 Good evening and welcome back to Byline, our weekly public affairs show right here on Amherst Media, co-sponsored by Amherst Media and the League of Women Voters. And through these shows we are trying to introduce or reintroduce, depending upon who the guest is, people to the community who are serving in our new town council or as our newly elected state representative and state senator on Beacon Hill. And so today our guest is Andy Steinberg, who's no stranger to the community, because you, Andy, have served in quite a number of public offices over a number of years. Give us your quick elevator speech on your history with town government offices. Well, good evening, Stan. I appreciate you doing this show and appreciate being here. I have served in a number of capacities, first on town meeting and then on the finance committee and three years as chair of the finance committee, which I was the position that I held in 2014 when I ran for select board and then I was reelected to the select board in 2017. So I served almost five years on the select board until it concluded its business with the transition to the charter commission's work, the charter and the council. Great. So when you ran at large, the community basically knew who you were and they got to know you even better, but you had to reframe a lot of what you were talking about because you had, you were going into a new body. Could you tell us a little bit about how that campaign differed from your previous campaigns in terms of what you focused on, because you were going from a five-member board to a 13-member board, but that 13-member council was replacing more than 200 people as a town meeting. So tell us a little bit about how you fought differently and what you found differently on the campaign trail as a result of campaigning for this different town-wide office. Well, it's an interesting campaign and a different campaign, though I think the differences came from some other things. One is peculiarly enough the time of year because it was a campaign that was taking place to coincide with the general election when there were a lot of other things on the ballot and there was also instead of just an election for town offices and a small number of town offices, two people for a select board, two people for the library trustees and the school committee, all of a sudden there was really six elections going on for council all at the same time, of which voters had to be participating in two of the six elections but were sort of seeing signs and being aware of information about all of them. So as I was going through the campaign process, I had to be very clear about what it was that I was a candidate for and frequently I had to explain that they were going to be voting for an at-large, two-at-large, three-at-large candidates and two district candidates participating in two separate elections and there was a lot of voter education that was required that was probably something greater and different from previous elections. And all of that had to happen in the context of a statewide election and where you were used to having the whole spotlight on town government in an April election, now you were on a ballot in November, September and November and you had to fight for some attention from the voters even as they were trying to learn and understand what this new town council is going to be all about. So that must have been interesting and of course you and Alyssa Brewer both got elected to the town council and you were the only two who had previously served on the select board. So when you sit at the town council meetings, since each of you brings different experience, you and Alyssa are both wearing two hats, a former select person and a current at-large member. Do you find some tension and conflict there? Do you find yourself censoring yourself because you don't want to talk too much about the past or how does that work for you? I try and sense what the interests are of my fellow council members because there are frequent times that they actually are looking to us for background on how a decision had been made previously and how we would transition that thought process and that kind of decision to the council in its new role because it is 13 people, it is different dynamic than being on a five person board. This is a really great group of people to work with there bringing a whole range of very different experiences and different knowledge but variable experience with town government and I think that is what Alyssa and I ran to offer continuity and experience and I find that the council really looks to us for that experience. When you say how the previous decision was made by a previous select board, do you mean the process or the content or both? It can be both. As far as process is concerned, I think that that is something that it might be interesting for new members of our council to know but it is important that the council find its own way of making decisions and we are now in a period of developing and understanding what the process needs to be going forward but at the same time there was information that we had reasoning that we had for decisions that we made and that is of probably greater interest to the council because that is something where they really can build on what we did as opposed to reinventing it. So you are careful about how often you speak, when you speak and sometimes you are speaking as today's councilor about today's issue from today's perspective and sometimes you are offering history that might be valuable for the council as they are considering action on something today. Very much so and I think that all of us in the council need to be conscious of the fact that there are 13 of us and that there is a limited amount of time that we have available in public meeting, we don't want to have any one person capitalize the time so we need to be respectful of each other and respectful of the amount of time that we are presenting. I am very cautious about it and I find that my colleagues in the council are very cautious and respectful also. So each of you bring some unique capacities and experience to the table and some of you might be a group of, a part of a group of one or two or three other people who have background and experience in a particular issue. So like Evan and Kathy Shane, I'm sorry Evan and Darcy Dumont have a lot of experience and focus on climate change, not that Kathy doesn't have an interest in it, but both you and Kathy have a lot of background in finance and in your case you have significant public finance background because you served on the finance committee and you were elected chair of the finance committee by the council, am I correct about that? Yes. Okay. And Kathy is the elected vice chair. And she's the vice chair so we have two people with a lot of experience in economics and public finance who are leading that committee. That is really terrific. Let's focus on that committee a little bit because it's starting to get up and running and starting to take on some tasks. But of course the biggest task is the creation of the annual budget for the municipality. And so we used to have a finance committee. Now we have a finance committee, but it's different. Tell us how it's different from what you had experienced as a member of the finance committee previously and what as chair you think is going to be different and how this is going to play out under our new form of government? Some of it is work in progress, but the finance committee that existed previously was a committee of the town meeting. It was appointed by the town moderator and it was charged in the former town government act with providing advice to the town meeting about any matter that might come before it in the financial consequences of that action. The current finance committee is a committee also of the legislative body. So there's a lot of similarity in how it proceeds. So I'm not sure that the differences in the larger sense will be that great. There are differences in timing however because there's a smaller window between when the town manager is required under the new charter to provide a proposed budget for council's consideration then was required under the previous town government act. So that we are going to have to create an appropriate procedure that allows the committee to review and understand each of the budget section recommendations, but to do it in a smaller window. And these are the recommendations from the town manager and his department heads? Yes. Okay. But there is another difference isn't there here. You're talking about a finance committee that was a committee of 200 plus people, I'm sorry, from among 200 plus people and it was a handful of people on the finance committee. Here we have five finance committee members out of a body of 13 who will ultimately approve the budget. How is that going to be different in terms of how you think the process is going to work because five of you will be in the room when you vote on the recommendation to bring to the full council. Eight of them will not have been there, however some of them might have been on some of the alphabet soup of other budget related committees that we have in town. So there's three other panels that relate to finances. One on capital, there is a joint committee, help me with the names of these committees. The joint capital planning committee which will be working on the capital side buildings and equipment and the other is the operating budget side. The budget coordinating group is really trying to coordinate the process of budget development with the schools and the libraries and the town. And then the participatory budget commission is a new feature as well. I mean it's a new feature. So you've got three panels that are working away on their part and their role in the budget process. And then all of those get integrated through the work of the finance committee and then ultimately the council as a whole has to take up that budget. Are most or all of the members of the other three panels council members? No and actually on the finance committee they're not all council members either nor were all of the finance committee members and the old finance committee members of town meeting because the moderator could appoint people without regard to whether or not they were members of town meeting and occasionally there were people who were appointed or people who had been members of town meeting and were not reelected but continued to serve. There is a provision in the new charter that provides that in addition to the five members who are members of the finance committee there also are non voting community members to be members of the finance committee. How many? I believe it's four. And those people would apply through the normal process to volunteer for town committees or they could be recruited. We haven't determined that yet and that actually was on our agenda for the first meeting but we only had very brief time to discuss it but we want to find people and encourage people to contact us if they would like to serve. Contact who? Contact the probably the president of the council unless we incorporate it into the committee, general committee process which is a mechanical thing that needs to be determined. So the charter doesn't dictate how those four people get selected? It leaves that open and the council will have to decide upon a process? There's a fair degree of flexibility left in the charter as to how it is to be done and there are actually two different committees because the governance committee may have the larger role in how the citizen members of committees are chosen generally and then obviously this would need to be consistent with it but I hope that that process can be completed prior to the time that the town manager is required to deliver the budget which is 45 days prior to council action so that they are fully integrated on the committee and participating in the committee process as we review the proposed budget for FY20. So this first budget cycle is going to be quite challenging, I mean budget cycle is always challenging because you have to set priorities and the priorities really demonstrate the values of the government and there's not enough money to do everything that people want so there's a lot of choices and decisions that have to be made but this time you also have to set up the process for completely integrating into the new governmental structure the rest of the steps so here's one example where the charter is not so specific that it's just automatically done a bunch of different decisions have to get made before you can even appoint the people and then you get to work on the rest of the budget process so options are that the town manager could be given the authority to recommend to the town council using the normal committee process recruiting process or it could be that the governance committee the committee that covers governance and appointments could be the place that the recommendations get developed. Yes there really are three types of committees when one is just general committees that exist in town other than the planning board and the zoning board of appeals and there's a process in the charter for the town manager to make recommendations to make the appointment subject to confirmation by the council then the planning board and zoning board of appeals are specifically held for appointment by the council itself and then there's this third group that we're really into with the finance committee and that is committees of the council that include citizen members as either voting or non-voting members and our governance committee will need to work on developing the final steps for all of those processes and I believe is working doing that as we meet now. The challenge is everything we do in this new council right now is we're sort of beginning to understand the complexity of the charter and how it can be implemented most effectively to meet our expectations and the community's expectations for our new form of government as we also try and do the town's business. So let me try to summarize this. If you're a citizen resident of any of the town and you would like to serve as a non-voting member from the community on the finance committee at this point you have to do two things one is you have to watch the process and keep following it so you know when the process is settled and what the decisions the process is going to be for the actual appointments and the second thing is if you want to get a jump start on it you let the president of the town council the chair of the finance committee the chair of the governance committee and the town manager know that you have an interest. Yes and hopefully what we will do and but again this is something that I just don't know because we're all working in pockets at this point and the governance committee is working separately. The select board had a citizen activity form which was available on the website and then people would just complete the form and fill it out. It is my understanding that that is where we are remaining as a general process and if the finance committee appointments can be incorporated within that process I think it allows for the easiest accessibility for the community members who are interested to demonstrate that interest and so if that is what we can achieve that will be the best solution. So the form when I last saw in one of your council meetings was still being finalized it was being refined and perfected is that process finished? That I don't know because that's really the work of a different committee. So at this point a couple of options for people but let somebody know that you're interested. Absolutely that's the bottom line. I don't think you need to let all of the people that you mentioned know probably is the good use of anyone's time but it's important to let somebody know so that they are considered when we get in the mix and so maybe just filling out the form online is a good place to start because they're going to look at those forms no matter what. Yes. Okay so let's go on to another quick topic here. So how do you see the integration of these other committees outside that are outside of the finance committee? They have well established historic processes except for the participatory budgeting commission. So do you see those other two panels capital and the coordinating budget committee both operating pretty much the way they have in the past? Yes and I have served on both of those committees in prior form of government. So let's just be real quick on each one of them. The joint capital planning committee includes members of the school committee and the library trustees are represented and it also includes some senior level staff within each of the three segments. The purpose is to allow each of the organizational pieces each of those functional areas that have capital needs schools libraries in the town departments to present their needs and their requests to a group and the group then meets and considers what each of requests is, tries to understand the requests, look at the entire budget that is available for capital because we will have determined an amount that we assume will be spent on capital and its question of what is most important. What has happened before and is required to continue in the charter is that we not just make the recommendation for the next budget year of what should be in the capital purchase list for that year, but to develop a ten year plan so that if a need is presented for some major piece of equipment or even relatively minor piece of equipment that it isn't just forgotten, it is placed into a year. So when we start the process we look at the list from the priors to what's proposed for the next year and obviously they are making modifications to it. In the few minutes that we have left I would like to focus on the participatory budget commission because that's a new function. The other two committees are going to operate pretty much the way the panels are going to operate pretty much the way they have operated in the past and they will be interacting with the finance committee pretty much in the same way they did the previous finance committee. But the participatory budgeting commission is new. This is a new idea for our town. We have about two minutes left. Give us a thumbnail of what we should expect there and how you think citizens of the town, the community, residents will be able to participate in that. This is an area that really needs a lot of work to develop but I do want to answer your question by saying what I understand the purpose was the charter commission and putting it forward in the vision that we need to then carry forward that there should be some amount of money, some portion of the budget where citizens then can come in and say we have these needs that we have identified and that are excluded from the budget process in the past. We would like to have those considered and the purpose of having this new process is to allow both citizens to make that request and to participate in the consideration of all of the requests that come forward. Even though they may be small, we haven't determined the amount of money that will be available for that. It helps to incorporate the citizens in understanding the complexities of budget processes and it helps to hear from the community about what their perceived needs are. The challenge in the budget as a whole and I'm sure that you've had that experience is that we have a police department, we have a fire department, we have a public health department, we have libraries, we have teachers. The first thing you want to do is make sure that you're funding the good work that's going on. These are likely to be things that would be a one time expenditure because they wouldn't typically be built into the base of the budget so maybe sometimes people come forward with something that will take two years as opposed to one year. Another way of maybe describing it is it's a second bite of the apple. If you haven't been able to convince the finance committee and your town councillors to incorporate something in the budget that's in the nature of a one time expenditure for your neighborhood, your street, whatever, you might have a second bite at the apple to try to incorporate it in the budget through the participatory budgeting commission. And with that we're out of time. So I want to thank you Andy for being here today and to our listeners thank you for being here and you heard it here. If you want to be a non-voting resident member of the finance committee fill out that form, the volunteer form on the town website and if you are interested in participating and trying to get some additional help as this budget process unfolds for something important to you that doesn't make it into the primary budget, get ready to offer your ideas about what could be done through the participatory budgeting commission. We look forward to seeing you next week. Thank you.