 Steve, you're all I care for Franklin Matters, Franklin Public Radio, and Franklin TV in this case, doing a video interview with one of our council candidates, candidates for town council specifically, Glenn Jones. Glenn, how are you doing this evening? Good evening, Steve. How are you doing, my friend? Good to see you again. Indeed. So for people who may not know who's this Glenn Jones, why don't you give them kind of your short Franklin story, or however long you want to make it? Steve, I'd be very happy to give them that story. Well, I grew up and I was born in Cambridge and raised in Watertown. I met my wife in Brighton, actually over in the awesome Brighton area, and she was from Rosendale. So we're both officially from the city, but we were in the process of getting married, looking for a place to live, and my mother, and the funny story goes that my mother was the real estate agent. And she says to me, she goes, well, I think we've found the house you're looking for, but it's in this small town called Franklin. So me and Nicole looked at each other, and the first thing that popped in our heads was, where's Franklin? You know, back then in 1998, never heard of it. I lost it with some kind of farm country out west. Some place past 128, and back then anything past 128 seemed like a cow town. So we jumped on 495, and the funny story goes that when we jumped on 495, we thought it was taken forever to get out of there, and there were maybe six cars on the road at the time. So we got off at the exit, back then it was exit 17, and it was a stop sign coming on to a two-lane road, and we drove up West Central Street, and we pulled onto School Street, where we was one of the houses we were looking at, and we just fell in love with the house. And the people who owned the house then, they were kind enough to show us the house, they were kind enough to show us the backyard, and we were happy with the neighborhood, and we raced back to Watertown, and we put a bid on it on the house, and that started my history story here in Franklin with Nicole. We got married not long after funding this house, and we've been here ever since. So that's been 28 years, and Nicole and I have been married for 25 years, and actually with 25 years ago that we got married and moved in the house, and we've raised five children in this wonderful time. One thing that has made this town so great for us, other than just the great offerings it has from the library to the school system to all the fun amenities and recreation, was the very community feel that this town has. I mean, it's never lost that feeling, and it's never lost that appeal, and I've actually seen it just almost recently in the happenings around town, where there's such a sense of community in this town, and that's what Nicole and I were looking for to really start a family. So I have five children, I touched based on that second ago. My oldest daughter Dakota, she's 24. She currently lives in Alston, ironically. My daughter Jillian, she's 23. She also lives in Alston. She just moved to Alston too. And my daughter Rebecca, she's 15. And my other daughter Sabrina, she is 13. My son who sneaks right smack dab in the middle at 19, he actually just graduated from Franklin High School, and currently, believe it or not, goes across the street to Dean College. He's a college student who, you know, you don't hear many interesting stories of people who graduated Franklin High School and go to Dean College, but my son did. And part of the reason he chose Dean College was because of the drama program. He's an actor. He's an actress, performing. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. So all of my children went through the Franklin Public School systems, and it has served them all well. I currently have two more left in the system. I hate to put it that way, but I have one in ninth grade, I have one in seventh grade, and they love it. They've always enjoyed the public schools here in town. And all of my children, I think one of the main topics that comes up when we discuss schools nowadays, they all went through Davis Thayer. And Davis Thayer was right across the street from my house, and it was so great to grow up in such a wonderful neighborhood. The Davis Thayer neighborhood, the Davis Thayer neighbors, and the families that have been part of this community have been just so great to grow up and very inviting. So a little bit about me, a little bit of the background about me. I'm an electrician by trade. And I started working in the field back in 1998 as soon as I graduated from high school. I did my apprenticeship up until 1992. Those were some tough times. I spent most of the 90s from 92 up until around 2000, working in the electronic engineering field. I worked for a couple of companies, one of which was a laser company called General Scanning, they made laser optical systems. And then I worked for another engineering company called Micro Optical, where we were designing wearable heads up displays and doing a few projects for DARPA in the military. My first daughter was born in 1999. And my wife said to me, she says, you need to join the union. And it would be a better fit for you. So I said, okay, so I joined on to the union, local 103 out of Boston. And I've been in that local for almost 23 years now. And what that is, is the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. And during my career, I've done many things from building Gillette football stadium, to working on projects here in town, things from the food pantry to 15b record. And when I was the fun part about 15b record was at the time I was working for Tri-County Regional Vocational Technical High School as a full time teacher, and I had several students help me build that project. My specialties, everything from computers, to electronics, to house wiring, commercial residential and industrial type of wiring. But mainly, I work as a teacher now. So I work as a full time instructor over at JTC of Boston. It's over in Dorchester. Many people may recognize the location, because the real landmark for us is the turbine that you see off of the highway. Plus we have a really large sign right in front of our union hall. It's also right across the street from that very familiar painted tank that everyone loves talking about the landmark for that area over in Dorchester. But I teach full time, and I enjoy teaching. We have about 1700 apprentices in our school, and we're looking to grow the program. We just recently renovated the building. And my wife works as a full time nurse. This is actually her workstation. I'm actually right now, but she works as a telephonic nurse. She's worked as a psychiatric nurse, pediatric nurse, and now she works for a company called CCA where she does telephonic nurse. And that's about it. I mean, I fell in love with this town, and I'm probably never going to leave my wife jokes. She goes, they're going to bury your ashes here as soon as they actually get you off the council and out of politics at some point. But I do, I really do love it in this community. And my family loves it here. I just find it ironic that my two older children have made their way back to the place that my wife and I started from. So everything goes full circle. What goes around comes around, they say, right? And Steve, you know, I have to admit people like yourself, when I met what feels like, you know, a long time ago, almost 15, 15 years ago, when I was getting into the campaigning running for town council originally, back in 2008, I was going around the town, visiting various locations from the senior centers to all the different committees. And the subcommittees, I had met various people on the open space committee. I was on the open space committee back then. And I made a real goal, number one, my number one goal back in 2008 was to familiarize myself with the happenings of the town. And that was visiting all the different committees, subcommittees, boards, et cetera, I spent about a year visiting the town council and getting to know how they work. And that's actually where I met you when you were first starting at your efforts, as frankly matters. And we've known each other since and I'm very proud to call you a friend, Steve. Thank you. Good. So certainly you've mentioned in that, since you also spent time since then on the council, certainly engaged in the community, the democratic process as well. Regular voting is certainly encouraged. You want to speak to that as well? Absolutely. That's a good question. I was actually just looking something up and when I was read, you know, it's to quote, it's a right to vote is essential. Well functioned democracy is the motion enshrined right by our constitution. And you know what? I'm a firm believer in that because growing up the one my father was a Marine, just a little bit of a backstory to this. And he was a true blooded true blue American. And he had he believes in this country, he fought for this country as a Marine. And he instilled in me that that one basic understanding in life if you don't vote, if you don't do your part, it's really hard to make a change and to complain about something if you have if you yourself are not actually doing your part in the democracy. And there is no better right that's given to us as American citizens than the right to vote. And I have made every effort since I could first vote back in 1988, when I turned 18 years old, I think I just missed the first bush. I did I missed the first bush and Reagan vote back in 1998, I believe it was 98 that the vote was for for Bush, and I just missed that election. So I've been voting ever since I'm by, by the way, it's described, I'm a level A voter, I vote in both local, state and federal elections. And I think everybody should most important part of voting though, Steve, is that people need to learn about their candidates. So like this interview, for instance, people should go out, they should listen to people's interviews, they should read articles about their these people's learn and be an educated voter, because who do you want running your state? Who do you want running your country? Who do you want running your town? And speaking of the town, as myself, a fellow town counselor, I think many, many people don't actually realize how much of an effect we as local counselors have on their everyday business. Because we set, we set the tax rates here in the town. We set the policies. We set the bylaws and the rules and the zoning and trash pickup and road repairs, schools, etc, etc. So local politics plays a big part in everyday life. And people need to go out and learn as much as they can about the people that they're going to vote for. And I have and always will continue to support individuals kind of stepping up to the plate coming out of their, you know, their, their uncomfortable zone and, and stepping into the light a little bit and learning how the process works, being a part of the process. And every single time I see new faces that come up and are eager to be a part of the process, it makes me so happy. You know, it almost makes me feel like I've done my job successfully and being a cheerleader for local politics in the community where people now step up and take part and kind of take the reins. And that also allows people, I'm sorry I'm rambling on about this, but that actually allows people an opportunity to see the inner workings. Because when I first got involved in this process back in 19, 19, 2008, I hadn't really had a vast background in local community, and let alone understanding of how all that worked. All I was getting my news from was from Country Gazette. If you recall the Country Gazette, which was one of my favorite weekly publications, that was news that was a week old. And you were only getting snippets of information. So I said to my wife back then, this is bothering me. I really need to know what's going on. And I said that I felt the best way to find out what was going on was to actually be a part of what was going on. And I haven't looked back since. And I'm just looking forward and I'm hoping to continue that process. But I love it when people joined, when they become a part of our democracy, and they actually learn how this process works. I think Melanie coined it best in her interview with you recently when she says, you know, it takes a good two years to really kind of wrap your brain around how all of this works. And it's all about education and learning as much as you can and taking what you learn and applying it back towards making the community and continuing to make the community the best place to live and raise a family. Yep. Good. So let's highlight at least what you bring to the table in terms of whether you're a background. Certainly you've got some years of experience on the council, but what do you bring to the council in terms of your background, your skill set that helps the council operate in terms of our behalf? No, that's a great question, Steve. I would say how does my job being an electrician as a master electrician tie into helping manage the town's budget? How does that help me manage making policy? How does my experience as a father, how do all that play into my ability to be a good counselor? Well, I'd say I would say many things do. Decision making, you know, as a father, I have to make some very important decisions based around the health and welfare of my family. And in big picture, that's how I kind of look at the community. It's like it's almost just like an extension of my family where my number one goal is to try to make the best possible decisions for the for the voters and for the community at large, including our businesses, our small businesses, our big businesses and our non-profits of churches and everyone else. It's just it's my decision making ability. And also when it comes to being a master electrician, I'm very, very familiar with the process that it takes to start something from nothing and make it into something very large. You know, I jokingly said to my apprentices last week, I go, who's the first one on the job? They go the electrician. I go, right. We show up to the job when it's nothing but dirt. And with the last ones to leave, turn the lights on and handing everybody the instructions to how they're building works. You know, that's the best part about being an electrician is we, we, we start off at a small pace. We start with small projects and we work up towards bigger projects. I've worked on just about every kind of project you could think of from power plants that worked on the Bellingham power plants over here. I helped build Gillette football stadium back in 2000 and State Street, many of the buildings over there. What it really boils down to is my ability to take a set of plans and work with those set of plans to ultimately build the big picture and then working with the contractors and working with the building owners to get their project off of the ground and ultimately get it to their final project. And I can walk away being proud that I had a big part of making that work. And that's how I feel about being a counselor. And I take that same approach. I try to be pragmatic. I try to be logical. I have, I like to refer to myself as a utilitarian. Many people probably don't know what that means. But I'll give you, for instance, and I know I'm going to get a lot of heat for this. But there had been discussion about tearing down Fenway Park and building a new baseball park. And when I heard about that, first of all, it would have been a great project for my apprentices and electricians to work on. I said, sure, that sounds like a really clever idea because why do we build a baseball park? We build a baseball park to play baseball. And Fenway Park for its time was probably a really cool place to go to. But the seating is old. The building is old. The structure is old. The seating isn't that great. It's not really laid out too well to watch a baseball game. Like, for instance, when you're sitting in the grandstands, you're facing center fields. It has, it had its day. It had its history. And maybe it's time to move on and build something new. This was when they were talking about building it. Obviously, they changed their mind and kept the old building. But the Yankees did it. I hate to bring up the Yankees, but they had 26 World Series wins in Yankee Stadium. And they still were logical enough to realize that this building scene today, we need to build something new and start building a new legacy in a new building. And that's kind of some of the mindset I had when we were looking at the plans to build the new Franklin High School. So I was on the council at the time when the plans came across our desk to, from working with the MSBA to build a new high school, we were working off of what was referred to as the model plan. And we looked at about four different models, one of which was the Whitman-Hanson Project. And when I saw that model, the first thing that popped into my head was perfect. It's a perfect design. It's like a, it's like a racetrack. You turn left, you turn left, you turn left, you back where you started. It's three levels. It's got sunlight in between. It's a very simple, but it serves the purpose. And it's a very appealing building. And that's always been my approach. I looked at the old building. I said to myself, is it worth keeping? And the logical answer to that was no, because it was too old. It was too worn out for as nostalgic and as much history as it created, it was time to move on to something new. And that's kind of how I approach everything with a very pragmatic, very logical planning type of approach. And sometimes in life, you have to look at things to say, what's best? I'll give you an example. Unfortunately, I don't have much say in this because I'm going to butter. But as I spoke earlier about Davis there, we're all my children are going to be there. There's discussion on what would be the best use for building that was built in 1924. What runs through my head as a decision maker is how could we best utilize the building to fit much of what the community's needs are, but what's the cost? How much is it going to cost the community to turn it into some of this building? Or even differently, if it did go to a 501c3 nonprofit, how much money would have to be invested in order to bring it up to code, in order to get it to be suitable for those needs? And would it be a viable, long sustainable project? And there are many decisions and that's going to come up with the Davis there reuse committee. So I mean, I have my own thoughts on it and hopefully we'll come up with a suitable decision. But which leads me to my next point, which is as the chairman of the master plan, I was appointed to the as chair to the master plan committee. We're taking our existing 2013 master plan, which had had a little bit of updating in 2020. And we're looking to write a new 10 year plan based off of some of the goals. So what are what our committee is doing, it's a 13 person committee is we're going through all the various goals that were set back in 2013, everything from land use to zoning to housing to cultural aspects, historical aspects, and looking at those objectives that were set back then, crossing off the list, what had been done, kind of revamping some that we would like to keep. But we're also really looking for some input from the community as to how they would like to see Franklin over the next 10 years. And this is kind of both an interview slash outreach to the community saying, what do you want your your time to be? How do you want this to look 10 years from now? Let's make a plan. Let's sit down, take what we have, which is a great foundation. And then move it forward into making this the best continuing to make this place a bit live and raise a family small business. I mean, it's such a such a great such a great time. Yep, sorry. I think that'll give us a good segue to the next question, where in one of your key roles, certainly the hiring and time administrator managing him, because then he runs everything else in the town. But your other key role is the annual budget. Certainly the school committee does their piece, you give them a line item, they manage the rest of that. But from what we've seen in the forecast for the next few years, at least, there's going to be some challenging times, some tough decisions, what kind of prioritizations. And I think you've alluded to some of that, but I just want to rephrase that in terms of the budget decisions that you and the council will be faced over the next couple of years. Well, I wish I could say this was my first rodeo with this, but it's not. We went through some very hard times back in the recession, back to the when the recession hit in 2008 and the market fell, the housing market fell. And we were in some really tough times back in 2009, 2010, all the way through 2011, when when some light was finally started to shed itself, we had to make some tough decisions. As I'm sure it's been explained in many facets by many counselors, the only way that the community, meaning that the town government has a means to raise additional funding is through property taxes. And it's set at two and a half every single year based on proposition two and a half. So we're not just, we're not a company in the sense that we can raise fees or raise prices and just really nearly do whatever we have to do to try and raise additional funding. It's just a work like that. We are restricted to where we can get money. And that is through property taxes. So if the community so chooses to give additional funding to support the budget, we can always put forth a operational override. But there hasn't been a lot of success with that. And whenever we have unsuccessful overrides or when we hit tough times like we did back in 2009, 2010, what it ultimately boils down to is making those tough decisions. We have to look at the big picture and say to ourselves, okay, what can we keep? I equate it to my old household here. When times get tough, I was laid off for seven, eight months back in 2009. You have to look at the budget, your own budget and your own personal wishes and needs and say to yourself, all right, where are we going to make the cuts? Does it mean just using the houses as an example? Does it mean that we cut back on cable television? Do we cut the cord? Do we cut back on gas use? Do we cut back on food expenses? Do we start clipping coupons? That's what I would do here at the house. But when it comes to the town, there aren't a lot of options because the largest cost, I should say the largest cost driver for the town's budget is payroll. And nine out of 10 times whenever something has to be cut, it's typically it's either a layoff or it's a cut in the department. And what that means is like back in 2009, it could have been for police officers, it could have been firefighters, it could have been librarians, it could mean closing the library on more days. It could be making some really drastic cuts to our services that ultimately at the end of the day, nobody wants. Nobody wants to cut any of the services that this community has to offer because it's what makes the community such a great place to live. The good news is that we were able to get through those hard times and the value of the community went up. We've continued to be named one of the number one communities in the country and that helps bolster our our income through economics. We have 20 percent of our budget is based on commercial industrial and those businesses are thriving, which is a good thing. We've attracted some really good businesses over there. We've offered a TIF to Hamilton Technologies who came into town. We help Coltsnap, which is a company that really grew a lot since the COVID pandemic. Colchain. I'm sorry Colchain. We'll have to edit that one out of it. Get the Colchain. I have Coltsnap on my brain. And so many other good businesses in the community that have helped us afford to have a lower tax rate because I think one of things that many people don't realize is that our lower tax rate in general is based on our valuation of the community as a whole, which I think if I recall off the top of my head, we're about a $4.6 billion community. But if the time comes in the next year or two and to answer your question, if we have to make some more tough decisions, there are very few places that we can make those choices. More than likely it would mean making personnel cuts, which would mean a diminishment in services provided. And that's not something we're looking to do. We're always looking for new and interesting ways to kind of pinch a penny. And as the expression has been said many times over the year, cut it to the bone. We don't want to be in the position of cutting it to the bone because so many things get lost in the mix. Like, for instance, the schools, the schools, myself as an instructor, teachers, they deserve so much for all the hard work that they do teaching our children. It's been so tough keeping teachers on the rolls. They deserve the pay that they deserve. But the school's budget is always just as much a challenge as the town's budget when it comes to insurances, overhead costs, busing, etc. That those things are just going up. We as a community face the same issues that my household does. When times get tough, inflation comes along like it does right now. The gas prices go up, electric bill goes up, fuel costs go up for fuel in my car. And in the town as a whole we face those same problems. We have to gas police cars. We have to gas TPW trucks. We have to have busing to bus our kids. So what it boils down to and it has always boiled down to one thing and that's the community's input. The community needs to come out. The citizens need to come out and they need to speak with us. They need to speak with the counselors and they need to speak with the town administrator and they need to speak with the finance committee and they need to speak with the school committee and say, okay, if times get tough, this is what we need. There's always a what we want picture, but this is what we need. And when we make these decisions, I want to sit down and make it with the community as a whole so they understand how it's going to be impacted. But with full faith and understanding that we're going to get through this, just like we did back in 2009 and 2010. Okay. Well, thank you for taking time to elaborate on your positions, your background skill set, et cetera, and certainly justifiably gave the plug in there for the master plan as well. I endorse that the master plan certainly gives us as a community and you on our behalf, you know, what is the vision? What do we want to be when we grow up in the next 10 years? We've certainly evolved. How will we continue to evolve? That's in our control at this point. Is there something you want to leave with the voters that we haven't discussed? Keep faith. You know, keep faith and just being the great people that you are, because it's really the citizens that this community is so great. I was almost so giddy the other day. It was awkward over at the comms and it was the unfortunately, the last farms market that was being held. But I was in such a good mood because the citizens voted to support building a new school in Franklin, Tri-County Regional and Occasional Technical High School. 80% of the voters voted approving that building. It was a beautiful day on Friday and so many people were out at the farmers market, visiting everybody, getting the last purchases in before the cold day like today would come along. Yesterday was such a beautiful day. Saturday they had a drunker treat up at the library. They had the fire department had a great event going on and then the police department also had a Halloween party where it was packed and it was packed with so many citizens and I was just so happy and giddy to see everyone out and about and enjoying the great the great town of Franklin. And I could I could say they're all night, Steve, and just boast about how many wonderful things there are about this town. But just seeing people out and about and enjoying everything, that's one thing I enjoy so much. It's really why I do what I do and I just love what I do so much. It's the reward of the smiles of the kids getting what they want and the parents being happy and ultimately the citizens getting what they need. So thank you for that. Well thank you. And that'll give us a nice segue as well that the citizens and voters particularly I'm assuming most of you are registered generally the registrations have been fairly high. Do take your opportunity to vote either by mail in person there are still some in person opportunities in the town clerk's office before the election and then certainly on election day Tuesday November 7th from 6 a.m through 8 p.m at the high school the precincts will be in order in this particular case because it's a town election as opposed to tri-county it was just an alphabetical list so the precincts didn't matter. The vote counted but the vote and the precincts count this time around. So I think and oh contact info I know you're on Facebook your contact info is on the town page as well any preference in terms of other ways to contact you. I can always be reached in my town email account gjones at franklinna.gov if anybody has any questions or comments or input or they'd like to be part of the process please send me an email my phone number I can you know if you email me and if you're looking for to contact me directly I can always give you my phone number but I do have a Facebook page Glen Jones Franklin Town Council and I also have Glen Jones just a regular Facebook page too if you'd like to like my page and we can be friends and I can share as much information as you would like. One thing I will admit is that I'm a factual person I just the facts the whole facts and nothing but the facts as the clerk of the council that's my job. Indeed well thank you for taking time today to share this with the voters residents and community of Franklin when you encourage you as well listeners to vote on or before November 7th and a final reminder we do this because Franklin matters. Is it us?