Selectmen meeting scheduled for Monday, August 28, 2017 has agenda item listed as 4c, open meeting law response from Advisory Committee.

TO: Board of Selectmen
FROM: Carter Terenzini, Town Administrator
RE: Administrator’s Weekly Report
DATE: August 24, 2017
CC: All Departments

BoS: Please submit your Annual Retreat Survey to Holly ASAP so we are ready for 09/06.

The following is intended to provide information where a full memo may not have been warranted or supplement the provided information.
Business Meeting or Workshop:
4. c. The response takes refuge in a defense on the basis of free speech rights and does not acknowledge the issue of a majority of the board viewing or commenting upon matters over which they have domain. That said, it seems the best approach would be a continuation of that expressed by the Board at its last meeting. 

4. d. Should any final draft presented to you gain your approval, or – failing that – should you decide to continue negotiations, we will also need to discuss the schedule for Town Hall and any changes to your meeting schedule. This will also impact potential revisions to the Countdown to the FY’19 Budget & Legislative Package. You asked me to consider accelerating the presentation of the FY ’19 revenues (which I can move to your workshop of 10/02 if I am not trying to also present the five-year financial forecasts envisioned in the Draft financial policies). You have also asked me to consider accelerating the review process. I am not at all convinced we can do this by having all departments present and defend on the first workshop of 03/02. First this would be a substantial amount of material for you to have to review in the week between the 02/26 presentation and this workshop. Secondly, I do not believe you could get through all of the departments in the one evening. Therefore, I am going to suggest that we look at adding some meetings in March such that we can target 03/26 as Adoption.

If the selectmen follow the last approach, there will be more name calling and more of the "we are the adults here, etc, etc." Kind of hard to state a quorum of a seven member committee violated open meeting law when only 3 names appear on the complaint. The selectmen appear to be assuming things - again and as the  saying sometimes goes; when you assume, you make an ass out of You and me. In my opinion this is more posturing by the selectmen and is aimed at mitigating effectiveness of something covered within Templeton Town by-laws. It also distracts from the fact that in 3 years, the board of selectmen have failed to deliver a Town Administrator, which was a Town Meeting vote. So the almighty "we are elected" ones, the superior board, the "when I was on Advisory, our report was only one page" (when it was actually two /three pages) they cannot get the job done so they need distractions. Remember this past year, the selectmen, the superior board could not get the budget documents out to the Advisory Committee by the date required in the Town's by-laws.

Selectmen failed to follow their own policies and could not take the criticism, the selectmen failed to follow Town by-laws and the selectmen have failed to hire a town administrator. So if the selectmen follow the same routine as their last response to an OML response, they will show just how childish they really are, in my opinion.