 Well, everyone, thank you for joining us and once again, I'm sorry for delay, I'm sorry. The computer that rebooted on me and took forever to go through the process of getting me back online. So we are here for the time manager search forum and it's an opportunity for you to tell us what you would like to have some qualities that you'd like to see in our next time time manager. And so with us tonight is my colleague, Steve DeCorsi and Bernie Lentzman is our consultant. So we're going to turn it over to Bernie now. Great. Well, thank you and I certainly, I can certainly understand the technical issues. It always seems to happen at the worst possible time that computers do what they do. So I'm glad we got that resolved and happy to be here tonight with everyone. So Len, thank you, thank you for the introduction. You know, as was pointed out, our goal here tonight is to hear from the residents and other stakeholders that may be in attendance on the qualities that you think we should be looking for as we conduct the search for a new Arlington town manager and what the issues are facing the town of Arlington. I thought just by way of introduction, I'd talk a little bit about who community paradigm is so that you have some hopefully some level of confidence in the the the work that we are going to be doing, we have been doing and are going to be doing on behalf of the town of Arlington to get you the best possible town manager out there for the town. You know, Arlington certainly community really is a leader in so many different ways. So it's very gratifying opportunity to to work with you and to be here tonight to to talk about what the residents are looking for in the next town manager. Community paradigm was formed roughly eight years ago, coming up almost on nine by me. I was my background is in municipal government. I was a town manager at Chelmsted for about 20 years and the city manager Blowl for almost eight years. And when I made the decision to leave my position as city manager, I wanted to keep my hand in municipal government. Municipal government, I think is really the place where the rubber really hits the road in terms of delivery of services to people that depend upon government for such essential services that, you know, and really make an impact on people's lives. So I wanted to stay involved and we we created this organization, this firm have made up of a variety of associates that work have worked with municipal government or in municipal government. And one of the areas that was of particularly significance to us was the fact that so many communities were going through a process of finding new town managers. There's been a generational shift that's happened in municipalities across the Commonwealth and across the country. Here in Massachusetts, roughly two thirds of the communities have turned over, changed their town managers over the last five or six years. Mostly generational retirements and then the resulting churn that happens as one position becomes vacant, another one. Someone moves into that and another one, another position becomes available. And it's really led to a very competitive market in the municipal management world, as you can expect. On top of that, certainly over the last couple of years, with the great resignation that we've seen that sort of came out of the pandemic, we've seen a whole host of other vacancies that have occurred as people have made the decision to leave the municipal workforce. So we now have conducted over 90 or approximately 90 searches for town managers and town administrators in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts over the last nine, probably actually more like seven years. We're going to get right into this right away. And so we've been very active with the most active municipal executive search firm in the Commonwealth. And so we're very happy to be part of the Arlington search because Arlington has always been one of the leaders in the world of professional municipal government and we're thrilled to be here tonight to continue on in helping a community find its next chief administrative officer. Our goal tonight is basically to hear from you because we think it's been a tenet of ours since we started this several years back to offer up or to recognize the importance of community and citizen engagement in the process. And we always offer this to communities and some communities make the decision to move forward without citizen input. But when we raise this to the board in Arlington, it was a very quick determination that people wanted to hear from what the citizens are looking for, what the residents believe are the issues facing the town. And so our goal here tonight is really to, one, look to the future, not the past. What we were looking for is from you, is an understanding of what you are looking for from the next town manager, what you believe the issues and challenges are that are out there that we should be looking for when we look for a town manager for you. What are the top priorities, the issues that really drive the town of Arlington to make it a better place to live and to work? And then what are the skills and attributes that the next town manager should possess? What's important to you to see in that town manager? And sort of combining those two of the issues and the skills, what are the opportunities? What makes Arlington an attractive place? When we're promoting people to look at Arlington as a place to come and work and to become the town manager, what are the opportunities that you see? What are the skills that they could bring to the table? What are the challenges that they could address that would give them the opportunity to make a community an even better place to live and to work and to participate? So with all of that said, I'm going to open it up. I think the idea here, land as I recall, is for me to sort of work with the citizens and residents and the tenants and get a sense of what you're thinking. So I'm going to open it up and hopefully we'll have some people that participate in this process tonight and give me your thoughts. I'm happy to answer any questions about the municipal management marketplace, the process, anything that can help you in helping us determine what's best for the town of Arlington. Yes, just of course, Ernie. And first of all, I'll just ask my colleague, Steve, if he wants to say anything. Thank you, Len. Now, I just would like to thank everybody who was participating this evening. And as Bernie said, it's important for us to hear from the public. We did put out a survey on the town's website. And some of you may have already filled that out. That's going to be open until November 15. But for this evening, we'd like to hear from you and get your thoughts on what you'd like to see in our next town manager. So thank you again. Thank you. So yes, so if you could just raise your hand electronically, it helps to track the order in which you want to speak, you know, just calling you or Bernie, if you want, you can do the callings. Well, I think I think we have a one right off is Phil Goff. Yeah, thanks, Bernie and Len and Steve, Phil Goff, 94 Graffin Street. And just before I get into what I think is really needed in Arlington with the new town manager, Bernie, if you could just tell us a little bit more about your approach to the search process, I know you've been involved, as you mentioned, and as I heard in the search for town managers from other communities. And most recently, I think in Watertown, we scored one with George Parakis, is really great guy, because I'm in the planning world. So I sort of know of him. So what are the things that other communities like Watertown and others you've worked on? What sort of the direction they've given you to sort of inform your approach for looking for a town manager? And I know you want to take input from us here tonight and from the select board and others. But what are those factors that are already kind of baked into your process and approach? Well, I think it's a great question. I think that if I, you know, you sort of described our process a little bit there is that what we've done is we've come in already and spoken to members of the board. We have the survey that's out there on the street. At this point, I think we have 116 responses, and we're hoping to get that up a little bit more by the 15th. And we've been speaking to some of the department heads. And we conducted a survey of the department heads of questionnaire to get their thoughts. You know, we've been digging into the information that's available to us to and then culminating really in tonight's meeting to grab as much information as we can to understand Arlington. You know, we walk into a community really with a we try to set aside any preconceived notions that we might have about the community. Again, I've been in the business a long time. So I walk into almost every community in the Commonwealth with sort of a perspective that I have some sense of what the community is all about. So I try but I try to set that aside and gather the information that we can to understand what's important to the stakeholders of the community. And that would be the department heads, the board, the public and the information we have. And we pull that all together, we generate a position statement, position profile that, you know, as I often say to every community, if we stopped right there, I think there's value because it's allowed the community to step back and think about what's important, what are we looking for from this individual that's going to be filling this position. But we create that position statement that then is used in two different ways. One, it's used to market the position. And it's used as a tool for us, for a screening committee, and for the board to assess the candidates that come forward. And we then move through the process of narrowing the search down and cool down to those individuals that most closely track to the ideal candidate. We conduct the interviews of those people, we bring finalists, the screening committee will bring finalists to the board. And the board will conduct their own interviews and make decisions based upon who would be the best most the best fit for that community. And what we think is important as we go through this process is to cast as wide a net as possible. And so you I appreciate you bringing up the town of excuse me, the city of Watertown. Because I think that's a great example of, you know, sort of reaching out to the network of people that we have, and spreading the word far and wide to identify potential candidates. In the case of George Parakas, I knew George and I was able to, you know, be in contact with him and talk about the position. But we really went out there and used whatever means we could to build the strongest possible pool of candidates. As I said, it's a very competitive market right now to find managers. There are some communities that really struggle. And you'd be surprised at some of the communities that really struggle to get candidates. Much of it's driven by geography. But there are other aspects of it as well, with regards to the political and governmental culture of the community. I don't think Arlington has a problem in that area, but there are communities that do. There are, you know, issues that may trouble some candidates. Again, I don't think Arlington is in that position. But, you know, so but we try to get out there and get as wide a pool as we can so that we have a diverse and qualified pool of candidates to bring forward to the town. So I hope I answered that with the question that you have, Phil. But, you know, our job here is to really assemble as much information as we can about the town and then cast that wide net, spread the word, and help bring those candidates forward for the town to consider. And Azir, if I just quick follow up, Bernie, is your network and those that you spread the word to, is that sort of out of state as well? Are we kind of talking about potential all New England search or nationwide? Like, where is it at? Great question. It's actually nationwide. We utilize the, you know, the network that we I guess there's two different ways I'll respond to that. One is, you know, the postings that we do include the International City and County Management Association. It also includes the women leading government organization generally that we that we reach out to the, you know, there are other organizations that represent underrepresented groups and people that we think should be brought into the mix, again, these are national organizations that we reach out to. But beyond that, you know, that's, that's a pretty simple process. You don't, very frankly, you don't need us to do that. We bring a variety of, you know, hopefully skills and perspective to the, to the job of looking at candidates and sort of managing through the process. But beyond that, we've developed a network over the last seven or eight years with the recruitments that we've done that's nationwide that we can bring candidates in from from all over. Because people have identified us as pretty much a go-to organization here in the Commonwealth that they can, if they're interested in working in municipal government in Massachusetts, community paradigm is the place to go. We have a, you know, for example, our website gets about four to five thousand hits a month of different candidates. You know, we're on the phone talking to people from around the country, looking at coming to Massachusetts and we have interest in being in the New England area that we speak to. You know, so we, we do do it from a nationwide perspective. The reality is, however, with all that said, the reality is that geography does play a role. It plays a role in what communities are looking for and it plays a role in what candidates are looking for. There aren't many people necessarily they're going to be looking to move from where they are to Massachusetts for a variety of reasons. And there are communities that are hesitant to look outside of the Massachusetts marketplace because of concern that, you know, there may not be the awareness or understanding of Tom meeting former government, the board of selectmen, select board of former government. So all of that plays into sort of creating the right match. But we have, we've brought people in from, you know, we have someone right now in Massachusetts, we brought in from Colorado, brought people in from, from Texas for, for, that have looked at positions comes immediately to mind. You know, some people from Connecticut, trying to go through all our clients upstop in my head here, but we do have people from around the country that we speak with. Okay. Another question that people may have, and you know, it isn't just questions, it's I should state that really, I hope you didn't come here to listen to me. If you did, I'm happy to speak, but I really want to hear from, from you and what you think we should know about Arlington, Elizabeth. Actually, I think I saw the next hand up first. Oh, I'm sorry, never sorry. That's okay. Yeah, I want to thank you for this opportunity. Although there's also a part of me that feels like this should always be, there should always be this kind of resident input into major decisions like this. I would like to see a hiring committee that includes some residents, particularly residents that represent some of the less engaged communities in town. One of the issues we face is that there are communities of people in Arlington who don't feel heard and feel pushed to the edges and have a hard time coming forward and expressing themselves. I do feel like we've moved a lot forward, but I am definitely someone who would be interested in reaching beyond the traditionally qualified candidate for town manager to looking maybe for people that have community organizing experience, non-profit management experience, experience working alongside people rather than over people in a hierarchical position. I would love to see somebody who is experienced at helping different groups of people within a community come together and communicate. There's tension between community members in town and our police department. I would love to see an effort put into improving that relationship and a more openness in our police department to dealing with some of the cultural problems they have. Yeah, just generally someone who is approachable and who is willing to think outside the box. I think that we have systems in place that we get very wedded to, but I would love to have us be able to think more outside the box and include more diverse ideas and opinions about how to move forward. Okay, great. Very helpful. Thank you. Hi, I'm Elizabeth. I want to thank you for this opportunity. I second, I agree with Lynette. I also have concerns about the people who are here are the people who are always here. If we look at these names and we're not reaching the people who perhaps we really need to hear from. So I hope that this isn't the end of your community engagement. I would hope that you would go to the senior center and do a listening session and go to where these communities are versus having people come to you. So as also as Lynette alluded to, there has been, I think the town fractured a couple of years ago. I think it's been a really hard time for the town. And I would love to see somebody who is open to working. I feel like there's capital T town organizations and there's lower T town organizations. So there's a lot of nonprofits, a lot of volunteer groups who are not officially part of the town organization, but do incredible things like Arlington eats. I'm part of a group called Arlington Fights Racism. So I would love to have a town manager who sees those people and groups as partners versus and reaches out to them and incorporates them into town events versus seeing them as other and not reaching out to them, maybe seeing them as competition. I don't really know. I'm not part of it. I'm the other. So I don't really know. I also agree that we need to have somebody who is willing to take a fresh look at public safety, the town's relationship with our public safety officers and be realistic. We've got problems and they're not going to go away by not talking about them. So let's talk about them. We need some courage. We need someone who's going to be brave and have the hard conversations. Thank you. Great. Thank you. Yeah, and I certainly, it's interesting to hear your thoughts on that regarding the partnerships that are out there with the organizations. Sort of, if I could sort of tie into my own experience that, you know, that was a key part, if you know the city of Lowell and the history it has in moving forward as a community of diversity and the partnerships have been developed with neighborhood and nonprofit organizations, being the Urban Teen Equality Coalition or the Cambodian Mutual Assistance Organization or the Coalition for a Better Eighth, which is a neighborhood development organization. They really looked at it, certainly during my time as manager there, they were looked at as really partners throughout the, in terms of improving the community. And I think that if you look at city managers, town managers in general, there's been a shift over the last number of years to become more focused on that and level of community engagement and working in partnership with different organizations that, as opposed to the more traditional, you know, stay in the back room, just working on your spreadsheets type of approach. So that type of perspective I think is where municipal management has gone and is heading. Yeah, if I could just, you know, Arlington is a community that's run a lot by volunteers. There's a huge volunteer, which is an incredible wealth and a gift, but it's also a very closed group of volunteers. It's not a system that's open for everybody. It's a who knows, not I'm not gonna, that's not, you know, I'm making a blanket statement. There are differences, but it's a who knows who situation. And I think that needs to be broken. And I think that the new town manager needs to be open to having public forums and hearing from people and not hiding. Yep. Thanks. Absolutely. Great. Thank you. Kristin. Hi. My name is Kristin Anderson. I'm a town meeting member in precinct 11 and I run a business in Arlington Heights. And I'm here tonight to ask you to find a town manager who has experience bringing commercial real estate tenants and commercial development opportunities to our beautiful town. Has lost much of its commercial development opportunities over the decades. This has had an impact on the town's budget. If you look at the municipalities with with which we share a border who do not have budget problems. I'm thinking Cambridge and Somerville. You'll see that those municipalities have a well balanced ratio of commercial real estate to residential taxes. They do not have to repeatedly raise taxes on their residents. Raising taxes is problematic for low income folks and for folks on fixed incomes. Some more commercial development not only provides residents with local jobs, it increases income diversity. And it is respectful of elders, many of whom have lived in Arlington for decades. And as someone who loves being able to live and work in the same town, I understand the value of being able to walk or ride my bike to work. Commuting is a terrible waste of personal time and our personal time is important. Quality of life improves for folks who are able to walk to their jobs. So I share a lot of concerns that folks have mentioned here this evening. But I wanted to specifically ask for this. Thanks for opportunity. Thank you. You know and we've certainly heard that. We're aware of the the sort of the dominance of the residential values creating the tax base of the town of Arlington and the challenges with regards to commercial development. So thank you for that. Thanks. Other people weigh in. What should we know about Arlington in terms of if we're okay Steve. Thank you Mr. Lynch. Steve Revolac 111 Sunnyside Avenue. I'll try to kind of answer the questions that you sort of set out for us and just sort of string it together. A few of the characteristics that I appreciated in Mr. Chapter Lane. I felt he was a good communicator. He was diplomatic and quite politically savvy. You know he was for in a lot of ways he was he was pretty good. He scored well as a people person. I also felt he was progressive especially in the areas of you know making town buildings more energy efficient and modernizing processes within the town. I also appreciated that he took a regional view on a lot of things. He was involved in the Metro Mayors Coalition with the Metropolitan Area Planning Council. You know the important point there being that some issues are you know better solved through collaboration with other municipalities. You can't just do them by yourself. And I think that's another area where Mr. Chapter Lane did well. In terms of challenges I think a lot of it for Arlington comes down to land use and transportation. You know having been a community that was built out in the 20th century we made a lot of the you know same mistakes that other communities in the 20th century made. You know we're not the sprawliest but we do have some of that and with the need to you know move away from fossil fuels global warming and that sort of thing these are all kind of big problems that we're going to have to address and we'll probably meet some municipal leadership to address them. That is what I have. Thank you. Okay great thank you. I made a come back for the question I was about to ask for more but I'd like to hear anybody else here that Mona. Mona. Hi. Mona Mandel. I think nine town meeting member and 14 Water Street Arlington. First of all thank you so much for providing this forum and really appreciate select board members and the committee to engage the community for more feedback and would also echo what Lynette was saying would be curious to hear if there is a hiring committee that is also formed for this purpose. I wanted to just I heard what you said and so these are just some things I felt would be to try to let you know what I feel would be some important things for the town manager. So first one is the top priorities for town manager. I feel that the we have a projected budget deficit that's coming up so I think someone who that is something that will be pretty high up there. Another top initiative would be Arlington public school systems and to support equity initiatives there. The third priority would be affordable housing. Fourth priority it's not in any order as such these are just some priorities as such. Fourth would be diversity equity and inclusion and being collaborative nature. The fifth one would be to support small business initiatives in Arlington so it broadens the tax base as to what Cristin also mentioned and last but not least is climate justice and climate emergency. Great yeah and you know it's interesting all of much not all this is echoing what we've been hearing as we as we've been in the town talking to people and from the survey so this is this is very helpful to hear this. Thank you. What skills and attributes do you think are important for the for the next minute? These are the issues but maybe maybe we're about to go into that. You know I wanted to my second point would be challenges I think you wanted to talk to challenges so I'll talk about that my humble opinion of course and the third talk about is skills and fourth is opportunities. I think those are how you laid out and I was trying to take notes as you spoke earlier. So in terms of challenges I would say Arlington has is political and there's a very strong civic involvement from various groups and so I think it's very important for the town manager to be perceived as well as actionate as being open to all view points rather than just focusing on protecting the the town interests only and that's where creative solutions can come out where you work collaboratively with various groups so I think that I see that as a challenge as well as an opportunity. The second thing would be the budget deficit I think for the town manager there's so many competing parodies I think that will be something we do want the town manager to think of because it has impacts about overrides which also impacts property taxes for people who may not be able to afford them who are in fixed income or maybe having issues with paying higher property taxes even though we support all the work just to have that into consideration as well be able to work with budget deficits in creative manner. The third thing I wanted to mention was the skills that you that I feel would be good I think one strong one would be community building experience working with groups who have varying opinions and perspectives being very collaborative and being open to working with different groups strong experience in governance and accountability and being talented open to creative solutions last but not least progressive and making processes more efficient for the town and its residents. In terms of opportunities Arlington is a leader in many areas and I think I don't have to go into that I think you see that in so many things that have been highlighted I'm sure when you talk to different residents in town but I do want to speak about some areas that I feel also need some help and I think that's an opportunity for this new manager to work on to develop. I think this was already mentioned outreach to various groups building relations with all groups including seniors including people of color including people who live in our affordable housing community as well as building trust with police relations with the town. So thank you so much that's all I had and I would love to hear from others. Thank you very much. Thank you there's a lot there that that I've written down so thank you very much. I'm going to go to Lynette or ask the Lynette to speak and then we'll come we'll come back to you Philip go ahead Lynette. I just wanted to add one more thing to my list. I think that it's really important to have leadership that is transparent and you know mistakes have been made by our town leadership to have the humility to admit oops we made a mistake here's how we're gonna you know to be open and you know we all have egos but the people who are in the highest positions have the hardest time owning their you know maybe minor mistakes but I think that it's a great model and that we learn from our mistakes and mistakes are an opportunity to move forward and if we don't own them we can't grow from them and we can't learn from them we've we've had in my opinion mistakes made by our leadership and especially in terms of the police department and the relationship with the police department and I'm and I would love to see that shift so there's a greater transparency you know here's here's what happened and here's what we did wrong and here's how we're going to fix it. Okay great thank you. Phil I'll go to him because I said I was going to go to you next but you have a couple other people who've jumped in that haven't spoken yet but go ahead Phil. I won't be too too long. I think all your comments are really terrific and I do especially want to second what Steve had said about Adam and I'm sure Bernie you already know a little bit about our previous town manager and some of the characteristics that made him what I think many people consider a pretty successful town manager so the more I think you know about Adam and I think he was kind of the perfect guy for the job at the time I think finding someone who reflects some of those qualities that Steve had talked about better than and I need to repeat him too much the communication the political savvy that you know he he also lived in Arlington or at least for most of the time that he was here and I think that that matters to some degree and I'm sure that isn't a requirement like I know it isn't city of Boston to live in a city that if you work for us but I think that that you know says a lot about Adam and potentially a future town manager the one kind of comment or opinion I want to say here too that I think to keep in mind I'd love to see in our next town manager I think Adam had this characteristic to some degree but you know I would have kind of wanted it perhaps even more so is to really recognize the power of of Massahab in our town and its critical importance it's really kind of a it's a powerful like organizing armature you know you said you wanted to learn about Arlington the way I say this is a planner it's a organizing armature of the town that's really more so than you see in just about any other town or small city that I know of where it provides you know the links it connects like all of our grocery stores all of our business districts our high school and our middle school and probably one of the elementary schools you know library the town hall kind of you know culture art but it could be more and I think that you know a town manager with you know who sort of comes to Arlington and really sees sort of diagrammatically how important Massahab is to the town and the transit I forgot to mention transit of course is key and understands that Massahab is is decent it's good but it could be so much better I think we've you know we've improved things and bits and pieces we've tried to make parts of it and and parts of it are indeed a complete street a livable street that are that is accessible for all modes of transportation for all ages for all abilities but it isn't quite there there are gaps in that pedestrian network and that bicycle network transit could be a little bit better there are opportunities redevelopment in the business districts I'd love to see more of that there you know are some sites where we probably could have some more density for both businesses and residences and you know I think again seeing Massahab as having that real potential to become something even more than that already is I'd love to see that in the town manager in the future okay great thank you yeah and I I've certainly spent some time on Massahab there in Arlington so I'm somewhat familiar with I won't again I never claimed to know be the expert on all this but it is a very crucial corridor certainly for the town so you know great thank you Robin Hi thank you for the opportunity to speak I'm also a town meeting member from Precinct 12 and I want to second a lot of the comments that were made especially by Lynette and Elizabeth and I also think that we need to do more for small businesses but I also want to see more done for artists in town I am an artist full-time full-time working artists I know that artists in the region have had a really tough time there's almost no studio space left anywhere in Metro Boston and surrounding areas and I say that as an artist too has had to go further out but I've been in West Concord for like 27 years and I'm getting squeezed out of my space eventually too just with real estate prices the way they are there's almost nothing affordable if there's anything at all and I would also suggest that you reach out to the arts community for input as well I'd like to see that I'd love to see diverse candidates for the position and I love the idea of reaching out to non-traditional sources to find candidates I love the idea of community organizers or non-profits or you know just other avenues for finding people who are good at at running things who have great executive function and multitasking skills and who are savvy about various things I had a question about how do you usually reach out to people excuse me well you know again we we focus you know largely on the network of people that we have and we depend too on people like yourself if there's people that you think that would be particularly interesting to us we utilize the again the sources or the resources of the posting organizations that we that we sort of focus in on municipal government and it's always interesting to hear looking with communities looking for people outside of the box and we certainly have seen that in some cases most communities do tend to focus in on people with municipal backgrounds or people that are familiar with municipal government and very frankly most people who are interested in these positions have made a lifetime commitment to the value of municipal government and therefore you know that's sort of the people that are out there looking there have been certainly some success stories of people that have come out of different sectors and tried to work in municipal government but there are others that have not been as successful you know have made the decision to get out of it so it is a challenge you know there's Massachusetts in particulars very unique in terms of its governmental structures it's it's laws it's regulations and there's you know we have I don't know how many communities have gone into that people say you know get us someone from the private sector get us someone from the non-private sector and once people get into the municipal world from those sectors it it doesn't necessarily always work out as well as one would hope and would like but certainly we're open to the possibility that there may be some people out there they're coming out of those you know I certainly can appreciate what you've what you've spoken of regarding the the artists community the creative economy you know the value that they bring to a community on so many levels and you know certainly we we'd be interested in hearing from from those people if they would like to weigh in on this process well I hope you'll reach out to the artist community also directly yeah is there is there an organization in in Arlington of the community yeah artists yeah yeah great great yeah okay well we can certainly try to to reach out and grab some information and input from them as we as we go through this process thank you great thank you Rajiv hi there thank you to everyone for providing this opportunity for us to be able to voice our opinions and thoughts about this very important step I am part of the Arlington Human Rights Commission so I just wanted to state that but I do not speak for the commission I speak on my personal behalf today I just want to echo a lot what is already being said so I won't repeat it all but just wanted to quickly go through all of the other people talking about the importance of diversity making sure that the person who is hired is focused on affordable housing listening to people who are not heard people who belong to minority communities being on the commission we often hear from people who are at the most vulnerable who are facing issues who have been sort of targeted for their minority status so I really hope that the new town manager whoever it is works to be proactive about solving these issues a lot of these issues occur and we sort of have a reactive approach and we are trying to fix things or patch things but if we have we are more proactive about it addressing upfront as to why this is happening why do we have swastikas in the schools and you know Black Lives Matter signs being stolen or vandalized and we've had a whole spate of these issues so I really feel that the town manager needs to come in and has to kind of address some of these issues make the people those who are vulnerable feel or that they belong to this community I mean one of the easiest way to kind of illustrate how people don't feel heard is if you see the voting patterns some of the more diverse these things always have the lowest voter turnout it's just because I don't think they feel heard so they don't feel like they want to vote or you know have a say in who gets to represent people in town there's a lot of incredible work being done by a lot of town bodies and committees but the representation or the people who are part of these committees it belongs to always you know white upper class or you know higher income demographics I would encourage the new town manager to develop a process to be able to recruit people who are diverse who have different opinions who are from all all spheres of Arlington and ensure how you know because what happens is the majority even on those town's bodies and committees people who volunteer the efforts the majority of the work is done by a very few we have to be able to create a process where you have to make sure that everybody has an effective voice and making sure that all those views are represented I also echo somebody who talked about the importance of Mass Ave we want to make sure that every time I'm on Mass Ave I always hear from people about feeling unsafe if they're biking or they're walking on crosswalks we have to develop a mechanism where people feel safe to be able to access all the wonderful businesses that we have on this great corridor of Mass Ave and I think yeah that's that's all I oh the one final thing is that being part of the AHRC I also view we partner with other towns about a lot of diverse events that are held but Arlington doesn't seem to have to do seem to have a lot of those happening in our town you know things like Indigenous People's Day and so on a lot of the other towns are making a huge effort to involve their minority communities it would be great if we could do something like that something like not only maybe you're not on the scale of the town day but something you know to be able to celebrate all those communities I mean I moved to this town about 15 years ago I had no idea what was going on and now when I first moved here only when I made an effort to engage myself to realize that there are so many towns and bodies and committees it would be great if Arlington developed a mechanism where anybody who moved to town has a way of no you know feeling known that there's all these opportunities for them to volunteer and engage so it would be great if the town or the town manager develops a process to do that okay great right thank you thank you for taking your time to listen to us today great thank you Barbara hi thank you very much I really appreciate the opportunity to come and talk to you I'm going to try and keep it short and make maybe three points but the first point is I come from a probably this relatively unique position in this that I was raised by a city manager I was the child of a city manager grew up in the household so I am like so familiar with the pressures and the and the you know the problems and the decisions and the issues and the budgets that need to come out of that person's head while they're running this position and and as I think about it I think about it as as a good town manager for Arlington I think needs to be like an orchestra leader and the and the orchestra leader has the audience that he's there to please specifically though he has a board of no I can't get rid of that the select board that he has to please because he or she does not work for the town specifically unlike a mayor form of government the town manager works for and to make the select board happy so with that in mind removing the select board's happiness the town also has to be happy and the town is like the audience in this orchestra hall and and the department heads are the the members of the orchestra if there's one thing that I would like for a town manager to be able to do is to make those those department heads work together as a team make them feel like a team be good at team building make them understand what's going on and care about what each other is doing within their departments and to be aware of the various needs and interests and policies that the audience thinks are going to come out the town policies that come out of of that are that the town's people are aware of make sure that all of the department heads are aware of those policies in Arlington we have elected we have boards that are elected we have boards that are appointed we have boards that are appointed by the town we have boards that as Robin referred to earlier the the arts groups that are in town that are not necessarily some have some appointments and some are just freestanding groups we have a lot we have dozens and dozens of groups that contribute tremendously to the quality of life of people in Arlington and those groups some of them have very formal mission statements and policies others have less formal goals and policies the town manager needs to be aware of of those goals and policies and needs to weave it in to the department heads in their daily and weekly and monthly goals so that they can reinforce those policies that come out from the audience great thank you and where was your mother or father city manager back in that day it would have been the father and and he was for about 20 years in Santa Ana and before that big deal all right so you you know you know the business so oh yeah good very good thank you very much thank you Elizabeth um great I I wanted to just maybe ask you a couple questions about the process so two people have asked if there is a selection committee and I'm wondering if you could answer that and say who is on it if there is and if there isn't what is the plan about that and be what is the transparency of this process how will we as residents be able to follow along will there be publication of the statement of the position statement you know I'm curious to know what you're hearing from the department heads and from the select board about what they would like in a town manager so how do we stay informed sure sure in terms of the there's not a selection committee and I think what we'll probably be talked about at some point by the board is a in some type of screening committee to help with the process the board selects the the manager so there's not a there's not a committee that selects the manager that's the responsibility of the the board the select board but there is talk we're working now on what type what the screening process would look like and how that works out and so we'll that that will be coming up though in a subsequent conversations with the select board in terms of the position profile yes it will be a public document we can it'll be posted on our web page and I would anticipate it would be posted on the town's web page and it will provide all of that you know again keep in mind it's going to be a pool to market the position to give people information about the town about the position about the issues you know and it's it's done in a format that if you go to our website communityparadigm.com you can see what's out there right now and other positions that we're working on in other communities we can you know someone mentioned the town of water the city of Watertown which we just recently completed in the last few months we did the same process there but that will be that's out there it is very transparent as far as the actual screening process the screening of the candidates will occur in executive session that is not public because people's jobs are at stake and we don't we want to get them you know the most robust diverse pool that we can and so people tend to apply for positions unless there's some guarantee of confidentiality as they go through the process but once the screening process results in the selection of finalists that are sent on to the board those will be public those are public presented publicly the candidates are out there publicly and they will be interviewed publicly so that's all a very public process it's some some states the laws allow for that to be take place outside of public the public but in massachusetts it's required that those finalists be considered publicly thank you and when you are screening candidates how do you how do you control for bias you know we've we've used a process in a couple of the communities of a blind review it's more challenging in the municipal sector or for a position of this sort because you know we can we can delete names of people you know we can try to take out any identifying information that tells people whether you know what the gender is what the gender identity is what the ethnicity and race and age are but the end of the day you know we're going to be looking people are going to be looking at this individual works at this location and you know if you started to take out the communities that they work in and we've tried doing that then you lose everything it's about the people's backgrounds so we can we've tried to take out some of that information but it's it's it's met with only limited success the other the other aspect of that that's that's I would say interesting and maybe that's not the best word is that many communities now with the emphasis and that has been placed on building a more diverse who are interested in seeing what you know who are the people from underrepresented groups that have applied for the position so we've had committees that we've worked with that have said you know you know it is a challenge getting people of color to apply for these positions getting women to apply for these positions we just don't have the reality is that we don't necessarily have as many people from those groups that are that are applying for these municipal positions in spite of all of our efforts because there's still just challenges out there but in communities there has been a push well you know let's make sure that we have women people of color that are in our pool that we're looking at so that of course disappears when you make it a blind process so we try to weigh all of that as we go through it but we have we have used it but it's it hasn't necessarily met with as much satisfaction as some people were looking for thank you you know it's not like you know there's in the if we were a high tech company just are we can use that as an example and we were looking for a software engineer just a software engineer you know there's hundreds thousands of software engineers out there you know and you want to take away the the name that would tell you the the light would like to tell you the gender of the ethnicity then you know really would matter because then you really could see it but when you need to throw in where people are working that's going to tell you and everyone it's all public so it's all googleable so that people can just do their own thing if there are if they're on the committee so it's a hurdles that we've tried to work through Robin I was just wondering what the time frame is do you know yet in terms of yeah our goal is to probably get this out on the street at the beginning of December with the goal being that we would have resumes in hand at the beginning of January go through the screening process in the interviews during February and have these in the hands of the select board by the beginning to middle of March with a hiring probably sometime in early April okay thanks sure and that in that way usually these positions there's a about a 60-day notice period so the hope would be that the new town manager would be in place probably sometime in June another question Conquering I just can I just say I know I said this before and I think you probably noted it but I think that if the town is really committed to having a diverse applicant pool that they would do well to look beyond the normal recruiting places to looking for people with community organizing experience and nonprofit management experience that's where you'll find the women and the people of color okay yeah and again I think that what communities have found is and I certainly support that and support the you know we're very proud of the fact that we have had through our searches the 90 or so that we've done women have been in the finalist pool in I believe about 70 percent of our searches have resulted women in the finalist pool and selected in 35 to 40 percent I haven't run those numbers recently both of which exceed the state average and we have had an opportunity to have a number of candidates that are people of color that have been interviewed and or appointed so we're very proud of all of that and the balance really is the diversity of the pool and making sure that the people that are in the pool are truly interested in the position and are appropriate for the position and you know it's really weighing all of that that we're focused on but yeah we couldn't agree more on the importance of the the diversity of the pool something we take very seriously good thank you other comments that people may have I think we've blocked off about an hour and a half of this tonight running up against that but we're here to hear from you so want to make sure we have we get everything that we we possibly can and we can go a little later since we started about 10 minutes later late as well yeah okay okay Len I think we're though I think we're probably everyone's had an opportunity now I think to weigh in and or said what they need to say but again if there's something we're missing here no we did leave this wide open just so that people could speak about whatever they wanted and ask any questions to make any comments so there'll be other opportunities you know so whether Mr. Lynch is here or not me we will hold in other forums mean and we'll reach out to the community and certainly if anyone has any ideas you know more suggestions as to the pool to reach and where to reach them I'm all ears me my colleague is all ears and so we will do as much as we can you know and and and and any and in any format mean and and provide that to Bernie if it's appropriate and certainly to all colleagues when it's appropriate also and I think I think people here in attendance and people that may be watching this on local local cable government access cable you know they know how to get a hold of the board members and I'll put my email out there it's be Lynch at communityparadigm.com if people have additional information that they want to send on to me you know our goal is to get this out on the street in December but the selection won't take place until much later so at any point between now and December and then beyond that if people have questions or if feedback that they want to give to the board members or to me happy to take it and really I was trying to emphasize to me it is only doing the creation of the position statement of the profile that we want input made we will take input right at the time that we make the decision so exactly Elizabeth um so will there be other what what is the what is the game plan for further outreach beyond to the community beyond tonight is there other listening sessions I think I think what generally generally what and again following the model that that we've used in other communities the the you know we we're always able to willing and able to take feedback and information throughout the process but we use the forum we use the survey and then generally there's some type of process or some type of citizen engagement or community engagement towards the end of the process as we're looking at the finalists to give people an opportunity to meet people but we have to we need to talk that over with the board as we get towards that end yeah I just think you're going to get different input than the you are from this group about what people in town need from a town manager and I just think that there's a missed opportunity to hear from different people and rather than the same people so I'm just going to put that out there okay thank you it's certainly we'll we'll we'll we'll explore some other opportunities that maybe possible out there okay okay well you know I think we're going to bring this to an end you know and I'll circle back to my colleagues Steve if he wants to say anything or comment thank you now I just want to thank everybody again and as I was listening to the comments tonight these comments are going to be helpful to us to our colleagues but also to people who ultimately will apply for the job because I'm sure they as proud of their due diligence for the town they will take a look at meetings as well as this forum tonight so thank you for the participation great yes thank you thank you very much everybody you know so I'm going to end the recording now maybe thank you I wish you a good night great thank you buddy good night thank you