 Okay, good evening everybody and welcome to the Board of Selections meeting for June 18th. We gather this evening to interview a candidate for the job of Comptroller here in Arlington. So I would just like to start out by thanking our screening committee that I honestly feel did an exceptional job despite my leadership on that. Diane Johnson is unable to be with us here tonight but she was part of the screening committee along with Karen Malloy, along with Steve Gilligan, along with Adam Chapter Lane and myself. Andrew Flanagan, our superb deputy town manager is here. He ran an assessment center for us for each of these candidates. So the five member screening committee met and I'd like to start by saying it was originally my goal to bring two candidates before this board, but I'll explain why we're here with one candidate this evening. So we had 19 applicants for this position. Of those 19 applicants, the screening committee we met and we rated and we determined which of those candidates we felt should get an initial interview and to go through the assessment center. Nine candidates were invited to the initial interview and to do the assessment center of which seven was that if I'm remembering correctly. So the seven went through that, they did the assessment center, and from that we determined three finalists. And I believe last Friday, last Friday we, the screening committee, met with the three candidates. And in my opinion, and this is unanimous by the screening committee, I honestly feel one has risen so clearly to the top that I felt I wanted to bring this candidate before the board for each of you to interview and to make your final decision. Before we do that, I'd like to ask any of the members of the screening committee who are with us tonight if they'd like to add anything. First, Adam, anything you'd like to add to our decision? I really, I echo your sentiments, I know myself I was very impressed with the interviews, the presentation and the background and everything that Mr. Viscay brought to the table. I think, I don't know if the board would like to, but maybe hear from Andrew Flanagan about the assessment center if you think that's appropriate. Yep, I was going there after the screening committee members. So, Caron, our director of human resources, anything you'd like to add or thank you. Our excellent treasurer, Mr. Gilligan, sir? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'd just like to add unintentionally I conducted meetings over the last couple of weeks with other finance officers from, I don't know if they're all women, but certainly in this area of the treasurer, nothing but great praise and good things about Mr. Viscay. Thank you very much. So, one of the things I learned through this process is that one of the things the town does is develops an assessment center. Where each of the candidates are, and Andrew take it from there and explain what the assessment center was and your impressions. Jan, you want to ask something first? I just think, Mr. Chairman, if we could have the microphone for the people. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Correct, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So, as the Chairman said, we typically run candidates applying for all different positions within the organization through an assessment center style exercise. Generally, they have different components. We test things like basic knowledge that is needed in the position, written ability to communicate through some kind of writing sample, and then an assessment to see how they actually act or operate in something like Microsoft Excel. And they almost every time really provide us with a lot of information about a candidate that doesn't necessarily come out in a typical traditional interview. So, the assessment center that we put together for the controlled candidates had two primary components. One was a basic financial knowledge assessment about municipal finance here in Massachusetts. We provided them with information with regard to the town of Arlington's FY 2015 tax levy. With that information and a little bit of information about the FY 16 levy, we asked them to do a full calculation of what the FY 16 levy would look like. We gave it to them as a piece of paper. I asked them to do this in Microsoft Excel using all the tools contained in Microsoft Excel. To make it of such quality that it could be used in our budget materials. The second piece was more of an accounting exercise where we gave them again limited amount of information, but enough information to ask them to produce a report that would be regularly requested from either myself or the manager from the Comptroller. And then we asked them from the information generated through that report to put together a memo explaining what the town's options were. The payroll exercise meant to basically show us where we are at the end of the year. So in short, all seven candidates participated in the exercise. And Mr. Viscay performed far and away the best on both components of the exercise when compared to the rest of the candidates. So. And Andrew, I had asked you after you, he came in and spoke to us about each candidate and how they had done in the assessment center. And I said, if you were a professor, what grade would you give the candidate? And the only one you gave an A to was? Mr. Viscay? I'll leave it, that's a softball question. Was Mr. Viscay? Adam, coach him more tomorrow. But right, did you give a B? I forget, but the only A, am I correct? Was Mr. Viscay right? Okay. Yes, question, go ahead. I understand that you have to go with what the protocol is designed for, which is Microsoft Excel, I think, I heard you say. Or Excel. That's what we use for this exercise. I'm just wondering where, this is really a sort of heavy, munis job, what's the similarity between Excel and munis, are you testing something totally different? Like, can you assess, the big thing for a lot of us is knowledge of munis and I did see it in Richard's resume curriculum vitae. But I'm just wondering, is there any sort of compilation or comparison between Excel and munis? There is the most up to date munis. You can export to Excel, a lot of people do that, the current comptroller, the former comptroller, did that on a regular basis. And then you can import back into munis. But a lot of reports we use to make decisions, our accounting system is munis, but Excel has a lot more functionality in terms of actually manipulating data and presenting in a way that is easily interpreted by the people who are making the financial decisions. With regard to munis, we did think a lot about including an assessment component with that. Our concern was there are many different versions of munis out there and different communities are operating on different versions. So it would be very tough depending where the candidates were in terms of where they were currently working and whether or not they had munis. Their interface could look a lot different to one candidate than ours does, based on where we were in terms of updates. So it wouldn't be a completely level playing field. That being said, while I wasn't on the panel, I do think an assessment of munis knowledge is one of the questions that was asked. Absolutely. Can anyone respond? I'm sorry, no, keep going. I'm just curious on either with Andrew or through the chairman or the retail manager, was there any part of the Excel protocol that was able to extrapolate sort of basic working knowledge of munis or what was the questions that were asked to kind of satisfy that? So again, it would be very hard through any candidate's work in Excel to equate that to any kind of knowledge of munis. So in terms of what was asked in the interview. Yeah, so in the first round it was a very direct question about, tells us about your experience using any financial software, what do you use? And if you use munis, we probed a little bit deeper about their experience of munis and whether they currently were working on it, what experience they had with it. In the second round, we dug a little deeper about whether or not they'd implemented any new modules in munis and probed deeper into their familiarity with using the munis system. And just for Richard's edification, I just ask that because that's sort of the backbone of the financial software that we agree to move forward on. And there's been sort of a pro and con between the town and school. I just want to make sure, so we can carry on with that particular edict with using munis and integrating everything else that, which is aware of that. And you all assess that, that that was appropriate for the experience. May Mr. Chairman, my number one priority from the start was making sure that the board could have the chance to look at somebody to a point that was expert in munis. I'm with you that it is absolutely crucial that the incumbent comptroller has to be a munis expert and have that capacity. Thank you, sorry. Mr. Curell. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Curell. I just, in fairness to the candidate, I did note on the curriculum that in Salem, there was some work with munis on the time and attendance automation, if I'm not mistaken. And we're about to call them up. You can ask any questions you'd like, obviously, including that question. Any more for Andrew? Nope, okay, thank you very much. On a test I would have failed, by the way. Thank God I'm not a candidate for comptroller. So here's what I'd like to recommend we do next. I'd like to call up Richard to the microphone, ask him if he'd like to make an opening statement. And then one at a time, ask each of my colleagues what questions you have for Richard, comments, statements, anything that you would like. Then we would ask Richard to step out while we actually see if there's a motion to appoint him and take a vote on that, and then we would bring him back in. Is that process okay with everybody? Okay, Richard. So, welcome. Good evening, Richard Viscay. I appreciate you having me here. I'm very honored to be the one candidate brought forward. I look forward to joining the team and helping in any way I could with keeping the financial structure of the city intact for a very impressive there. And I'm happy to sit here and answer any questions about my experience, my day-to-day operations, what I do currently, or any other questions you have. Thank you very much. So, do you remember we started the interview, Richard, asking each candidate, well, you were alone in the room, obviously, but why do you want to come to Arlington? Well, I came to Arlington because I know it to be a great community, a triple A rated community. It's really run professionally, the town manager, not a pretty stable environment. Been doing this for the last 16 years, started at the Commonwealth inside at the DOI, working with 25 cities and towns throughout the North. Got to appreciate, really, when the community's run well versus when the community's not run so well. And from that, I was able to come over onto the town side and went amass. I started as the first finance director of the town, learned the town form of government pretty well, had the opportunity to go over to the city of Salem and work with a city council and a mayor. And again, seven years later, I had another opportunity to go to Everett in the midst of the game and license fight. I thought that was going to be a pretty exciting opportunity. It certainly was an exciting opportunity. We were able to obtain the license and thought that was a pretty great feat. And now I'm just looking for the new challenge. I know that Rublews that was working there for so many years retired and did a little research on the community. It just seemed like a perfect fit for me. And like I said in the interview, it's probably the first job I applied for in 10 years. Most of them I was actually recruited to come to. So just goes to show you how much I thought it would be a great opportunity. Thank you. And didn't you say something about you heard what tremendous leadership there was, especially on the board of selectmen? The board of selectmen chair especially. You better be careful. No further questions. You said city versus town. You got two right there. So, well, I'll go last. You'll go last. I was going to go by seniority. So if you want, I'm talking all the time. No, that's what questions you have for Richard. And I'm kind of joking about that. But I'll tell you, if you get up before town meeting and you refer to us as a city, a lot of people are going to pick up on that. As well as a comptroller position, attention to detail. I'm going to try to limit my questions just because I have the opportunity to go first. So I guess I'll just ask two. My first question would be in terms of I know you were at the town in Winam and now the cities of Salomon, Everett. Here in Arlington, as you're probably aware, people look at the comptroller, sort of a check and balance and reports to the board of selectmen. What I would like to ask you is a twofold question. First of all, what sort of interface do you see with the selectmen in terms of do you have in your mind or is there something you come up with in terms of reporting back to the full board in terms of an annual, semi-annual, once a year, twice a year sort of basis? That would be my first question. I'm just kind of looking to what you're going to do to work cooperatively with the board in terms of coming back to us. What's most comfortable for you? And I'm not giving you to this. What I typically do right now in my current situation, I have a committee of administration finance and I give them monthly reports on expenditures, the other date on our enterprise fund and on our general fund. I attend every meeting, I answer any questions and after that, I just, as needed, if someone asks them information for me, I give them whatever they ask for, but short of knowing exactly what the routine is, my standard thing would be to report the budget to actual expenditure reports. And if you do revenue reporting, we can give you budget to actual revenue reports. And again, just to be there and to answer any questions, I think would be the most effective way, not being a minor reader or not knowing what you'd like to see. And certainly once I get a little bit better feel of how business is running, I will try to work to the board and what their needs are, whether it's capital items, whether it's projects and floorcasts, et cetera. So I hope that answers your question. Okay, that's fine. I just want to, I guess, I'm sure this came across in the interviews, even though it was sort of a widely encapsulating in terms of people that were on the interview committee, the comptroller, as you know, is hired and overseen by the board of selectmen and a lot of people in town. See you as, and Ruth Lewis previously, is sort of the checks and balance. And so one of your main, in my opinion, one of your main duties would be the relationship that you do establish with the board and a lot of that is communication. But as you say, you'll do some more homework and kind of get up to speed on that. I'll ask my second question and I'll just tell you one thing. Anything you ever send me, whether it's written word or budgets or capital planning or projections or communications with the DOR, like my colleagues, definitely read everything will be the first one to call upon you or others in your staff to explain that to me because I am a little challenged by numbers but I've learned if I do a little bit of query that I can usually get there. So just trying to define who I am. The second one would be you highlighted in terms of your highlights, the internal controls that you had put in place in the various jobs that you had held. And I was just wondering what thought you might have given to where there is a townside and a school side. And there has been talk about a consolidated finance committee group bringing the two together. But right now you do have a townside and a school side. You will be the comptroller upon a successful vote. I know that Powers and Sullivan is our external auditor that does our audits for us. I'm just wondering when you get the management letter back from a Powers and Sullivan or whatever, and there are recommendations and suggestions. I was wondering if you could speak to some of the internal controls that you really felt were highlights or successful. Might have been sort of something that was never done before. Just where you put that down is one of your highlights if you could kind of just expand on that a little. Yeah, the highlights of my internal controls is that unfortunately a lot of the places where I worked didn't have any. So it was my job to actually implement them. I can give you examples of water and sewer enterprise fund people who are putting the bills in, entering the bills, also have the ability to abate the bills and adjust the bills. That's a check and balance data has to be segregated. It has to be proper internal controls on the software who has access to doing what functions. I mean that's the biggest risk is making sure that just like the treasure and the comptroller, they have to have separate duties so there's no collusion or ability to manipulate funds. Internal controls aren't receivable just to make sure that everyone's communicating the assesses to the collectors. Collect this to the auditors, make sure that the overlays book, make sure all of the monthly abatements are booked, any adjustments, any kind of exemption you may have for veterans, survivors, spouses. Just to make sure that everyone's doing what they're supposed to do when you get together every month in reconcile and just have good internals closely when you look at the books at the year end they reconcile and you don't have to try to do 12 months worth of work to figure out why you're off on your reconciliation. How much more do you want? I'll stop, because I think my colleagues will probably ask everything else I want to ask. I'll stop there. Okay, thank you, Mr. Dunn. Welcome. Thank you. I guess my first question is, so thinking about what, I don't know, your first couple months or something like that in this job. What do you think you'd get done? What would be your goals? Like what would you look back and say, this is what I want to get to, you know, what do I want to do in the beginning? Well, first I want to get a familiarity with the, what the staff's functions are and what they do. And hopefully get a chance to have Ruth come in and show me what her monthly routine is. And again, what kind of reports are required of the select and what kind of reports are required of the town manager? Who's doing what? And then just taking an assessment, not really to go into change the world there, but just to see how things operate, how the treasurer and the auditor, I mean, the comptroller, reconcile their funds, how the assessor's role plays in there. Just get a good feel of what the financial team is. Of course, talk to the town manager and he says, town manager, about, you know, day to day operations, what's expected. And then start to look to it, what the goals are and objectives and just create kind of a bit of a timeline on how the fiscal operation works. Because once you get it after the first year, it tends to be pretty cyclical. So just want to get involved with who's doing what and then try to bring some of my expertise and my abilities and try to just, I mean, it's a well run community. So in some respects, I want to make sure it doesn't go down. It's tough to go up with AAA, but certainly want to improve and just try to find ways to do things better and more efficient and hopefully work well to communicate that information with the residents and the select men and all the stakeholders. Okay, one more, Mr. Chairman, and then I'll move on. So one of the things I find unusual about this job is being selected, by the way, is doing public interviews. So interviewing Adam, for instance, for his job and doing it publicly. It can be really awkward sometimes, but it's part of the, as you know, it's part of the thing. So here we are with a question that is probably easier to ask and answer when you don't have television cameras. When you look at who you're going to be working with in this job, some of them are people that you're going to be working for. And some of them are people who work for you. But then there's a lot of people that you're going to be working with who you don't have that relationship with. Like they answer to another authority. So for example, the treasurer is directly elected, the assessors are directly elected. The director of assessment, you know, and you're going to periodically need to do things or ask in the CFO reports to, of course, the school committee, and they're directly elected. Can you give me an example of a time when you were working when a relationship was like that and you weren't getting what you needed? Like, you know, there was friction or conflict or something like that and how you managed that? What I'm saying is, it's not always going to be easy. Can you give me an example of a time where you ran into that conflict and how you managed it? Sure. I mean, just in the current situation I'm in right now, we have an assessor that falls under the direction of the CFO, but they report to a board of assessors. And again, we're having trouble reconciling, overlay, and have to go in there and just explain what the proper process is and just try to drill down and find out what exactly they're doing. Regardless of who they answer to or work for, there's a fall of work that has to come through. So just to get familiar with what happens at a board meeting, when you've given abatement, how is it filed? How do you put it in the system? How do you send it over to the collector and then ultimately to the heiress? So basically just get everyone around the table, talk about what the steps are being taken, and you end up finding out a little more information on whether it's posting an abatement on the date you type it versus the date it was actually granted. Stuff like that is in a computer system, we'll throw off the balances. So just a guy to get an idea and say, oh, when you put an abatement on the 12th of June, make sure you date it May 18th, because that was the meeting date so that we understand what each other are doing. Because the system talks to each other in a different way, so basically just communicating and working together with people, I mean, who they report to is less important than what exactly is the problem and how can we address those problems? Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mr. Cura. Thank you very much. Thank you for coming in. I think some of my thinking was on the same lines with Ms. Mohan. You know, you've obviously worked in a town form of government, you've worked in cities as well. And I have kind of a two-part question. I was wondering what you see as the biggest difference between working in the two, the two different governmental systems. Obviously, you've been in the last nine years in cities. I'll put that out there just on its own and follow up. Politics. I mean, it's an elected mayor position and sometimes the mayor is busy trying to get elected as opposed to running good government. And that's where I have to step up and just make sure that everything's done in accordance to the mass general laws and make sure we're doing our requirements with the DOI and such. And you tend to get a better understanding of that when you work with a town manager who's not worried about getting reelected every two years or four years. It creates a bit more stable environment, which is what I find I like better than the city, political, every two-year elections type of system. Okay. And kind of following up on some of what Ms. Mohan had been asking about. I know I see in your resume that you've put a lot of emphasis on kind of reporting and you've won some awards for your reporting. I'm wondering how you deal in a town environment like this. Well, to Mr. Dunn's point, we do have very dispersed leadership and although you ultimately report to the board of selectmen, there are a lot of different reporting needs from the different branches. For example, I know that the school committee likes to get monthly budget to actuals reports. I know that the finance committee often pulls reports and makes requests on an ad hoc basis. We interface with the comptroller's office also, you know, often through the audit or through the long-range planning process. And I was wondering how you balance all those. If you see a role as learning the processes and practices that are already in place or if you have some best practices that you look to bring in to the job from your previous experience. Well, I mean, I would think it's a hybrid. I certainly think I've put some best practices in place, but certainly want to come in and see what's going on now. And I come to a community and I find that they're doing something that I've never seen that I think is really neat as well. So it's a lot of the systems that are same but different. I mean, I created five-year financial forecast for a long-range plan and capital plans. But I've also looked at how this town does it. And I think there's certain aspects that I say, oh, that's a really good way of looking at it. Some communities are more concerned with Prop 2.5 and being up against that levy limit in the city. Sometimes we don't have that. It's not so much about taxes that are levy because we have excess capacity. So some of the analysis and dynamics are different. But my first goal is to find out what's going on, how businesses run, how reports are done, how the communication is to the various boards and committees, and then get to know the people and get to feedback of what they'd like to see or maybe questions they've had in the past that never got answered and hopefully provide each and every one of them what they need to help them do their job the best they could. Okay, thanks. And my last question is, your last three positions, you've been either the chief financial officer or the finance director. Comptroller is obviously a very discreet role in comparison to that. And I'm wondering how you approach that coming in and kind of making almost a transition. Well, all three of the positions I've had as finance director of CFO have always been with the town accountant or city auditor set. So I've always been on the general side of the equation. The other fun stuff that come with it is just more or less the communication and the umbrella effect so that in a city a lot of times you want to ask one person what's going on with all these departments. So it creates efficiencies and senior staff means and such. But at the end of the day, I've always been an accountant. I've been a Comptroller type position. So that's my strength and that's what I feel I can accelerate even further because a lot of the other distraction may not be with this job. So I'm looking forward to just to kind of dig down on numbers and again raise the bar and hopefully improve upon any systems in place. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Mr. Byrd. Thank you, Mr. Greeley. And for you, sir, I do want to thank the hiring board. It seems like quite an in-depth process played out in a pretty short amount of time. And it seems like you landed on a pretty good candidate, particularly from the resume in this book that we have in front of us. And Rich, thank you for being here with us tonight. Could you talk a little bit about your management experience and style and how that's going to translate over here? Sure. I like to manage in a way that fosters a lot of good relationships and teamwork. I like to try to teach people not just how to do something, but why they're doing it and what the effect is on the different parts of the operation. Certainly, I like to think that I can talk from the town manager right down to the custodians and the laymen in the city that may have questions about whether it's taxes or how the capital plan is put together or anything like that. But basically just good communication. I pretty much always had an open-door policy with my employees and my colleagues to come in and discuss any matters. But just trying to teach when I can teach, listen when I can listen, and then come up with conclusions and solutions to the problems. But more like just teamwork and good communication. That's great. This may be a little bit redundant, but looking at some of your former colleagues and maybe some of the people you not only worked that worked for you, but also worked with you. What would they say about your customer service experience? Not only does the control do the books from on a day-to-day basis, but you serve on a lot of committees. You're interacting with the public on a regular basis, and that's certainly a big role here. Can you talk a little bit about that? What would your former colleagues say about your experience dealing with the public? I think they say I do a pretty good job. I like to think I'm a clear communicator. I'm more of a business memo type of format, so I try not to do long, wordy emails or memos. I try to be clear, concise type of bullet points. But I know that in my role right now, I communicate twice a month with the council. I'm pretty much the figurehead speaker on any money or the financial matter appropriation. So I do a lot of that with the council, with the committees. And it's funny, I get a lot of feedback on the streets when I'm at the supermarket or I'm in a store and people come up to me and say, hey, you're the CFO aren't you? And I say, yeah, I like what you're doing. I like the way you explain stuff and everything else. So that feedback is really helpful because when you're up there and you're talking, you're not really thinking too much about it, but when people come back and appreciate how you conduct yourself and explain yourself, it makes me feel like I'm doing a good job at that communication. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Did you get everything answered? Well, you said after your colleagues. If I could just do maybe a brief sort of follow-up. I'm just wondering, we're interviewing you and posing questions to you. Sort of what you've done to look into the town, and I want to stress that again, we're a town. If you keep slipping and say city, it may not seem like a big thing, but it is. What sort of pre-op investigation have you done about the town of Allington? Is there anything that you looked at that you highlighted in terms of something very good, something that you really want to sink your teeth into? I'd just like to know, we're making so many queries of you, what you've done on behalf of yourself in terms of what the job with the town of Allington is attractive to you and sort of what you've done in that, or if you have a question for any of us. Well, I went on the town website. I read the budget. I downloaded the official statement. I read the rear official statement. I looked at the tax rate, recap, erratic lens reports. I do have some friends and colleagues that are familiar with the town that work in the town. I've just asked a bunch of general questions about how the town is managed. I asked about Adam for people to know him. Like I said, I know it's a triple-a-rated community. I work with First Salt West. You guys work with First Salt West. I've been quiet with them about it. Jim Powers is my auditor as well, so I know Powers and Sullivan. I got a bunch of general knowledge about the town, and I looked at the financials, and I've read the last boundary and that's the end of the report, so those are the types of things that I was interested in looking at. Okay, thank you. Anybody else have any other questions? One of the questions we asked each colleague was how they prepared for the interview, and Richard presented us with this at the interview, which, and others didn't present any such things. So, Richard, do you have any questions for us at this point? At this point, I don't have any questions. I just hope I answered all your questions, and I really hope that the vote is favorable, and I'm happy to answer any other questions. If you have any, and I would vote for the opportunity to work with you all. Okay, thank you. So then at this point, Karen, could I ask you, would you take Rich just out and, you know, just set him at the, in a bench out there while we have a chance to discuss. Thank you very much. You can bid on some art. Don't go on Instagram. Well, you can come back. I didn't mean you have to leave, but no, Richard, you have to register. Oh, I don't want that. Thank you. I never heard him call us a city. He did it twice. I heard him say it was a city of Salem. No, he said it twice. He said it in his opening, and then he said it in the answer to a question from the right. That's all. I didn't. I don't have any comments. Anybody want to give impressions or thoughts? I definitely, I rely, I'm relying mostly on the recommendation of the committee, but he certainly did fine in this interview. But in terms of why I'm going to vote yes, is going to be because of the recommendation that you all have given. I'm on board with that. I mean, I think his credentials are, you know, pretty solid. It's a good mix of experience. I like the DOR experience as well before he got into municipal government. I guess I would ask either the chairman or the town manager, having been through interview processes before and being in a position. Most of the times I've been really, you know, 100%, 110% there. There's only been one other time, which was a totally different circumstance, but I'm just wondering, maybe two questions, why we didn't have a second candidate and I understand from what was said initially, it's because this candidate rose so much to the top and with a comptroller position, to me, what's really important is attention to detail, not just knowing that Ellington's a town versus city, but as well as, I definitely appreciate coming in and walking into something that is a well tuned machine that is working really great, but I'm also looking for sort of some semblance of them coming in versus just riding on what has existed, et cetera, where I think so many people have said to me with the current town manager, and nothing about any previous town managers even before I was, was that really being in tune with the time in terms of transparency and taking advantage of technology and things like that. So I guess my question would be, and I'm not trying to be critical, I'm just, guys know how I am, how did this candidate rise to the top versus having a second to compare to, what is it that really, if you could just not sell me on that, but do you understand what I'm saying? Yeah, so I want to sell you, so let me answer it first. This being the third interview I've been with him, it was his worst, it wasn't great, but it was. I mean, I felt he maybe was even more nervous this time, but I, again, will certainly let Karen or Adam, he so clearly knows what he's doing, which came through, certainly through the assessment center of all seven of the candidates. And the other, for example, one of the three candidates, the finalists, didn't even attempt to try one of the two parts of the assessment center. The third one, the third candidate, well, we can't use names or anything, but the second candidate that we all felt should this one not work out, we felt would do a great job, but she did an awful lot of saying what she'd need to learn if she came to Arlington. You know, as in, well, I haven't done that part of it before, or I haven't done that part of it before. So, you know, I really am trusting much more Adam, Steven, and Diane in terms of his capabilities of doing this job. But what to me came through, not as clearly tonight, is this guy loves this kind of work. And can I talk about one of the, the mistake you made professionally, question that we asked, should I not do that publicly? I'm just going to say, can you share in the assessment stuff or no? Well, the assessment. That's one of the questions. Okay, all right. So, you know, as I say, this was my third interview with him. There is no question in my mind, I'd like to work with this guy. But again, of three interviews I did with him, I just, I don't think this was his shining moment, necessarily. I would just like to say a couple of things because I did get to speak to his references and the quality of the people that he had me speak to. You know, Mayor Driscoll from Salem, Peter Frazier from First Southwest. I think it's Paul Saguerino, not Peter Saguerino, who is the town accountant in Burlington. These are very well respected people and they just had excellent things to say about him. And the things that he said in the interview that really impressed me were what he wanted to do for the town, how he was going to come here and help us make a great organization even better. It wasn't a lot about what he was going to do for himself. It's that he wanted to help us make a great town even better. The things that they said about him were that he's not just a numbers guy, that he's actually a brilliant budget strategist. Like he's going to help you get where you want to go. And then it's not about his ego that people really, really like him. The people, not just the people up in the organization, but the people who worked below him in the organization really, really like this gentleman. They say he's just buried down to earth and he has a great personality. So a lot of times there's the numbers people and then there's a lot of time. There's the personality people and a gentleman seems to be a rare combination of those two things. And coming from those three individuals, I thought that that was saying something. So I just thought you should consider that. Thank you. Adam. So I'll start where you finished, Mr. Chairman, in that he, in the first somewhat and then on the second, absolutely impressed me as really being a municipal finance nerd. And not to use a silly term. I mean, he clearly lives, sleeps, eats, and breeds this stuff. And it came out again in that second interview that he was passionate about local government. So that was probably the number one thing that attracted me to his candidacy. And he definitely had sort of the breath and scope of complexity that Arlington has in terms of its financials from his experience in Salem and his experience in Everett. City government, as I know from my past experience, is certainly much different. His complexities and sometimes relationship and political complexities can mirror some of the relationship building that we have to do here. He didn't get into it a lot, but working with the city council when you report to the mayor, but still trying to have good relationships with those counselors. So you have to be before twice a month is very, very challenging to do. So having that skill set. And again, I agree with you, Mr. Chairman. It didn't come across quite as clearly tonight as you could use. But he was very impressive. The other thing I'll say, Miss Mahan, in response to your second piece, I would frankly be suspicious of somebody who had never worked in the organization before, who came to an interview table and had a list of things that he or she would improve. Because they don't know. They've not been in the organization. They've not worked a day in the organization. And I think the right answer to that question from any candidate is, I got to come in and see how things are going so that's how I would, no matter who the candidate was for any position, if someone comes in and says, ah, I'm going to fix things. If they've not worked here before, I might think them a fool for assuming that they know everything having not stepped through the door. I mean, I guess I would say to that, I guess I'm going to take a little assurance that one interview, one and two, we did better. And tonight maybe he was very nervous or maybe he thought it's a slam dunk. I don't mean it. He hit a home run. What I was looking for on that is definitely attention to detail, but thinking of the comptroller position, similar to any other financial position, whether you're dealing with health care, retirement, etc. I would really knock it out of the ballpark for me. And maybe he thinks, you know, he has done that and maybe he has. I'm just a minority. He's familiar with powers in Sullivan. It's the same organization consultant that works with the city of Everett. I looked at your last management letter and recommendations and I see that for me, what I would have I've never been a comptroller, but I'm just thinking of, and I haven't just done interviews as a member of the board of select men. I've done it with Verizon, AT&T, etc. Just looking, you did a little digging. You kind of want to get a bonus point. I was thinking maybe he could either say, management letter, and I saw that you had the situation and the correction was, etc. And that's similar to what happened in the town of Wendemers. I wasn't looking for, so. I don't want to get in the position of defending his answers. He did say he read the official statements, and when he says that, he means the audit documents, because that's a term that would be used. And I think, again, I can rely on my own experience to say this, you know, he's probably coming from cities that while he was there, and if his resume is accurate, 40, 50, maybe 60 comments in the management letter. So we have three. So it's not necessarily something that someone from his position would look at and say, you know, there's a whole list of things that I got to go down to address, because by comparison, it's a very clean report. I'm going to stop, because I can see I'm in the minority. I'll stop there. I think we get more than three, but that's okay. I want to see what everyone else has to say. I'm just... No, I think I agree with Mr. Dunn that the work you guys did is quite impressive, and I'm happy to go along with it. But what really struck me is that the assessment, when he came out, he clearly did the best. And that's what I'm really looking for. If he's, you know, going to be working on, you know, with these numbers day in and day out, you want the person who did the best and, you know, under tight circumstances. And hearing what Karen has to say about his references, I'm pretty impressed by him. So, I'm a go. Thank you. Yeah, Joe. Yeah, I have one more question. I probably should have addressed it to the candidate, but I'll address it to the manager and the others on the committee. Did you have an opportunity to talk to him about the long-range planning process that we use to control his role in that? Because the controller has a seat at the table in that. No, but he explained how he developed that in the effort. Well, so I would actually say he did specifically, forgetting which of the settings he asked, but he did specifically ask how the long-range plan worked. He had seen the fiscal stability fund looking through some town meeting warrants and seeing the appropriations and did ask me to give a quick explanation with the confines of the interview of how the long-range plan worked. Anybody ready to make a motion? Mr. Dunn. What is the appropriate motion? The first is to hire him and then the second would be to ask me to negotiate a contract with him. I move that we hire Richard Biscay as our controller. Is there a second? Second. Further discussion? Although discussion, sure. It's actually just a question about, I think we all are. Is there any part of that assessment that Andrew spoke about that we can actually receive in written form or no? That's a protected document. I don't know why you could say that. I think if I see the because I think I'll see Rich interview one, interview two and that will, and then I assume as Dan Dunn asked in his question that, you know, within the first four to six, eight weeks he'll meet with us individually. I'm just trying to get prepared for that. He was a middle finalist that we interviewed so I wish you could have been part of the other two interviews to see why, at least I am so clear that this guy is the best. I'm going to be strongly guided by and I'm not being sarcastic or anything by the chairman and the town manager and Karen and others that have spent and gone through three rounds of interview and, you know, I totally get it the first two interviews, you know, if you had to rate them all and I really do take that to heart. So I'm definitely prepared to vote for this candidate if I could see that so that maybe when I have my sit-down interview with him and I'll talk to you first just where you were involved with the process to make sure that am I kind of interpreting this correctly. Sure. All right, thanks. Okay. So all those in favor of the motion I, Mr. Dunn, please signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed. So would you ask him back in, please? So thank you for the trustee. I'm sorry to keep you in motion. Move approval. I would like to request that the chairman on behalf of the board of select men enter into negotiations with Rich Viscae. Mr. Gay. I apologize. No, that's okay. Rich Viscae Jr., with any other department head, town manager that he deans necessary to engage in those negotiations. Second discussion. So thank you for the trust you've shown in Adam and I. Probably some sweat on this brow right now. That was a little longer, right, baby, than you thought. I offer two seconds of new business as he walks back in. If any of the board members are interested in attending the site walk schedules for the Mugar property next Tuesday at 10 a.m., the meeting point at 10 a.m. will be the Thorndike Field Park. And I'm out of town, so I can't be there. But you said you could be there, right? 23rd. And of course, all my colleagues want to wish my Cindy a happy 23rd birthday and I'll be home to help blow out the candles. That's that day? Tonight. Oh, tonight? Yes. Happy birthday, Cindy. Thank you. And welcome to the town of Arlington, Mr. Viscay. On a 5-0 vote, we voted to appoint you our next controller. However, the second vote is for you and I to enter into a contract negotiation. So congratulations. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Meeting adjourned or something else. And that's, Rich, anything you want to do, clean up or? Give us a quick, send us off on a high. Higher, send us off higher. I just want to thank you very much for the opportunity and the confidence that you're putting in me to serve as the town's controller. Thank you, Rich. And serve the board of select them here. And I would forward to getting started. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. I've moved to adjourn. Move. Second. All those in favor, please say goodbye by saying aye. Next meeting on the board of selectmen is June 29th. Good night, Arlington. Happy birthday, Cindy. Thank you, Mr. Curt. The next regular meeting. Yes.