address that? [1:22:52] Benner (former selectman, resident): I believe it's still state law. We've tried so many times to get the legislature to change that and haven't been able to do that. So you write the big check. I think, Fred, we were using in the Portland Press about $25,000 for our notices and we shifted to a weekly paper to save money and had to change the thing. So some of that was dictated by state law. I think you could still put language in the charter that says something to the effect of as long as it's not inconsistent consistent with state law, this is the preferred way to be able to give out notices and then come up with whatever way you particularly want and how the timeliness that you want to have on that. [1:23:48] Speaker J (unidentified): We had discussed it at a prior meeting, and it seems to be becoming sort of a generational break, for [1:23:54] Speaker K (unidentified): good or for ill. I think the paper is a law requirement. I believe it's a legal requirement to [1:24:01] Benner (former selectman, resident): put it in paper. Yes. I've testified a number of times over my lifetime to try to get rid of it. I think eventually it will go away, just because it's no longer as valid. But, you know, at the end of the day, I think most of the time, my philosophy always was that I believe that if the average person in the community had the same information that the elected officials had, they would generally make the same decisions. And my job as the manager was to make sure we did everything we could to allow the public to have the same information that the council was going to get. And if there's times when they would not have made the same decision, usually they'll come out of the woodwork and let the council know that. And I know people feel like they're not listened to. I'm telling you, my experience is four or five phone calls to a counselor is a crisis, and they're in that plane and say, you guys got to fix this. They do listen, and they do it. Somebody comes to a meeting, yells at them, calls them names, that's probably not going to be the most effective way to be able to do it, but they do listen. Yeah, they really do. Yeah, so I think you can just put in whatever you think can make some sense, but honestly, anybody that understands the value of making sure the public's informed is going to do everything they can. I really tried hard to make sure that the briefs that I was writing for the council during the time I was here were really there and explained everything, and we tried to get them published so the public can read them. Really tried to make sure that the budget documents that I produced were transparent so people understood what we were doing with the money and why. I try to do all those kind of things because at the end, I felt that one of the most important things that I needed to try to do was regain some credibility for this building, that connection to the citizens. About bondage, some communities have a setup where every cent that needs to be borrowed has to go to the voters. Some communities have a limit. It really depends. It depends. There are times when it is helpful to give the council some authority to do some limited borrowing without having to necessarily go in and out there. And when you think about the bond-in, the way the language is written is going to be important because it may take things like leases or lease purchases. It may take revenue bonds and change the dynamics on that. Lawson has a provision where they can borrow up to a certain amount of money based on their valuation. They're afraid you couldn't borrow a penny without going to the voters. I mean, the school department got a $2.5 million grant, but it was in the form of a loan. So we had to go to the voters to get permission to be able to borrow the money, even though it's really accepting the grant. And we had to call a special, you know, representative vote and get it all done, because we only had a certain amount of time to get that stuff done. So that's a pretty important one to be thinking about as you go through your dialogue and discussion. [1:27:37] Chair/presiding officer: New speaker flexibility, too, because when you have periods like COVID where cash flow is actually struggling, you want to make sure that you have the tax information bonding to be able to be adequate, to be able to meet the needs should it happen. Again, it's continuance. [1:27:53] Benner (former selectman, resident): You know, and that's just another piece. I know, and there was some discussion, I don't know who it is, about potentially going back to a calendar year. The reason that the calendar years will shift to the July to June year is too full. It was all about cash flow, if you think about it. You know, I went through and changed the year in, like, through the communities I worked in order to make it so that the towns didn't have to borrow money because 60 or 70 percent of your revenues didn't come in until like September because you don't even know what you have for an assessed value in April and you know then you don't know what you're going to have for your when you get the budget adopted what you're really going to get for revenue sharing and everything else so the challenges of the school budget maybe not getting adopted is not worth trying to in my opinion trying to change all the other pieces you should figure out what you think with that and think about what happens if the budget isn't adopted and what that looks like in some communities they have language that whatever the town manager submitted is the budget gets adopted some places I've seen where the town manager, if they don't meet by a certain date, they don't pass the budget, then the town manager gets to resubmit a budget, and then they have a certain amount of time to make adjustments, which thankfully a budget got adopted because it really made me nervous about that. Some places it says you can operate based on what you had the previous year. You think through those kind of things as well. Well, like I said, I'm glad to be helpful in any way I can. Thank you, Mr. Baird. All [1:29:51] Chair/presiding officer: right. Next we have on the agenda is proposed charter revisions. I assume we don't have any at this particular moment in time, so we'll go ahead and move on to – go ahead. [1:30:09] Speaker C (unidentified): I would like to make a comment on that. I don't have one, but I sent this out in email, and I wanted to say it here, too, is I would suggest that anyone that wants to put a revision forward, get it to the group at least a couple days in advance so we can have it on the agenda for people to consider so we can all look at it and how it will impact other things in the charter and have a more solid and grounded discussion about it than just, you know, having it here and having to think on the fly. [1:30:36] Speaker J (unidentified): Mr. Gould. So this is really a request to Alice, I think. Thought you were forgotten. As we start making these changes, it would be good if we could generate, like, a red line word document of the charter so we could see the changes as we go. [1:30:56] Speaker N (unidentified): Yeah. Did you, did the members want to share the document together? [1:31:03] Speaker J (unidentified): Well, that was my next question about logistics. Because different levels of technical comfort, it depends. That's fair. [1:31:11] Speaker N (unidentified): I think if it's needed, we can work on that, and we can help the commission make sure that an ongoing red line gets created as provisions get or as amendments get approved. [1:31:26] Chair/presiding officer: I will if it's all right with the commission I will work with I will come up with some solution either working with Alice or something maybe I can come up with on my own in terms of just technology along those lines. I also have to I mean if we're going to be communicating with our legal representation we need to have some sort of mechanism to adequately communicate what we're changing versus is was and all that kind of stuff. up. So I'll take that. I ask that you actually just make sure to loop in our secretary, because if we're doing the minutes and that type of stuff, I think that would be a perfect role to be able to make sure that it gets recorded as well. I'll make sure to do that. Thank you. Okay. Commissioner of Communications, and I'm going to start with Mr. Albert. Okay, so I'll dive right in. After our last meeting, I was tasked with going ahead and moving forward on the web page. So with the help of the staff here, they were great with getting the ball moving. I'm working directly with the Economic Community Development Director right now. I've been singing the praises of the Winthrop website for their charter commission. I felt like that was the right one. So we went ahead and got a mock together right now with all the draft pieces. I plan on hitting send on that to you all. I just didn't want to throw it at you before we talked about it tonight. I'll send that out tomorrow. You're going to see the raw conversations that I'm having right now with the Economic Community Development Director around basically what I want to do is move forward with this thing. I want to launch next Wednesday. So I will send the raw data around. Feel free to peruse it, read it, and then go ahead and take a look at the Winthrop site as well and compare it to what we're talking about. And if you have any sort of suggestions, comments, or things that you think should be added or and or taken out, feel free to bring that into play. But be mindful, I really want us to kind of get this thing up and running and breathing by Wednesday if possible. So if you have some bigger range goals, I may say I want to address those things. I'm pointing at you, Mr. We just put you right across me, but I'm just saying in general, whatever those changes might be, I may in the interest of let's Let's get it out for the public because there's some really good information on here. I think the public should have what is a charter commission. There's some really basic bare bones stuff that might fill in some blanks and help maybe get some people interested and excited about. Excited might be the wrong word, but at least interested to kind of find out more about what we're doing and maybe bring some input into this process as well. So I'll send that out tomorrow. Okay. Anything else? I'm trying to think of one. No, not right now, but I'm sure I'll circle back. As you guys are going, it'll come to me. Mr. Ward? Next meeting, October 15th, Ms. Leask's point. I'd like to, if not a testimony, I'd like to know what the action item is for that meeting, just to keep us moving towards task. I'd love to have it embedded right in the agenda so we can actually prepare. We talked at our last meeting with Mr. Bowie or Ms. Barnes. If you could get either one of them to actually do that, would be great for that next meeting to just build on the discussion that we had with Mr. Bennett tonight to get people that have been directly involved either in the process or in municipal government, just to get different perspectives to keep that moving forward. My intent of timeline on that is, I know we talked survey results would be closed by the next meeting, but not probably until the following meeting in our timeline. So I just dread meetings that don't have continuation from the previous. So I'd love to keep us towards task if we can embed what we're going to do at that next meeting so we can prepare. Mr. Fils? MR. [1:35:33] Speaker I (unidentified): My only comment, again, is I kind of wanted to know what our direction for next meeting was, just like Alan said. The other point is I hope we're moving. We already kind of went through the timeline before with survey results coming back and whenever they're ready. But we definitely are going to have to decide what we recommend as a form of government very soon here so that we can move in one way or the other and get on with what we're doing. If we're going to change the government totally, that's a whole different story than looking at our charter. So I just think it's important that we make sure we're moving along. Okay. Mr. Smith? [1:36:12] Speaker L (unidentified): I echo what Don just said also, and secondly, I'd like, Jim, you brought back a lot of memories tonight, town meeting. I served on the advisory board for, I think, seven years, and, yeah, the town did take the advice pretty solidly in most cases. I think it was after I got off the council, I did serve for a very short period of time on the finance committee, but we got the impression that the town manager at the time didn't really want to hear from the finance committee. So I just thought I'd throw that out there. Thank you tonight. [1:36:51] Speaker J (unidentified): New speaker P. So I must preface this with an apology to everyone. After our last meeting I had this ambitious goal of reaching out to people and giving the question on the website. And I came down with a lovely case of pneumonia. So I'm a little behind. But Missy has done outreach to some folks in the library and others about getting face time so we can have live people. It's appalling and surprising that people don't actually know what a charter is. So it is my intent to set up something with the library director. We have to work around their schedule and what other stuff they have going on there as well. And perhaps some other public forums to just interact with people and stand there and be annoying, but make them know that I'm not selling them solar panels. [1:37:36] Chair/presiding officer: NEW SPEAKER: GOOD. YOU'RE NOT WELCOME AT MY PLACE. NEW SPEAKER: I ALREADY GOT SOME. [1:37:41] Speaker J (unidentified): BUT AT THE SAME TIME, I THINK WE NEED TO, ASIDE FROM PEOPLE BEING ENERGETIC AND ENERGIZED, THERE'S A LOT OF PEOPLE WHO DON'T KNOW WHAT THE CHARTER DOES. THEY DON'T UNDERSTAND IT'S OUR TOWN CONSTITUTION. SO I THINK THERE'S SOME KIND OF AN EDUCATIONAL PUSH THAT WE MIGHT DO. I HAVE SOME IDEAS, BUT I DON'T WANT TO BRING THEM BEFORE YOU UNTIL I HAVE SOMETHING MORE fleshed out. Reaching out to people, not just like at the library, but maybe the transfer station, places like that, just with an informational brochure that here's what we're doing, participate or not, but you should be aware of what's going on. And I think that's an important piece, but again, these are half formed ideas, and I've been busy trying to play catch-up for the last week, so next meeting I'll have something more substantive. Glad to see you're on the [1:38:24] Speaker C (unidentified): amend love antibiotics, and if I may, I think the face-to-face is exactly the mechanism for doing that, because that's when I spoke with people and explained it, they got it like that, but they just [1:38:37] Speaker J (unidentified): need to make the connection. I've been getting outraged texts from people not understanding what we're doing, so like, you gotta read the notes, Mr. Gould, just not to put any undue pressure [1:38:51] Chair/presiding officer: on you. Is it possible we can get the outreach, in-person outreach done or scheduled for the 10th of October, and have that be our day that we go out and either have somebody at the transfer station, at the library? [1:39:12] Speaker J (unidentified): I cannot. I will be in Philadelphia that weekend, but I don't know. Let me think about that and see what options I WILL BE GONE FOR THREE DAYS. LET ME GET BACK TO YOU. [1:39:35] Chair/presiding officer: I WOULD LIKE TO GET A POINT THAT WE DO NEED TO START GETTING THE BALL ROLLING. [1:39:42] Speaker K (unidentified): yeah absolutely. So Mr. Mason, in the last meeting I was trying to defend the last survey question that I wanted added of asking people should the ex-vehicle excise tax be used for road repairs and all, and I was questioning about some numbers and I didn't have any facts. SO I LOOKED AT THE, WELL, THIS IS THE FISCAL YEAR 2027, BUT IT WAS FROM MARCH, SO IT MAY HAVE CHANGED, BUT FOR CAPITAL OUTLAY, THERE WAS NOTHING SPENT IN 24, THERE WAS NOTHING SPENT IN 25, AND THEY HAD NOTHING BUDGETED AT THAT TIME FOR 26. [1:40:41] Chair/presiding officer: Just for clarity, you're talking about expenditures on roads? [1:40:44] Speaker K (unidentified): Yes. Yes, there's nothing. And that wasn't just roads. That was like fire equipment, cattle equipment, paving. So they had nothing planned. Yet for motor vehicle excise tax, in 1924, they received $1,927,532. Nothing went to roads. In 2025, they received $2,012,373, and once again, nothing went to roads. And they had in their budget, they had planned for receiving another $1,900,000. And at that point the department head and the manager recommended a $2,025,000 budget, but they still had nothing planned for roads. I think it's a viable question considering the status of the roads in this town. Do people want some of that money dedicated for that? I mean, that is the whole idea of the tax, so I think we should keep that question, Mr. [1:42:05] Chair/presiding officer: Chair. Do you have anything else? [1:42:08] Speaker I (unidentified): No. There's an expert in the room who's been experiencing excise taxes over the last 30-something years, 40, whatever it is. I wonder if it's worth asking Mr. Bennett what he thinks. [1:42:21] Chair/presiding officer: I mean, we can, but Mr. Mason. I don't mean right now. Oh, yes. Yeah, I mean, when we come up to it, we can do it. Patty? [1:42:36] Speaker M (unidentified): First, I can't get on the internet because I need step-by-step-by-step instructions and I've been so busy. So is there anybody on here that can walk me through this step-by-step sometime? [1:42:48] Speaker K (unidentified): Are you off tomorrow? I'm off tomorrow. [1:42:54] Chair/presiding officer: I am on, but I can find some time. Why don't we connect after the meeting here? I'll get your information. We'll try to see if we can get you through. [1:43:00] Speaker M (unidentified): Okay. And my second thing is the surveys. Are people still going to, because I will go wherever it's needed. I will sit at Food City or whatever it is. That's something we're trying to. Okay. All right. Just let me know. That's it. I'm done. [1:43:19] Chair/presiding officer: I see where she gets it, Mr. Doobie. [1:43:26] Speaker C (unidentified): Bonded. Missing. To address the question of putting things on the agenda would actually not come to me. I get that information from the chair and I add it to the agenda to be published. So we should probably talk through a schedule of how things come to me so that I can get them to Alice in a timely manner. [1:43:48] Chair/presiding officer: Alice, when does, for the town council, when do they post their agendas? [1:43:53] Speaker N (unidentified): Usually the Thursday or the Friday before that following Tuesday. [1:43:58] Chair/presiding officer: That was roughly okay, so if we [1:44:01] Speaker N (unidentified): for the one on October 6 [1:44:05] Chair/presiding officer: Okay, so if we did a, since we meet on Thursday, if we did a Monday or Tuesday prior to our meeting, that would be roughly about the same period of time [1:44:13] Speaker N (unidentified): And the meetings themselves, they are being, the timing of them is getting advertised earlier than the agendas are coming out, so they, there are still ways for residents to find out about the meetings even if the packet and agenda aren't up immediately. [1:44:33] Chair/presiding officer: Okay. I think I'll make a, I'll put it upon myself to make sure that we have a finalized agenda and out to you probably by the Sunday before. That way we can make sure we're good and communicate to Alice and make sure the packet's ready to go prior to. So anything I get by [1:44:52] Speaker C (unidentified): Sunday night, I will make sure is in by Monday. Yep. Monday morning. NEW SPEAKER S. [1:45:03] Chair/presiding officer: OKAY. I WAS GOING TO BRING UP A COUPLE THINGS. I REACHED OUT TO MR. BOWIE VIA E-MAIL. I HAVE NOT HEARD BACK FROM HIM YET. DOES ANYBODY HAVE HIS PHONE NUMBER? I COULD PROBABLY GIVE HIM A CALL. NEW SPEAKER S. WAS IT ON THE HANDOUT HE GAVE US. I don't know. You keep going, I'll look. And the other thing is I just got Diane Barnes' contact information, and I'll be reaching out to her as well and see if we can get hopefully both of them into our next meeting, if their schedule allows. The only other thing is, again, kind of reiterating the point that was brought up earlier. There. We are running through meetings quickly and we've yet to finalize like anything we're going to be debating or proposed revisions or anything like that. I would like to, I don't know if we, if the, by the next meeting is will be in time. It's too soon, but I would definitely say by, I think we're, we did agree we're going to be on the 29th of October. I propose that by that point is the time that we should start having some middles for revisions that we want to make and my initial timeline like I threw out there was like me to start, ARTICLE BY ARTICLE, GOING DOWN ARTICLE 1, 2, 3, TO KEEP IT ORGANIZED. I'M OPEN TO OTHER SUGGESTIONS, THOUGH, IF SOMEBODY HAS A BETTER REFORM, MR. WARD. KNOWING THAT WE STILL ARE AVOIDING THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM ON FORM OF GOVERNMENT, I GAVE SOME THOUGHT TO THAT, IS THERE ANY OF THE ARTICLES THAT ARE CURRENTLY IN THIS THAT THEY ARE LESS reflective on the form of government that we can focus on to not lose steam associated with that. The ethics that are self-governing pieces, whoever your officials are, you could apply those kind of things if we could start at least there, we're moving forward rather than just spinning. Well, I will say Article 1 is the one that defines the form. That's right. When you start Not going in order, you're already assuming you know the direction. Right now we're in a boat and the fact is we're doing this. [1:47:33] Speaker C (unidentified): So we could probably start with school. [1:47:35] Chair/presiding officer: Yeah. Or some of the, we mentioned originally the fact is the subcharter, are we going to get into at all water? The fact is we could focus, it doesn't form of the government, it's the form of what we're actually doing with town departments. We can focus on that while we're waiting for the bigger piece to take shape with what the form of government would be. If I may, Mr. Chair. Go ahead. I remembered where it was that I didn't bring up on my council communication initially. I reached out to the previous chair of the school committee for 16-plus years, and she has been gracious enough to say that she's going to go ahead and dig into a central copy of the charter, ask her to dig into the 10.3, I think it is, which is school committee section. I also said, hey, listen, you've got a ton of experience. Look at the whole body of work but go to the one that we know that you can kind of give us that succinct piece I'd also plan on going to the current chair and I know that person is very busy as well but I'm going to actually try to leverage because the time in the seat that she has current I think between those two that would give us some real insight as a as a commission to if they can't free themselves up to be here because they're busy schedules at least we'll be getting some really good Information from folks who have spent a lot of time in the seat. So that's the one to bring it back around and you reminded me of that. So thank you. NEW SPEAKER POTTER. JUST HERE SHE WOULD BE AN EXCELLENT OPPORTUNITY TO BE ABLE TO BE ONE OF OUR OTHER PERSONS FOR A TESTIMONY. WHAT I WOULD ASK ASSOCIATED WITH THAT IS BECAUSE HE'S REACHED OUT. MAKE SURE THAT MR. ALBERT IS THE PERSON TO COORDINATE WITH AND FEED YOU THAT INFORMATION BECAUSE SCHEDULING ON ONE OF THOSE INDIVIDUALS IS GOING TO BE AN ISSUE. You. If I may, Mr. Albrecht, if you could possibly get them to come here for our next meeting, that would be ideal. Yeah, I will reach out and I will keep you posted as to what we're Yeah, understood. So yes, I will go ahead and get some details around logistics, and then I'll come back and let you know what I found out. I also would just like to remind everybody that, you know, this is a committee, a commission, so anybody, any commissioner at any point in time can make a motion to change something and then get seconded and then have debate. Like, that is everybody's, has that power on this commission. So even though we may schedule whatever, if you feel very strongly about something and you want to make a motion, I am not going to, nor do I have the ability to stop you from making that motion. So Mr. Ward. A question. I THINK IT SHOULD BE ADDED TO THE LIST. I THOUGHT WE ACTUALLY SETTLED ON THAT. I KNOW WE TALKED ABOUT IT. MR. MASON BROUGHT IT UP, THE QUESTION ON THE EXCISE TAX. THERE'S A CATCH-ALL ASSOCIATED WITH IT, AND LOOKING INTO IT AND HAVING OUR DISCUSSION AFTER THE MEETING, I WAS AMAZED HOW MUCH MONEY IS ACTUALLY OUT THERE IN EXCISE TAX TO BE ABLE TO THERE'S ENOUGH OTHERS, I WOULD HAVE NO ISSUE PUTTING IT OUT. IT'S NOT [1:50:40] Speaker J (unidentified): THE INTENTION OF THE QUESTIONS WAS JUST TO BE INFORMATION GATHERING. [1:50:43] Chair/presiding officer: Yeah, we're into it. I don't think that's necessary for a motion. Okay. We had a list of questions added to the list because it was a good suggestion. [1:50:51] Speaker I (unidentified): Which is I was just interested in seeing what Mr. Better had to say about it too because you don't experience with it. [1:50:59] Speaker L (unidentified): That a budget item though, I mean I would think that be directly involved within the budget. [1:51:08] Chair/presiding officer: Somehow go ahead better. Yes. We got you there. See you see what he did. [1:51:12] Benner (former selectman, resident): So I understand that all that, the $2,025,000 that was appropriated this year is used to offset taxes, all the expenditures. There is $625,000 or $640,000 in capital, of which I believe the council committed like $300,000 or $400,000 to its roads. If you ended up requiring by Charter that $2 million now has to go to the roads, you now have a $2 million hole in your thing. I think there's a need to be able to say there should be a certain amount of capital money in the Charter that should go. And you may want to think about whether or not should there be a percentage of the excise tax that goes towards roads, as opposed to the whole amount. The road commissioner in New Gloucester had the council, the town meeting, absolutely convinced that they had to spend all that money on roads. And so while everything else was falling down, they had some of the best roads. And at the end of the day, I said, that's not the law. The board can use that money as it deems appropriate. And so you always want to, I think, what I'm hearing you say is, I want to make sure there's more money being invested in roads and more capital. I think there's a different way to be able to achieve that in the charter without tying it to a regular stream that may have some unintended consequences. And so that's what I would suggest, the way that you would go about that in order to get it done and not cause a bunch of other issues are associated with it. You know, my sense is that I think, as I was looking at it, I said that I thought the community needed to get to about a million and a half in capital expenditures. Based on the current budget, that's the goal, where I think they need to be raising out of taxes each year about a buck and a half in the tax rate and wanted to get capital done and then augment that with borrowing as appropriate on some of your longer term assets, so that over a period of time you're spending about $2.2 million annually on capital based on what we have that's there. Hopefully that makes you think about a different way to get to the same place that you want to get to without necessarily causing. Right. [1:53:52] Speaker K (unidentified): I just wanted to get it out there. Do people agree that we should put some of that money into the roads and other capital expenses? Three years with no capital investment? This year there is. There's six years, but three before. [1:54:12] Benner (former selectman, resident): If the budget didn't have it, but two years ago I think they spent somewhere around, I think it was about $1.3 million they spent, and it was from when the fund balance was over what it needed to be. Then what you do, this is my recommendation, what good financial practice is, if your fund balance is supposed to be, say, $4 million, and you end up in a place where you have $5.5 million, you take $1.5 million and you dump it into capital. You don't use it to buy down the tax rate. You always put it into capital so that you don't create a hole in the next few years. They did spend, I think, two years ago or three years ago. It wasn't in the budget, but they did appropriate a pretty significant amount of money for capital improvements that year. You just won't find it in the budget document, which is a whole other discussion, right? [1:55:03] Speaker K (unidentified): Yeah, and that's all the regular citizen has to look at, though. Right. [1:55:12] Chair/presiding officer: All right. All right. I'm going to close the Commissioner Communications section. And at this point in time, if there's anybody in the audience who wishes to respond to anything we talked about, now's your chance. [1:55:24] Speaker J (unidentified): If you speak every meeting, you get a T-shirt. Alice? [1:55:30] Speaker N (unidentified): It's not actually a response to my, you know, I just react whenever you guys need stuff. But I did need to announce the logistical thing. Based on our ordinances, the town has a very narrow window to set an appeals board meeting. If an application is put in between the, narrow window of availability of the members and everybody else who's involved, the only time we could set up was. Was Thursday, October 15, at 6.30. So if our commission meeting can still happen, it would just be in the training room next door instead, and there would be probably still enough room to have a meeting. You think so? We can still have it streamed as well. We can use the OWL and have it go through a Zoom link or something like that instead. So we can still meet all the requirements for what we normally do and just be in a slightly smaller space. [1:56:40] Speaker C (unidentified): And additionally, you might be missing a secretary. You will not be there. Well, I have submitted my application for that board, and the council decided it this coming Tuesday. And if I'm approved for that, then I can't be in two places. [1:56:58] Speaker K (unidentified): So we're not important. We are. [1:57:00] Speaker C (unidentified): And as soon as I learn to clone myself we'll be all set. [1:57:06] Chair/presiding officer: The appeals board is a very important position I'll take the deal. [1:57:13] Speaker C (unidentified): Conveniently I can jump. [1:57:15] Speaker I (unidentified): I know this is out of order however I wanted you and the committee to know that I will not be here on the 15th and that we probably should talk soon about remote meetings because that's going to be my case. [1:57:29] Chair/presiding officer: When is your departure? [Speaker I (unidentified): Middle of November.] Aloha. Last call for audience. Oh, Karen. [1:57:47] Karen Stevens: Hi. You said it's called audience responses, but basically it's me putting out there some of the things that I noticed at this meeting and that I actually learned something about at this meeting. I had talked briefly before about three different things that I had responses to or opinions of, and I actually have three, well, four more things that I threw tonight. One was when you guys talk about finance committee, I have a hard time accepting that the Finance Committee consists of some of the town council members, liaisons, as well as town municipal personnel. There's kind of a conflict if you guys are going to be using the Finance Committee as a supportive role to the town council and to the form of government for the budget purposes. If that finance committee consists of town personnel and town council, it's kind of a conflict of interest. You know what I'm saying? The percentage in capital improvement to roads and infrastructure, I feel, should be in every budget. Like Mr. Bennett had said, it's a good idea. And I hadn't heard of that until he mentioned it. Also, code of ethics. Mr. Albert talked about it and what he said has validity except for many council meetings when there were discussions behind closed doors. We could hear the conflicts of interest. We could see it when they came out of their closed-door meetings. And there were contentiousness between council members where they should probably have stepped away from the dais and not voted a certain way or even been allowed to vote a certain way. I can think of three or four in particular that should never have been allowed. So the code of ethics is a big one. And my bonding and borrowing, again, Mr. Bennett mentioned it, maybe thinking about having go-to-voters over a certain amount so that there is no, not conflict of interest, but no, putting us in a situation that other towns are in currently where bonding and borrowing didn't go and they're now having come up short millions of dollars. That's it. Thank you. Thank you. [2:01:31] Chair/presiding officer: All right. Mr. Dubé, I mean. All right. I'll close the audience response section. Do I have a motion for adjournment? I second. All those in favor? And we are adjourned. Thank you for coming out, guys. Mr. Bennett, thank you again.