 Good evening, everyone. And welcome. We're so delighted to have such a nice audience here tonight. My name is Sue Cass. I'm one of the members of the committee that prepared this program. The other members are Karen Landers, our chair. Herb and Paula Gross. All right, the members of the committee. Can you hear me now? The microphone. There's no PA. This is just the TV. We're filming, okay? Can you all hear me now? I mean, I can shout. All right. I'm a member of the committee that prepared this program. My name is Sue Cass. The other members are Karen Landers, our chair. Herb and Paula Gross and Colin Cass. We appreciate the fact that you all took the time out of your busy schedules to come tonight. And we hope we have a program that you'll really enjoy. Thanks to the speakers who are sitting here in front of you, who are all current members of our town government, and they're prepared to teach you everything you need to know about town government. Thanks to the Franklin Performing Arts Company and to Alan Mercer for the use of this wonderful facility. And thanks to Franklin Cable TV for recording our program. Exits here and at the back of the room should you need them. Restrooms are out in the lobby and to the left as you go out the door. At this point I would encourage everyone to please make sure your cell phone is turned off. The format of the program is that Tom Mercer will be giving an overview of the government. He is our moderator and he will then introduce the speakers. Each speaker or a pair of speakers will have approximately 10 minutes to present his or her role in the government. Q&A will follow after the presentations. If you will not be taking questions during the presentation it slows everything down too much. We encourage questions that are relevant to the information that's been presented and if you have additional questions you can probably catch one of the speakers afterwards in the lobby. I'd like to turn the program over now to Tom Mercer. He's our moderator. Tom's been active member of the town government since the late 1980s and is basically serving on school committee, building committees for the Horace Man, school renovation, the senior center and the new high school. He's currently chair of the Franklin Town Council. Please welcome Tom. Thank you Sue and please just raise your hand if you can't hear me but I think I'm loud enough so that everybody shouldn't have a problem. Thank you Sue and thank you for allowing me to moderate tonight's civic forum. Our panel tonight of speakers, Jamie Helen, our town administrator, Dr. Anne Bergen, chairperson of the school committee, Sarah Herron, superintendent of schools, Joe Halligan, vice chair of the Franklin Planning Board, Melanie Padula, chair of the Franklin Planning Board and Melanie Hamblin, member of the Franklin Town Council. Our plan tonight is to kind of give you as quick as we can an overview of your local government here in Franklin. Basically it's everything you ever wanted to know about local government and how it works, how it's supposed to work. So we'll hold questions as Sue said until the end of the speaking portion and then we'll be happy to answer all of your questions. Basically we've put this into five or six questions and we're going to address, each of us will address those particular questions. For example, the first one is one that I have, which is what kind of government does Franklin have? Franklin has a town council, town administrator form of government. It's rather unique form of government. There are only 12 or roughly a dozen communities in the state of Massachusetts that have this form of government. I think the most recent ones to come on board, North Attleboro and Amhurst Bridgewater also has a similar form of government. They all have, we all have a little differences. In most cases it's the responsibilities, whether they come on to fall under the council, whether they fall under the town administrator. Those little differences are what separate all of these different communities. We did, the Homeral Charter came into effect in 1978. And since then we've had a, in 1995 we had a charter review. In 2010 we had an amendment and that's where we sit now. And as we go forward in time, I can see in the not too distant future that it might be time to look at it again and make some adjustments as we move forward in time because things become outdated or things that we should change. The next question that I had was, what is the structure of the government? And I'll give Jamie a little shot here now because when we put up the website, I wanted to go to the charter on the website so that people could see how they could see where our charter is and where you could go to read it and see really how it functions. Jamie told me it was 18 pages, it's not 16. So it's very easy reading. And I'd ask each of you, take a few moments sometimes and look at it. It really describes exactly how your local government works and who's responsible for what. The role of the town council, where the chief legislative body. When the charter first came into effect, there were 15 councilors. Obviously it required an amendment, not a not too distant future to get it back to nine that was manageable. 15 they found was very cumbersome. And the council sets the tone, the expectations and policy objectives. The council then also puts policies in place and one of the biggest things we do is the town budget. We set the budget and we do public hearings on zoning. So setting the zones in the town of Frank come under the format or come under the town council, then the enforcement goes to the planning board. Most important job that the town council has is we have the authority to hire and fire him. That's why you put my chair next to him. And basically that's it. We set the policy, we set the budget, but it's his job to put in place how it's administered. We do have the council, for example, we have veto power on the fire chief, on the police chief, library director, DPW director. Those four people, we have veto power. What does that mean? It means if Jamie brings a particular like we recently he brought the new fire chief before the council, we ratified that appointment. We could say no, but we can't then tell him who to bring forward. That's not our job, that's his. So that's why I like to use the word veto power because that's all we have is we can say no. We can't tell him who to bring forward. The other piece of local government is the school committee and the school department. And they operate independently from the municipals because we set, by we, the town council sets the budget that the school department, the school committee and superintendent then have to manage to that number. But that number is set by us. But we have no control over their line items in their budget. That's totally under their jurisdiction. So that I'm not too long-winded, I'm just supposed to be the moderator. I just wanted to give a quick overview and the questions that we'll be addressing. For example, which offices are elected, which are appointed and by whom, Jamie will go through that for you. How do officials and departments of the government interact with the public? Again, that comes under Jamie. Then following Jamie's responses to those questions, then we'll go to Dr. Bergen and Dr. Hearn who will go through the school department and give you an overview as to what their operation is like. And then we'll move to Mr. Halligan who will go through the planning board issues and then the Melanie will bring us home, so to speak. With how you can get involved in local government. And that's something that we really, really ask you to come, be a part of it. Come to a council meeting. Come to a planning board meeting. Well, they get a lot more people than we do. But come to a council meeting. I know they're on TV, but sometimes coming to a council meeting you'll learn a little bit more about what's going on. And we'd love to hear you there. Have you there? We'd love to have you come call us. Ask us questions. That's what we're there for. We're there for you. So please, if you have issues, don't hesitate. Our emails are online. Our phone numbers are online. Don't hesitate. Councillor Delacro is in the audience. Councillor Jones is in the audience. Please don't hesitate to call any one of us at any point. So with that, I'll turn it over to Jamie to walk us through the elected, which offices are elected and which are appointed. Go for it. Awesome. Thanks, Tom. Welcome every night. Everyone tonight is Tom said my name is Jamie Helen. I'm lucky enough to be the town administrator here in Franklin. I just want to thank everybody for all their support. A quick shameless plug. I have to, I just have to for both of our websites, you know, the town and both the school district here, which I know they'll go into in a little bit, have put a lot of time over the years into trying to build a very customer friendly website. I point this out right now because we're going to go through a few of the different frames, but, you know, we have everything on here to job opportunities, how to volunteer. We have all the agendas in minutes. Most folks don't realize that there's email subscription lists through the town council agendas and after every agenda, we ask the staff to put out an actions taken roll call document so you can see exactly how all the votes went. You know, if you go to this email notification center here, you can sign up for legal notifications. We follow the letter of the law and the planning board will guess for this at some point regarding what are notifications and other things about when things are going on in town. We go above and beyond what state law calls for and we publish our legal notifications on the website right here for those hearings and you can actually get all that right here in the box. It just operates like every other email list. Most of them you probably won't care about, but at least every once in a while you can scan through the agendas and just check in for five minutes every couple of weeks and what's going on in your chief legislative body. So those are really good resources right here. We have a comment box. People use it. So everybody here should use it too. We have a schedule and inspections online. We have a public works work order system right here online. I always tell people in order to be engaged, there's no education or degree you need on how to write something. Just tell us how you feel as Tom actually though. All of our email addresses are right out here online. The phone numbers are there. People talk to us all the time. Ask us simple questions, stupid questions, good questions, intellectual questions. That's what we're here for. So use these resources to your advantage to try to help everybody inform themselves. We have a town budget archive, online payments. We have a town blog people can subscribe to. We don't put out a fair amount of information and so it really has been hopefully helps keep people engaged with the data activity in the government. Up at the top here, you'll see a board and committees list that you hover over. Tom's point, the first question is which offices are elected and which are appointed? So there's five, really six, but five boards in town that are elected. It's the town council, the school committee, the planning board, the board of assessors. If anybody has questions about who they are, you can ask us at the end. But the board of assessors and actually generally set your tax rate. And the board of health, which should need, you know, the board of health in Massachusetts, boards of health have a tremendous amount of power. They have a lot of clout. They have a lot of regulatory clout over a whole series of issues that are very important to public health. And the sixth office, not a board that's elected, is the town clerk. The town clerk staff is actually under the pyramid structure of my office. But the town clerk herself is actually an elected official. So those are the only six bodies that are elected in town. As you can see here up on the screen, there's dozens of other committees. And the way that that process works, as I showed you a little bit a minute ago, there's a volunteer tab on the homepage. All you have to do is fill out that form, name, address, phone number, and check off some boxes for some committees you may be interested in. But the rest of those committees are actually appointed by the town administrator myself, subject to ratification that Councilor Mercer had mentioned a moment ago. Just like the police chief, the fire chief, the library director, the DPW director, all of those appointments are ratified by the town council at a public meeting every two weeks. There's one exception to that rule. Which is the finance committee. The finance committee in the town charter is unilaterally appointed by the town council. It does not need my appointment. Traditionally though, certainly since I've been here and I know while Mr. Nutting was here, traditionally the chairman of the finance committee and the chairman of the council have met with candidates for the finance committee and made that recommendation jointly to the town council for that ratification. There's nine seats on the finance committee, but that is the only one exception. All of the other boards and committees, those appointments come through the town administrator to nominate and go to the town council for ratification. So this is a fun one. The question that the organizers had posed to us, which is how do officials in departments of government interact with the public? That's a really big question. I'm going to try to answer it to the best of my ability. But in short, we're a customer service delivery organization. If you think of the library, the senior center, even education, at some point what we're really delivering is a bunch of customer services to all of you. Every department interacts with the public in their own way. The DPW is going to interact with the public in their own way. My office is going to interact with the public in their own way. In my impression, since being in Franklin, our elected officials in our departments interact with the public quite well. That's our job, and that's why we're here, and that's what all of us love to do. And so, as you can see from the website, hopefully forums like this, and as Councilor Mercer pointed out a few minutes ago, we're here for you. No questions too hard. It doesn't have to be complicated. You just have to shoot an email. I'm not going to go through the list of every single department in town and how they interact with the public. Most of them are fairly self-explanatory. You don't want to call the police unless you need to. You don't want to call the fire department unless you need to. But all of those organizations in and of themselves, they go out and do open houses during the harvest festival. They have Halloween parties. They go out and, you know, police the neighborhoods. They interact at the schools pretty frequently. Every department goes above and beyond their general mission and try to do a lot more outreach. One of the themes I've had since I've been in town administrator that I've always spoken of is our departments need to do a better job telling our story and who we are, what we do, what we're there for, what we don't do. A great example last week before the town council was the DBW Director Bruce Canoreggi came and did an entire presentation on being the tree warden. And if you watched it, you would know how much the DBW Director loves trees and how much passion he has for it. And there's a great example. He's got probably a 30 slide power pouring presentation on his website. You can go back and look at the live stream last week and learn everything you could possibly ever want to know about trees in Franklin. And I think it shows a lot of the passion that he has seeing trees as assets. That's just one example of a few. One of the things that the council has certainly set out, I think it certainly stands for while Mr. Nutting was here as well, is they have a very high expectation of me in my office being very visible in the community. And so, you know, one of the things I'm proud of and I love doing and I know that the council has certainly been very supportive of it, of me, is spending a lot of time going to a lot of events, spending a lot of time going to the senior center, being at the recreational department events, being at the library for various things and just having a very distinct presence in the community. And hopefully many of you have seen me at many things before. And if you haven't, invite me to whatever you've got going on. But that's a standard and a goal that has been very clear in the expectations of me as well as everybody in my office is that we have a very, you know, we're very engaged in the community. One thing I did want to point out in my segment about how we interact with the community and the community, if folks do go to the town charter and I think Tom is correct, it's really 16 pages of your town constitution. It's all right there. I've got to say I've read a lot of town charters in a lot of communities. They can be books. They're very complicated. The checks and balances are very hard to understand. This is a very, very well-written charter and I can speak from the Mass Municipal Managers Association which is the professional organization for my job. Most communities are very, very envious of the town charter that the town of Franklin has. They're very jealous that it's easy to understand. It's very straightforward. It was very well-written and so I really encourage everybody to take a look at that. One section in particular is section 423. In section 4 outlines the town administrator. It's right there. Two and a half pages. I'm just going to read this to you really fast because it's one paragraph and it spells out my job right there, right in plain print. The administrator shall attend all meetings of the council, keep the council fully informed regarding town and departmental operations, fiscal affairs, general problems, keep the council fully informed as to long-range needs of the community, the practices and governmental trends of other communities and the laws and regulations of the Commonwealth, prepare, assemble and present to the town council the annual town operating capital budgets and cooperate with the finance committee in fall financial matters. And this is actually the next one I'm about to say is a very, very important one here and one that I can definitely assure you if Mr. Nutting is going to watch this at home he took a lot of pride in this one. Serve as the general ombudsman to the community. Jeff, he certainly had a lot of opinions on various operations in town. He did an excellent job at it. Maintain an inventory of all town, real and personal property. Be responsible for all aspects of the personnel system. Serve as the chief procurement officer. Be responsible for the maintenance of all buildings and property and perform other such duties as may be required by this charter by law or order of the town council. It's right there in one paragraph what my job is. It is widespread. It is a big job. One other thing in here I would point out is that it's very unique among Franklin and a lot of other communities is outside of the town clerk every employee within the community reports to me. And I can tell you from a lot of communities that's something that a lot of employees like because they know where their bosses are, they know what the structure of the government is and know what's expected out of them. To contrast that in many communities the board of health for example hires and fires all the board and health staff. The town manager may have no say in that decision at all. Many communities the recreation board is elected and hires and fires all the summer staff and the town manager has no power in it. The town of Wellesley, the town manager there isn't even called the town manager. She's called an executive secretary I believe and she has no authority over the DPW as the de facto town manager. They have a separate legal elected board that oversees their entire DPW operations. And for a community like this I know from the employee standpoint at least they know where they stand and they know who they report to which is very distinctive and very different than a lot of other communities. So there's some other pieces of this section in the town administrator and the town charter. The one department I do not have any oversight over are the folks sitting to the left of me. As Tom mentioned earlier the school committee is its own independent authority and I will now pass the baton over to chair Hamburg. Well thank you very well done. Thank you. I also want to thank our hosts for sponsoring this event this evening. Involvement in our local government is so important. It is where democracy shines at its brightest in its purest form. I'm representing the Franklin School Committee having served at its chair for the last two years. The school committee is a seven person committee elected all at the same time every two years which isn't always a good thing but considering we turn over sometimes. We are primarily ambassadors for public schools in general for the Franklin Public Schools specifically. All citizens in a community where they have children in the school who are not benefit when our public schools are extremely strong. We need all the time as people in the school committee to demonstrate to the public that we are worth investing in. Our most important obligation and responsibility is the hiring and evaluation of this extraordinary superintendent sitting next to me. She runs the day to day operations of the schools. We don't do that. And we went through quite a process to get this superintendent. I think maybe people remember we had one iteration and we had surveys and we had focus groups and we had community events and we invited evaluation and we got the feedback from the community and wasn't good enough for us. We said we need a stronger person. We started the process all over again and we got Sarah. The evaluation is another important part of the superintendent and it truly is a comprehensive process. It's really a year-long process and we've held a number of workshops for ourselves as a committee so we can really get better at it because the first time around we weren't very good but we got better. Right, Sarah? We did a better job the second time. Our second key responsibility is working with the superintendent and the other stakeholders. We create the strategic plan, the vision for the schools. There are really now four key district goals that we have in place which we vote on as a school committee to approve. In addition, the school committee is responsible for approving the individual school improvement plans. Every school has its own school improvement plan very much in line with the district goals. We keep it very, very tight. The school committee votes. There are presentations made and we vote on those as well. But more importantly one of the big areas of responsibility, our responsibility is to make sure that we monitor and hold people accountable. There's that accountability process. It doesn't matter what initiatives are put into place. You can say we're doing all these things. Well, we have to ask as school committee members what's the evidence? Is it working? Is it doing what you're saying it's doing and that's an important piece of what the school committee does. We also create policy. That's, for example, homework policy and the dress code policy. These are ones that recently came into being and then constantly review and update a rather huge policy manual. That's another important part. And as Jamie mentioned and Tom, the budget is an important, huge part of what we do as a school committee. Working with the superintendent clearly and the business manager and all of the stakeholders to develop the budget again in support of those goals in support of our strategic plan. We also work with the joint subcommittees of the finance committee and the town council together because we are one Franklin. And it's really a cooperative partnership. We're not pitting the schools against the town. I think in the old days sometimes that used to happen. But we work beautifully together in a cooperative way again with the best interests of the community in mind. And while we meet publicly every other week, that's actually the easy part of our work. The real work of the committee is behind the scenes. Certainly all of our full committee meetings are held in public session when we're all together. That's per open meeting law. We never go off and have private school committee meetings. All of our discussions as a committee are held in public. But we do break up into a number of subcommittees which are also subject to open meeting law, including budget subcommittee, policy subcommittee, community relations subcommittee, public schools advocacy. We have an ad hoc superintendent's evaluation subcommittee. We will be adding on another ad hoc committee focusing on retirement facilities. We have representatives who serve every month on a meeting of the heads of all of the parent councils in town. We have representatives on the school wellness advisory committee. We have representatives on the Franklin Public School substance abuse task force. All of the school committee members participate in as part of all of the contract negotiations involving the contracts for teachers, for ESPs, for van drivers, cafeteria workers, secretaries. It's a lot of work. But the last part of what I wanted to say is there are so many ways for people to be involved to be part of the process. And the first we say is to be informed so that there are no surprises and so that when decisions have to be made people are aware of all of the facts, all of the information behind a decision. We ask you to consult our website to read our newsletter that we put out regularly. Please come to our meetings. We have monthly coffee hours out in the community. And we don't get a large crowd there, but every single issue that's been brought to the coffee hours, those have been brought back to the superintendent in action taken. She's very responsive to that. We make sure we are out at the Franklin farmers market in the summer. We are at the strawberry stroll, the harvest festival. We also encourage you to participate and support the parent communication councils in your schools. They are desperate for help. They really, and they do such incredible work. And the amount of enrichment activities those parents provide and they're always seeking help. You can help in so many ways. And the other is to serve on the site-based school councils. That's where so many decisions are made about individual schools. So your support is really needed there. And lastly, I would say we always encourage a healthy exchange of ideas. And sometimes we do. All of us serving for the community have to make tough decisions. So we're entrusted to make decisions in the best interest of our students. And not everyone always agrees. Debate is an integral part of our democracy, especially when the debate is focused on thoughtful, wise, fact-based information. We encourage respectful, thoughtful feedback always, and we encourage you to. We have our emails are out there. If you have questions, concerns, anything, we always make sure we respond. But in particular, because it's really, we don't get into the weeds of the schools. We make sure that Sarah, you know, we give that information to Sarah. And I can tell you she is extraordinarily responsive to everyone. And I'm going to turn it over to her now, but I just want to say, because she's modest about that, about the work that she does. And I've worked with maybe nine or ten superintendents in my, and I'm not old, but, you know. And she is quite extraordinary. She's just created this culture of trust. And she's visible every place. And every one of those subcommittees that I mentioned, that she's there all the time. She's out at the farmers market. She's out at that. She comes every place. So I know she won't say any of that, but I just felt I should say that, because, and I'll turn it over to Sarah. Thank you. Thanks, Ann. I'm really happy to be here tonight. And every chance I get, I want to be sure to share how happy I am to be in Franklin. I really love this community. Through the search process a few years back, felt like this was an incredible fit and still feel that way. I'm headed into my, I'm in my third year, not headed anymore. It's almost October in my third year. And I'm so happy to be here in Franklin as your superintendent of schools. The school department website is on display and I'll walk through some of the pages with you that I think might be most relevant, but I want to give you maybe a little bit more background in terms of the types of things that I do on a day-to-day basis. Most of the time when I describe my job, it's to seven-year-olds or nine-year-olds in the classroom setting and their eyes light up when I tell them that I'm the principal of all the buildings. And then they come to find out that that's, they think it's mostly related to calling school off due to snow in the winter. I assure you there's a lot more that goes into the, into the position. I work very closely with the school committee. The school committee are the liaisons with the community and I am the network between the school committee and what's happening in the schools. One of the most important things that the school committee does is set policy and all of the school committee policies are on their website in the policy manual and that, can I get your mouse maybe and I can run through some of this. The school committee policy manual is located on the school committee's website and these policies are set by the school committee. They are really, are governing practices. They ask me to implement the policy, follow procedures and guide on which different policies take place. That Dr. Bergen talked about and the website also lists the subcommittees and their charges for their work on the development of the budget and the budget implementation throughout the school year. And we have budget information also listed on our webpage and it would invite you to take a look. It's regularly updated through the iterative budget development process that occurs mostly in the winter and the spring time. I think one of my most important roles is the hiring and supervision of our building principles. Tom talked a little bit about the veto power that the town council has. School committee has a similar type of engagement around a couple positions in central office. The assistant superintendent, the school business administrator and the director of student services. Otherwise the staff members and the personnel in the district are offered contracts by me. But I think the most critical people that I'm offering contracts to and something I take very, very seriously is the search process and the hiring of our building principles. Massachusetts, Ed Reform came into place in 1993 and that really set up the governance model of schools that we have today. It took a lot of decision making power from the school committee level and put it into schools for site based management and that is the structure that we operate under today. And I'm working with the principals as Dr. Bergen had said on their school improvement goals in making sure that we're all working towards that same vision of education and what children need when they graduate from Franklin High School. It's important I think for the superintendent to be visible and to be an engaged member of the town and one of the areas that you don't necessarily see in terms of that engagement is the collaboration between my office and the town administrator's office. I think we're really fortunate to be physically located in the municipal building and have a common set of offices so that our offices can communicate regularly up on the third floor. And then on the second floor the finance department and our human resources department can communicate across personnel to create some coherence between the town department operations as well as the school department operations. We do share a facilities department and we share a technology department and we have memorandums of understanding that govern that relationship but there's a lot of collaboration and communication between our offices in order to make that run smoothly. Jamie and I also come together and have relationships with our elected officials that represent Franklin and you may see some joint letters that we put out about ways in which the state can support the town on matters for both the municipal and the school department. The schools are really proud of community partnerships that we've built and we're continuing and looking to cultivate more but we are engaged and I just jotted a few of these down this is not a limited list but we're engaged with the YMCA, the Franklin Food Pantry, the Safe Coalition, the Garden Club and we're a proud member of the Franklin Cultural District as well and we really enjoy those relationships and see that as being part of the community we're fostering the growth and development of children in that way. I'm regularly out giving appearances and talking about the school so if there is something that might be of interest to you always happy to share our story and tell about the wonderful things that are happening. For example, at least once a year I'm out at the senior center sharing some of the developments within the school department and coming up, Jamie and I are both speaking with the newcomers to let people know what's happening in the schools and in the town. On our school department webpage we have some of these quick links which I think for people in the schools might be things that are of interest in areas that they want to explore but for tonight the area that I'd like to encourage you to check out in the future is the Connect With Us page which talks about our communication strategy and the ways in which you can remain informed related to things that are going on in the schools. Particularly if you don't have children in the schools and would like information pushed to you about what's happening there is something called district news that you can subscribe to and sign up for and if you click on district news or on school committee news you can sign up for some of the things that we'll be pushing out. For example, the superintendent's report on things gets pushed out to email addresses on district news and school committee news you can sign up for example to get agendas and we're working on actions taken. That's the next thing that's coming. So we encourage you to connect with us in that way. There are volunteer opportunities that building principals and the human resources office manage where we might be able to make a good fit. We enjoy business partnerships with businesses in the community. We like to partner up for the purposes of our senior internship program where seniors in their fourth quarter are doing internships with businesses as well as other areas of employment. We have students with us who might be with us 18 to 22 looking for vocational training. We have business courses where we're always inviting people in to engage students in authentic interviews. So those are areas of interest. Those might be a good fit if you'd like to be more involved. And then although the school year has started we're a pretty dynamic place and we are well staffed but there are always positions that we're looking for and so we have a job site as well and that might be a good fit for you or somebody that you know it's not just teaching positions but we have drivers for school care and others. So those are some of the ways in which we'd love to see people get involved and thank you for having me. Thank you Sarah. Next we'll move to the planning board and Mr. Halligan. My name is Joe Halligan. I've been serving in the planning board now for close to 12 years. I appreciate the opportunity to be here this evening. I'm also lucky enough to have the chairman here Mr. Padula who has twice the experience I have and I believe at this point he has earned the role of the right to explain the process of the planning board. Thank you. Passing the buck. That's called passing it off. But I certainly would be open to questions to Mr. Mercer after the introduction. Okay. Just a quick introduction. Mr. what the planning board does the planning board has many roles in the land use process generally stated the planning board is responsible for planning reviewing deciding on certain types of permits approvals and for administrating the subdivision of land within a municipality or the town. The planning board plays a vital role in the land use process by implementing the various land use regulations in accordance with the land use regulations in accordance with the land use regulations. In accordance with the local zoning bylaws chapter 185 planning boards are responsible for reviewing and acting upon applications for site plan approval as of right and special permits. In addition the planning boards are responsible for reviewing and taking action on applications for definitive subdivisions approval and approval on ANR which is approval not required and you'll probably ask me what that is later on. The planning board also plays several or lesser roles in the implementation of land use regulations of a municipality. Planning board must ensure that all procedural requirements are strictly followed to provide each person with the due process afforded to them by the laws and the constitution. Furthermore the planning board permitting actions must be reasonable and supported by the information provided by the board by the applicant and other interested parties. The planning board serves as a special permit granting authority. In this role the planning board reviews and takes action upon applications for special permits. A special permit is a discretionary land use approval that a property owner is required to obtain prior to undertaking certain activities on his or her property. In addition a list of permitted use is located in the local zoning bylaw that's a book that you can purchase right there at the town hall. Attachment use regulations schedule indicate what activities are required at a special permit. As a discretionary land use approval the request for a special permit may be denied by the special permit granting authority for projects that the special permit granting authority anticipates will adversely impact the community. Alternately this special permit granting authority which is the planning board may approve a request for a special permit subjected to conditions and limitations to prevent or mitigate potential adverse impacts on the proposed project. The local zoning bylaws includes special permit evaluation criteria used by the special permit granting authority to objectively evaluate whether or not the proposed activity required, requiring a special permit will have adverse effects or not. The content and form of the application for the special permit dictated by the local zoning bylaws the special permit granting authority rules and regulations. Special permit rules and regulations adopted or amended by majority vote of the planning board after notice in the public hearing. Special permit rules and regulations may include application requirements, a fee schedule, and procedures for review, site plan review, and requirements for the corporate. I'm not going to read this whole thing. Just a quick overview. We are subdivisions game from or subdivision control of 185 which is Mass General Law 41. It was actually started in Boston for the control of streets and in ways. In 1891 it was later ratified in 1936 and in 1953 we had a pretty good subdivision control law that all towns could adopt. This town Franklin has adopted in 1986. We finally adopted subdivision control law. And that's where we started. Primarily as far for if somebody comes in with an A&R is an approval not required that means that a lot has funded John Street doesn't have to come before subdivision doesn't have to come before planning board. All I need is a building permit. But for one or two watts then it has to come before the planning board because that is considered a subdivision. Something that doesn't have streets. Zoning is another thing that the town adopted. The planning board has adopted that. The planning board adopted that in 1930 which was zoning. And that's for a use that's just basically set the geography of the town as to what zones would be in the town and the uses on those pieces of property and where they are. And of course they changed the council changes them. As the population grows they're changed all over town. So with that said I will take questions when we're done. Thank you Mr. We'll move on Melanie Hamlin who will talk a little bit about how citizens can become more involved in town government. And she has great stories to tell us. I won't tell them all. We're limited in time. There you go. Hi everybody as Tom said I am Melanie Hamlin I am on the town council and I'd like to thank the host for inviting inviting me I hope I can add a little bit to the conversation because I haven't even finished my first term yet so I'm still learning I'm one of the freshmen it takes a lot to figure out how things work. So I know we're here with this panel tonight don't be worried if you're confused because it takes a long time to figure everything out or if you have figured it out already you're way better than I am. So I'm actually going to ask G to go back to the oh he's on the town council page but I was going to go to the home page first so there's a bunch of ways that you can get involved and it's really important for everyone to participate in the government and we want to hear what is important to you. So if you go to the home page on the website you will see down in the connect email notification so I'm going to ask JV he knows that I can fire him he's going to follow my directions with five other votes with five other votes oh I only need five other people only four of us I want to show you these are all the things that you can get email notifications about all the things that happen in town so if you want to say you wanted to go to a planning board meeting thank you don't go a town council meeting you can click the very bottom there is meeting agendas and those to me are really the most important things the agendas and also the jobs jobs you can sign up for but the agendas and the legal notices are I feel like the things that people want to know what's happening and if you want to know what's happening sign up click that link and then you can get notifications email notifications when the agendas come out when the legal notices go out so then you'll know oh I want to go to this meeting right and then so that's that's the best way to know what's happening if you go back I'm going to have Jamie go back to the home page and then you look underneath the email notifications is the social media section center there so you can find everybody's websites everybody's facebook pages everything is there all in one place which makes it really easy to stay connected to find out what's going on all the schools are there and we even are going to update our town facebook page I think pretty soon right Jamie yep you can also if you don't have cable TV but if you have cable TV you can actually watch all the meetings on Franklin TV Verizon 26 Comcast 8 29 29 but if you don't have she's still learning I even learned downloads so if you don't have cable people have cut their cord but you have internet you can live stream the meetings you can even go down if um you can see the archive so you can actually watch the meeting which is pretty cool it takes about a week or two for that meeting to get up on the website but you can see it there's no you know sometimes reading the minutes aren't quite as much fun as what really happens right guys yeah so um now james is going to go to the town council page and oh the local phone directory there's local phone directory there too you can find out anybody's phone number all the departments whoever you want whoever you want to talk to all in one place right so we'll go to the town council page and if you look over on the left side there is a send a message and we'll try our council at once one tap right you're going to tap it no so there you can just write down whatever you want like jamie and tom have already said don't overthink it just tell us what the issue is because we want to know we represent you so we can bug him right that's really what I feel right you guys so you can do that or if you want to contact a single town counciler you can go to the this part of the page you can scroll down you can see our email addresses our phone numbers are there we want you to call us and reach out to us you can click on names and email addresses and you'll get that same form but it will go to one person instead of everybody so don't be afraid or don't hesitate to reach out we also have thank you jamie anything else no is there do you think there's anything else no the calendar is there the town calendar is really good that's right glenn thank you it has all the meetings everything that's going on in town and you can actually sort through departments you can make it you can simplify it if you want but that tells you what's going on all the time we're on time right yep it's got all the board don't point out the planner sorry everybody knows how to get you guys and then there's also this year we've started a town an administrative office hours at the senior center every third thursday from 830 to 930 jamie or christie are there I was there last week tom's been there we want you to come up and talk to us and tell us what you're thinking about so we're trying to be available at the same time our state rep jeff roy is there too so you can do state stuff and local stuff you can get two things done for one visit we're just trying to be available to everybody so you can watch the meetings and you can read the agendas and read the action items but really the best thing is to come into the meeting so you come into the meeting all citizens have five minutes to talk about any issue that they want to talk about that's not on the agenda so we want you to come in because sometimes then we have to listen to tom read tom test what you're allowed to do right and so that's your chance to tell us what's happening, what you're worried about in your neighborhood what you want us to think about we cannot at that time interact with you but the town administrator is taking notes and then we get to bug him about it remember that person that came in that was really important what are we going to do about it let's figure something out so that's how you can really make a difference in everyone else's day to day life right so those of you who you might not know that I spent about eight months going to every town council meeting before I ran for town council and I did that because I wanted to actually add something to the town charter I wanted to create an agricultural commission in town and so you can't just go and do something in my mind I have to figure out how things get done and then go do it I spent I don't remember how many a long time and I'm still going to them of course but so I spent a lot of time at the town council meetings with Jamie and Jeff Nutting at the time, the town administrator as a normal everyday citizen to create a commission and I believe like Jeff treated me the same way after I was a town counselor the same way as I was a citizen so they're always open they're always listening to everything you have to say you just got to go up there and bug them once in a while right we spent a lot of time we worked with the agricultural committee the people that wanted to start the committee we worked with the town administrators and then we came up with a compromise on what would fit into the town charter and fit for our time and so we actually did that pretty fast some of you guys voted on it I was in the audience at the time but it was amazing how when you figure out how things work then you can get stuff done right so I have another example of people reaching out to the town council that actually had a positive result so there are a lot of people I think my fellow town councilors that are here have heard from people that they wanted to change the poultry bylaw people wanted to have the right they wanted to have chickens they wanted to grow their own food we live in a right to farm state so people should be able to do that but the way the bylaw was set up is that it was impossible for people most people to have chickens in their yard because you needed too many feet 100 feet on every side so what happened was we brought it up at the economic development committee meeting twice there had to be like 20, 30 people there that came to support it so that's huge people came in to the meeting in their busy schedules and said we want to have chickens in our backyard we were like wow okay so let's develop a way to do that and let's make it 25 feet and we sent it off to the planning board and then people who supported it went to the planning board meeting and then it came back to the town council meeting to get changed to the zoning to get changed and people came to that too and that's when we said okay let's do it let's vote this in and we actually changed the bylaw the usage you know what it is the zoning news table if they have 25 they can have chickens 25 feet off of their property line so we listened to people right and then there's an example someone who came to a town council meeting who really wanted to have food trucks in town right and so since somebody came in we could just start bugging Jamie about hey let's do food trucks let's do food trucks and so because this person actually came in and actually spoke on the citizens comment time we now have a food truck area it's away from all the brick and mortars it's up on the town common and you can have if you have a charity event you can have a food truck there for the food right yep that's correct absolutely thank you very much Jamie for that so those are three examples what can happen when you participate it it's really kind of fun right Tony what take my word for it that's why I put those to be sorry each other so really seriously though I like to joke around a lot because it can get kind of dry and boring but really email us anytime call Jamie being involved is it takes a lot of time right it takes a lot of time to figure out where you fit in what you can do how things work but it's worth because you live here right alright so I think I'm done thank you Melanie before I open it up to questions I just want to close with a couple of thoughts and one of the things that Dr. Bergen touched on and Superintendent Herron touched on which I think in the 30 years that I've been in the municipal government I've never seen a community do it other than us is when we when we built the new municipal building we put the school administration and the town administration in the same building and we took the town administrator and the superintendent of schools and their offices are actually back to back and just one door open and they can talk to each other I defy you to find the state of Massachusetts that has that type of closeness with their government and we need you to understand that many times people look at town government and schools and town I'm sorry we are one we are one school department takes care of their budget the town takes care of our budget or Jamie and Sarah but we work together as one and if there's one thought that I could get you to leave with tonight it would be we are one Franklin and that's who we should be that's how we should think about our government and how our government works now with that one more sorry everybody you see here tonight and everybody that you've heard talked about tonight that serves you the taxpayers of Franklin on these local the council planning board school committee all of these nobody's getting paid nobody is getting paid we do this because we love our community and we've in a lot of cases and mine in particular I was born here I do because I love my town and I want to give back to my town and that's what everybody here is trying to do we may not always agree but we can agree to disagree but we are all here for one thing and that's to make our town so with that I will open it up to questions that's it please the charter schools are independent they are public schools in Massachusetts but charter schools are independent from the local school department we do have some operations for example transportation is something that we're responsible for so we do respond to transportation for the charter school and we have communication back and forth on things that would support children but from a government standpoint they are their own entity another question yes in the back and I'm going to repeat the question only so that the people at home can hear it through the microphone the question is has there been any consideration given to higher sustainability go ahead Jamie just keep dishing them over right now we have not and the main reason why we have not is just budgetary constraints we have a full facilities department that traditionally handles most of these requests a couple of fun facts that many people don't know over 90% 90 to 95% of all electricity in the town and school buildings from the solar field on Union Street on the nuns property we're a green community we're very proud of that we've been certified a couple of years ago in that all the buildings in town have LED converted lights to them the street lights many of you may be aware we just converted from the old high sodium lights involves to all LED throughout the entire community probably about 75% of our operational costs and maintenance costs on our street light account in the budget fully matured it'll probably save over a couple million dollars over about 20 years which the bulbs LED lights usually last for about 15 to 20 years the old sodium bulbs are like 3 to 5 so just all of those things and alone all of our facilities facilities department do a tremendous job keeping our facilities up to date they all have updated capital plans we have a very meticulous capital program and policy in place to keep our school buildings and all of our facilities energy efficient we actually had an audit done from a third party that's required to become part of the green community certification process and you have to have in there a fine 20% of your electricity load you have to find ways in a certain time frame to reduce your energy consumption by 20% the third party consultant as well as the state department of energy resources couldn't get us to 20% and the main reason why is all of our mechanicals and boilers and all the traditional things where you can kind of spend a couple hundred grand to get a lot of those energy savings they couldn't find us the 20% so they essentially gave us a waiver to go underneath so that we can still be certified which really speaks to I think a lot of the leadership that the town has had for many years so all of that work has been done through my office a lot of it was done by me some of it was done by Mr. Nutting a lot of it was done by the facilities director Mr. D'Angelo as well as the DPW and so we've been able to spread out a lot of those tasks that a sustainability coordinator would normally have in maybe another community we've been able to spread out a lot of those tasks throughout the current operating staff and so we don't feel like we had to go out and spend another $60,000 $70,000 and health insurance for a full time person another part of that is when we built the new high school in Franklin we were awarded back from the state from the Mass School Building Authority two points for getting green status at the high school that two points was $2.2 million another question yes my wife is sitting over there she's called the divorce lawyer two of three times she just forgot what you looked like that's true and I'll repeat the question so the people at home can hear how much time do we put in as elected officials and I guess I'll speak for myself and I'll let everybody else speak for themselves it's as much as you want to put in I can tell you I spent 10 years as chairman of the school committee in the 90s when we were the fastest growing community in the state of Massachusetts that was a time consuming time for sure in the last 10 years I chaired the building committee for the new high school that took a lot of time that was a six year project from start to finish out many nights going to talking to them about why we needed a new high school and I can form a superintendent of schools and myself we were out three nights a week for maybe a year just doing that so it's what you can give and it's as much as you want to give I'm fortunate and lucky enough that I'm able to give a little more time than a lot but you know town council I can tell you is probably not as time consuming as school committee I know you might find that odd but I can tell you from personal experience that it was more time consuming as school committee because there are 50% of the people who don't so and go ahead as I was outlining the various subcommittees it's a lot of time but as Tom was saying some people have more time to give than others I'm retired not old so I can be on more of the committees just because I have the time and some people work full time they don't have as much time to give but as Tom was saying it's really an act of love and the work is so intriguing and interesting but it can be as much as three meetings a week like I was saying I think sometimes it's a little bit deceptive because people think maybe the work of the school committee is the meetings every other week and there's a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes but again I'm oppressive so that people won't come up to the truth but to say that as much as you want to give you know that oh yeah easily Tony Joe I'm we get our books on Thursday late afternoons which is a pretty thick book for the meetings that are going on everything submitted to the playing department I believe a week ahead of time so we've only got from Thursday night until Monday night to study our books really get a grasp on what's coming in front of us so that does absorb nights and weekends I'm lucky enough to have a place of business on 140 not trying to solicit my business but I'm very approachable and over 12 years people have learned oh I can stop in the CGO I live in town, I work in town I've had that opportunity and several times a week people will just walk in that minute turns into hours sometimes and a lot of it is a lot of people are trying to get educated on a project they don't understand the process I don't want to say I'm running a miniature school room but I try to groom the people what to expect, what the bylaws are the rules, the regulations they get a little more understanding of what the meeting might be coming up nothing is discussed particularly about a particular meeting but how it works and why is that going in and why does that person have the right to do it so there is some an education process for the planning board a lot of people could pick up the book and learn a lot more about how the planning department works it seems like I was talking to Jamie earlier tonight that if you've been watching the planning board meetings lately our planning board meetings have become more of a classroom than actually spending time making decisions we're getting large crowds people don't understand the process of the board we're giving a lot of our time in the 12 years I've been there it's starting to get up to 10 o'clock now 10, 10, 30 which never was like that at the beginning because people really do want to understand the process but to come to the planning board to learn and they're not picking up the books and learning prior and sometimes being prepared is better than not being prepared so there is a lot of time I put in hours, nights, studying during the day but I'm open for that, that's why I took the position I enjoy it, I like it and I will continue to do that consider it sure the question was could the lifelong learning part of the school department which is evening classes is that could they teach a class on this and Sarah was about to answer that anything right basically what we're doing here certainly something that could be looked at if you saw Sarah with her pen as she usually is she's right on top of it yes very good question that's a really good question repeat sorry how does the disabilities repeat it commission, I'm sorry the disabilities commission interact with the town how does it get into the town government and Jamie is pulling it up on the website now so in short the commission on persons with disabilities it's its own legal entity and traditionally the most interactive way they work with us is on education and outreach but more importantly they work with the building commissioner Gus Brown on making sure that you know the businesses residents, even the town government that we're adhering to basically state code relative to ADA access really the big interaction in fact the building commissioner most of the boards and committees in town in fact they think all of them for example the planning board has a whole staff that work with their department, Amy Love our town planner is phenomenal she staffs all of those meetings the town engineer goes to all of those meetings just like myself and the assistant to the TA go to all the council meetings as well as the town attorney the superintendent and her staff go to the school committee the building commissioner is what we call the staff support for the disability commission and really it's mainly about correcting problems within the community that many people see either before they actually enter a building and they have trouble or certainly after and the building commissioners authorized under the state statutes to be able to execute that entire thing so it's really a you know they could come through the council to me to the building commissioner it's very inefficient for those of you who know Gus Brown our building commissioner he's unbelievable what he does he is an incredible advocate for ADA compliance ADA is a difficult federal statute to comply with all at once but as you go through life and as projects turn over residences and commercial buildings go get to refiled you try to comply with those things on a case by case but for anybody watching at home who's here and they have something they want to ask relative to that committee the best first stop is to call the inspection department and talk to Gus I think the committee meets maybe once a month and I think they take the summers off so they maybe meet about eight times a year and then every spring they also have an educational campaign where they have the state officials from the state building office come out and do a presentation for the community other questions yes up in the back well currently Jamie's only been here for so basically the question the question is with the gridlock at the national level with the legislative branches of our government we're not seeing it here probably right now because we're in a pretty good place right now I believe that we have as good an administrative team as any town in this state we have a great group of people that do a great job for all of you and us short go ahead two quick points I'd say the point that council Mercer pointed out a little while ago I think is actually one reason why you have that both the superintendent and I came from other communities we worked in other places before we came here and I can only speak for myself I know she's also we've talked about this before just the same thing but having our offices and having the administrative suite in the same building having our human resources departments in the same suite in town hall our finance offices are in the same suite in town hall we have one facilities department we have one technology department one director that oversees all school in town technology needs I think the culture is just that the collaboration is just part of everyday business when they moved to the building 15 years ago sure there was probably some folks who were a little weren't sure how this was all going to work and now what we find or at least what I find every day is our school and town finance teams work together the town does the payroll for everybody the warrants and best practices are shared among our professional staff including us very often Sarah and I about what legislative things can happen what should we strategically do with our legislators and I just think that that culture is a big part of what Tom had mentioned earlier I also think our staff is second to none and in my experience here I will say that I think Jeff before me and even myself we've been able to attract and retain some really really great staff members and I think by the fact that when I go look into higher people yeah you need somebody with a technical background right I mean you need somebody who is an engineer who is a licensed engineer to be an engineer but I know that a lot of the factors we consider is also the intangibles the emotional intelligence the attitude do they already know everything or do they have a career arc to them and I think that Jeff before me and certainly myself and a lot of the other staff and I would say the same thing about the school department I think we look for great character individuals and I think we look for people who have less ego who are going to look for the greater good in the community and I think we've developed a pretty solid culture here with great employees who really work collaboratively together the fire chief she knows who the fire chief is we know who Brutus the DPW director is our staff work so collaboratively collaboratively together I've never in my four years heard anybody say that's not my job you know and I think from the bottom of the organization to the top and the top down I think that's a really big reason why you don't see what you're seeing in DC here is because our employees are really really big part of that and everybody works collaboratively works together and works really hard to try to get the job done Melanie you want to add something thank you I just wanted to add that for the town council we're all councils at large right so we don't we don't represent a district or a precinct we all represent everyone right it's a non-parison board so we always have to think of what's best for everybody you know safety wise health wise everything that we do we have to think about everybody at once and I think that helps and I agree every vote that we take at the town council I firmly believe that every councilor sitting there is voting in what their opinion what their opinion is of 34,000 people what is in the best interest of the majority of those people and that's how we should vote I know that's how I look to vote and I'm sure every other one of my councilor fellow councilors vote the same way yes very good question Jamie I'm sure Jamie will pull it up on the I repeat this oh I'm sorry you should be telling me look at the volunteer leader the question is how do you sign up how do you get more involved in local government where do you go to find out what the terms are are you signing on for a one year term a six month term whatever the case may be I will tell you that occasionally just from a personal experience when I was on the building committee for the building committee for Horace man middle school that was an 18 month project five and a half years later we finished it but that was because we had a contract to go belly up in the middle of the project and then you go to bonding companies and it becomes a big mess so but those are the kinds of things but in most cases they're annual so generally speaking the vast majority of volunteer positions that are not elected that's separate are going to be for three year terms the vast majority there's a couple exceptions like the cultural council which is really in state statute and it's a two year term you can serve three consecutively there's a couple of funky ones with a couple of various rules but most of the bigger committees that most folks like the conservation commission all those groups those are all usually three year terms and my recommendation is two fold one there's a volunteer form right here on the bottom of the website it goes to a form that comes into a queue in our database with all the information and you just simply check off the boxes up here that you'd be interested in what we also recommend is go to the website, look at all the boards and committees each website has their own kind of basically their committee charge what they're responsible for maybe some resources, some links to state laws or the Board of Health maybe has regulatory issues that they deal with frequently and you can find those links on those websites and I think the most important thing I find is is that people should really do something that is fun and interest them you know if you don't find what you're doing fun a lot of this is going to be very difficult to take in as I think a lot of people that always come to me say after they volunteer for a year or two they go wow this is like really sophisticated stuff like you know this is a lot more than I thought you've got mass general laws, code of Massachusetts regulations, local bylaws as Melanie had pointed out a little earlier it can be a lot to learn quickly and so oftentimes I also suggest to folks to just go to a couple committee meetings right on the committee calendar for example if you're interested in environmental related issues maybe go to the conservation commission for a couple meetings and see what it's like call up the staff member our staff meet with prospective volunteers all the time for a half hour with the conservation agent what is this like as Joe pointed out what's the planning board book like before you go throw your hat in the ring getting into on Thursday to Monday when you pull out these huge plans and you try to make sense out of a stamped engineering plan and you go what did I get myself into this isn't fun and so I think some of those are usually the things that I would recommend and I always tell folks now that we've had an online form most if not all of our volunteer positions right now are currently filled but we still get volunteer applications from folks and the staff keep a folder with all those folks and when somebody resign sometimes people resign in the middle of a term they just aren't interested anymore they have family commitments or something else and then we contact the next person that emailed us so we encourage everybody whether the seats are filled or not to just hop online and fill out the volunteer position as for elected positions it's a little bit more cumbersome I think from the perspective that you have to go in get fill out papers, nomination papers there's a legal window which you can fill those out as there are different requirements of how many signatures you need to get validated and certified by the town clerk my recommendation on the elected offices is to certainly talk to any of these folks up here who have gone through that and if you don't find them tonight definitely call the town clerk both the town clerk Teresa Burr as well as the assistant town clerk Nancy Dinello can make sure that you have everything you need and you know what you're getting into you know before you go out and get all those signatures and we've all just gone through that Councillor Jones Councillor Delaco who's a new person running for town council and everybody across this table tonight so other questions yes sir so the question was does the town notification system shouldn't it be used for the triple E updates yes and no it's a double edged sword we use the town now I want to also well we have the pulpit we do use one software system and the school department and the town use that notification system for different reasons obviously the school community uses that for notifications to parents for school closings or other events and the things that you all use it for the town the notification system we try to use it judiciously and the main reason why is it's almost guaranteed every time we use it no matter how big the emergency is or how little the emergency is we get inundated with dozens of phone calls and emails saying to take us off the list and so it's a fine line what we tried to do was use the website and social media to try to get out as much information about that as possible that was in the state's management plan and so it is a difficult call I will not deny that that's one part of my job that is tough in terms of when to decide to use that I would say in the case of the AAA there was no emergency in Franklin so we can't go declare legally through the Board of Health or the town we can't just go say oh we're a critical state in the community that is the Department of Public Health's jurisdiction and and so they've never declared us as a critical or even a high risk in Franklin I respect the fact that folks feel that fear many communities around here are in critical state I know in Medfield because of the horse that died but we've had many conversations with this with the Board of Health we've had at the council meetings and what we've tried to do is because we were at a moderate to low risk for the entire season we've tried to do a lot of social media presence outreach and using the town blog the town email subscription lists as well as having daily updates on the town website yes ma'am he's right behind you I didn't see him slipper 20 go ahead this is another just take the opportunity to put in the plug as well as to Franklin TV for all the work that they do broadcasting and enabling the simulcast which I admit I use frequently as well town council meeting last week I had a business meeting at 9 o'clock the council I was able to watch via their webcast until 8.55 when they finished I swiped my seat and went to work in my office in the comfort of home if I had gone to the town council meeting I wouldn't have made it to the work meeting in time but in terms of Franklin Madison thank you for the subscription thank you for the plug it's a total volunteer effort I spend equal time probably 20-25 hours as I go to both school committee town council and fincon meetings following the money from my point of view from work next week I would be spending more time doing Franklin matters because Franklin really matters as somebody said so I still would like to get into the planning board zoning board conservation commission process that's another whole bucket of work I don't know if I can go there but if anybody wants to volunteer to help me go and support those I'm looking for that kind of help too and I'll do some of that teaching I'll do some media pieces but if you can take notes and you can tell a story we can use your help to spread the word to the rest of the Franklin folks who do read Franklin matters who do read the town stuff so thank you any other questions yes sir you know no place for hate I'm just curious good question when you come to the town of Franklin what's the process they have to go through and do citizens have anything to say about accepting them into the community and since it goes to his office as you can see and as I stated very early on where the town administrator is the key individual for the municipal side of Franklin's government so Jamie I'll let you handle that that's a really good question and of course my answer has got to be really complicated and I wish you were as easy as something I could say in a sentence to but when we say a business British beer works went out of business and another business came into that site that's not really a hard question there there's an established liquor license at that site a lot of this stuff is governed by state laws a lot of it is out of our jurisdiction there's another factor which is if it's an industrial park one of our overlay districts EMC is a business that's a 750,000 square foot building and then you have small businesses that come in like little shop of olive oils hair salon or something like that the main basics are is that you need to have a DBA certificate which is a doing business as whatever your name your business is that's a $40 certificate for four years that you get from the town clerk's office and the first stop that most businesses make is to the planning office which is also our board of health office our inspectional services office and mostly important to your question is the zoning compliance officers office which is the same as the building commissioner same thing as Gus Brown when a business comes to town unless it's a new building a change of use deals with liquor or other permits like maybe a tobacco permit from the board of health or other things of that sort it's fairly rare that there's really a public process behind that it's generally between the land owner and whoever the tenant is going to be on a purchase and sale of the property or lease of the property and so there really is not a lot of opportunity unless there's a public process required either via the planning board for a change of use for example or sometimes the zoning board of appeals is another public committee that hasn't come up tonight they may need a variance for some reason or they may need some of these other words no but they may need a waiver and so those are public processes that do take place they are posted 48 hours in advance and they are in the town calendar on the website there and so people can come and give comment on any of those public procedures at the ZBA, the planning board or the conservation commission in terms of generally an established building where the use is not changing you know it's pretty hard if say a Wendy's was going to be converted into a McDonald's or a Chick-fil-A or a Burger King or something like that you know it's a very limited window if any that the public gets to kind of comment you know publicly on that to deny that transaction from happening I'll be completely honest it's very very difficult to have that occur usually in my experience businesses that come into town that somebody doesn't want you know for maybe that kind of reason in terms of the Chick-fil-A usually comes from maybe more of a citizen-based grassroots effort for example that business in terms of what you spoke of you know I know the city of Boston had a proposal at one point and basically there was enough people to rile up and get to the city council and the mayor and said you know we don't want you here those are fairly rare and they're difficult to do certainly successful in some cases but just a general rule of thumb if you're going from like a hair salon to a you know a niche olive oil shop or something like that or a restaurant unless it's something new it's a little bit more difficult to know when those things are coming hope that answers a little bit I could probably talk for an hour to be honest but everybody understood okay that is too a little of an issue for the Boston absolutely understood any other questions? yeah somebody else has no