Morning everybody. I'm going to call order the town of May and go over board of select men special meeting for Friday, October 24th, 2025 at 9:00 a.m. And we're going to start with the pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, liberty, justice for all.
Okay, you guys offer comment. We're going to get started with the public speak. Joe,
you good?
I'm good.
All right, Liz, it's all
me.
Yeah, I'm good.
Nothing. You're good.
Rogers Rogers. I just to say that as a voter guidance member, I'm extremely concerned about the situation that we're in right now, losing Eric. because we rely on administrator heavily at our at our meetings, at our weekly meetings when we're going through the budgeting process because Eric or the town administrator where we're just volunteers, myself, Liz and the rest of the board, they show up once a month and then the budget once a week. We don't have an intricate knowledge of the budget that Eric does of every single line and everything that's going on in town. He was a crucial part of our budgeting season, our budgeting process. And without him or someone like him with his knowledge, it's going to be very very difficult especially with Mark Breaker and Joanne Kever who have been on board longer than anybody else on oil tipper. Well, we lose England possibly too reelected. So we have a very young board without the benefit of having an administrator who really knows the intricate interworkings of the town. So it's going to be a huge loss and I hope that this board acts quickly and decisively to get a qualified person to backfill Eric's position.
Dram
Yep.
You don't want to be on camera? Can we can get you on camera quick?
Nope.
No. Okay. All right. listen, Eric, Eric stepped out. this discussion between us is really to how to fill the position and what we're looking for from an interim town administrator and then a permanent town administrator and how we sit there and go about those steps. So, I really want Eric to sit there and explain to the board and the members his situation and where he's at and where what his recommendation is so that we hear that first before we start talking about what we think should happen.
All right. So, he's off the phone now.
Joe, can you hear me? I'm going to make sure. I
think so.
I'll move you closer if I have to.
There he is. I'll move you closer. No, come on. You want to sit here? There you go.
If I can hear you better, I'll sit next to you.
Stand right next to us.
Eric, what I had said to everybody.
I wanted you to explain
your current position, what you think is going to go on so that we can hear from you your ex, what you think we should potentially do as we decide what to run.
Okay. So my thoughts are pretty simple and that is hire an interim town manager/c town administrator to get through the next 3 to 6 months while you make a decision on a permanent replacement. my suggestion is that you hire Jim Balano. he came recommended to me from from Nikk's executive director. and independently John Elcesser also said he would be a good fit. So you know and the town's attorney said he functioned very effectively in Windham twice while he was the interim town manager.
Hold on one second.
Yeah. I want to repeat that.
Okay.
Just to do that again.
All right. Take two.
Round number two. Okay. So, you asked me what my thoughts were on what the process should be going forward. And my suggestion initially is that you hire an interim account administrator to fulfill the role until such time as you've gone through the search process and hired a permanent replacement. Ideally, you would have that person in place by around November 1. So, he and I have a couple weeks of overlap. so I can transfer as much information to him because there are a lot of projects going right now that need to be addressed. So, my suggestion is that you choose Jim Bolano. he was initially recommended to us from Jim Rivers who is at NECOG. and Jim Jim Rivers prior to that was the person in charge. he was Windham's town manager and he transitioned to Jim twice. once from Jim Balano to Jim Rivers when Jim Rivers took over as town manager and then five years later when he left Windham to be NECOG's executive
director he transitioned back to Jim Bano who then transitioned to the new administrative who's been through this before. He's a good people person so I think he can hopefully stabilize the town workforce which I think is going to be a really important consideration. you know in your decision. So I also asked John Elcesser he gave me two names. Jim Balano was one and he listed a second which I also provided to you in that packet. if neither of those two are acceptable to you, then there are two NICOG employees that are functioning in town administrator roles from multiple towns right now. that do would have some bandwidth to cover the town of Andover, but I would think that would be your certainly not your primary choice. That
would be a fallback position if you couldn't get anybody else to do it on a more close to full-time basis. So, I think that's the first thing. Get somebody in, you know, to run the show in in the short term for 3 to 6 months or however long you think you anticipate taking to do the search. number two, I think you should probably reach out to CCM and talk to their staff about doing a salary survey for the position so that you as a board understand kind of what the ranges of salaries for town administrators, town managers are. So you have a basis going into discussion because I think you're going to struggle. Towns that pay an awful lot more than Andover are still struggling to find competent town managers/administrators. so that would be my suggestion. Understand where you are on a salary basis and figure out where you want to be. the third thing would be to hire an executive search firm. I've provided you with two. There are clearly a bunch more out there. I've been through the process with MRI. from the applicant standpoint, they are thorough to a degree. That's shocking actually. but there's there's good in that because you at the end of the day, you will know
everything you want to possibly know about a candidate prior to you know, signing an employment agreement with the new administrator. So, that's one. Randy Frank is another. I know she did Coventry search, she did killing relyarch, she did three or four others in Connecticut in the last year. So she's she's also somebody that does that extensively in you know in the state of Connecticut. so that's those are my basic suggestions. you know, and then I would also say we need to kind of have a play plan in place to cover the things the the roles that I take on that are kind of outside the direct town administration. one is board of directors for Easter eastern Iowa's health district. I'm also on their exec committee, but my replacement will not. they will choose another current board member for their exec committee, but we should have a rep on the board of directors. ideally that should be the temporary administrator. And part of the reason why that's important is most of the people that are on the board of directors are other town managers and town administrators. and it gives you an opportunity every other month to sit down with your peers and after the meeting discuss a lot of the things that occur. So I think that's important. and you have the contact info for Rob Miller who's the head of
the Eastern Iowa's health district. we're going into the season where the Midnortheast Recycling Consortium, which Andover is a part of, believe it or not, we're one of the founding members of that, starts to do their bidding for, you know, recycling, tires, all the functions of the transfer station and hazardous waste. They that group also runs our hazardous waste disposal facility which is in Willington. we should have a rep going to those meetings and voting at those meetings and I listed the contact information there. we probably should have a representative for the Hop River Trail Alliance. for those of you who don't know, that is an organization that's composed of seven towns along the Hot River Trail. And it's kind of a two-stage organization. There is a board of directors, which is either a town employee or a decision maker from each of the seven towns, and then there's an actual board, you could call it an executive board that does the work. So the seven the towns are the one that decide what the organization does but the towns don't do the work. The executive portion does the work. My
suggestion is Bill Penn who is I think I saw him running in here. you know the only thing that would have to happen with Bill is Bill would have to keep the board informed. and anything that's of concern to the town, he would have to bring back to the board. So, you guys could come up with a position before he votes as part of part of the Hop River TR Alliance. alternately, you have to find either a board member or a town employee that would sit in on that. Jay Tuttle sat in on a few of those meetings. eventually Eric, his replacement, could do that, but I think Eric has too many other things on his plate to to put that on his head. the next thing you're going to have to deal with is you as a board are the local traffic authority. but the reason you are authorized to make decisions is because you have a local traffic authority designate, which currently is me. you can't technically make any road signage or signal or any decisions without an LP that has taken the state
training and state certified. So, either one of you are going to have to do that. you know, which is a couple days out of your life to go through the training. And then annual, you're going to have to go to two or three events year to maintain certification for you're going to have to find somebody to do that for you. I think you could probably just not make any road silence decisions for the next 6 months until you had a full-time person here and then make them do it. That would be my suggestion, but that would hamper you if you had to make an emergency decision. You would be doing
that outside the bounds of what's allowed in the state of Connecticut. And the last thing is we really need somebody to cover the Andover's representative on the Capital Region Council of Governments on two main boards. The first is the policy board. That's the major decision makingaking board of the organization. And the second is the transportation committee. transportation committee because transportation is where an awful lot of the funding comes through. and being on that board and interfacing with the professional staff is very helpful when you're trying to grant fund your own projects. so I think we really ought to have a direct
representative on both of those and I listed for you when the policy board meetings and the transportational committee meetings are. Now I also serve on a number on three other boards within Prague but those are kind of specialist. One is the bike ped committee you know I do that simply because it's an interest of mine. I serve on the priority pathway committee which is a committee determining trying to trying to lay out the multi-use pathway network throughout the capital region. I'm doing that simply because I have a couple things in handover I want to add to the list. so you know I suspect they're not going to replace me on that. and that's it. That's the major for the kind of outside organizations that I wrapped the town on.
okay. So
just for the meeting purposes when you spoke at Jim Bano we met Chuck Murray and I met with Eric and Jim last night just to understand potentially what would happen with a temporary administrator and just from the meeting with Jim Eric was you know it was interesting that Windham didn't call on him just once to become the temporary administrator they call twice. And so that's what this board has to decide really. What is our strategy to replace the town administrator position because we have obviously a temporary issue that we need to address short term and then we have a longer term issue of what type of town administrator that we're looking to hire. Because in my mind, we have two choices. we have a choice to sit there
and hire someone who has less experience and potentially keep a similar salary range or we have an issue with Eric satan said we need to do a salary survey to probably increase our costs and go for a more experienced and do a wider search for and that's what the board we all need to decide what we want to do And those are the two things today that you know we just need to come what's the basic plan. My thought with the the temporary person is to make sure that temporary person documents the minutia of what Eric does and document in such a way that we have a working plan for the next administrator to come in because I don't believe that Eric walked in to the best situation at the point in time when we had the last change in town administrators. I don't think Eric came in with a lot of information as to what the job entailed and who should be called and what should be done. And I would much rather in the three weeks that we have left with Eric make as much headway as possible to documenting all of that and I think that would be very helpful for us. So those are the those are the steps that we have to deal with and we have to decide what we want to do from a temporary perspective and what we want to do moving forward and those decisions all don't need to be made today but they need to be thought about and we need to identify I mean I will tell you the town administrator's position the return on the investment of the town administrator's position has been significant and anyone who doesn't
think that needs to really just look at let's say the prior six years or even the first two years of the administrator were very difficult. So, but I'll even go past that. You back to the previous administrations and the amount of grant funding that was pushed into this town. I can only count about a million dollars that came into the town u probably since I moved into town. 500,000 for the bridge that was a fiasco. that also cost us an extra $500,000 and the $500,000 for the field which was $250,000 for the renovation of the old firehouse and I forgot I think it was $250,000 for a field that we combined into the field renovation the first time. And anybody else here tell me that there's more money than that that's ever come into this town those 10 years?
Anybody? I mean, I'm just wondering because I
there was some money that came in from the state through the federal local bridge program for the old bridge at times far
time.
So that was probably
that's true that that was that was done.
Yeah,
that was done when I first joined the board.
Was that under pro under process? that's near the Palazi house. Yeah,
correct. Correct.
Yeah. I want to talk about too is that Eric did also get us involved in the SIFT program which is bringing in about $150,000 a year.
True.
By combining all those separate checking accounts into one, it's just bringing a lot of money to the town that we didn't have before in addition to the $13.5 million worth of grants. So,
but that was your credit that
was that was on the board that should have been done long long time ago.
Should have been done was done when Eric came to office administrator process. So that that those are the things that we sit there and they board to consider as to what we're doing
and also new vehicles for the transportation.
again it goes to the return on investment. So you invest money,
you have better performance.
I will only speak from my standpoint. you you you elect a first selectman in our town. We elect a first selectman, that first selectman will not always have skills that translate to an administrator's position. And someone might have the skills to do the administrator's position, but have a full-time job that they can't commit to. And so you have a return on investment issuing multiple ways. So who you elect in my position as first element is not always going to be the best person to be the administrator of the town. and and I think if we regress and think of going backwards to that process, I think it's a a vast disservice to the community and a and a monstrous step backwards. So, but going forward, we have the issue of are we going to sit there and hire someone that may not have all of the prerequisite skills of an administrator or are we going to pay more to get somebody that has more of the skills? That's what the board has now. That that those are decisions and I would sit there and go to other board members who want to talk about that. That's that's
fine. That's future issues. I would like to sit there and schedule a meeting. I I mean Jeff, I'll sit there and go to you. Would it be appropriate to schedule a meeting with Jim Blano and the rest of the board to sit there and see if it might be a good fit for us?
I think that would be acceptable. I think it's something I mean I I wouldn't expect Carol, Ann, or Scott to vote on somebody they've never met. So I mean that's asking a lot. So and you know I this is the first I mean we met last night and this is the first I've read that there's another name out there. So maybe you schedule Richard Brown as well to come in possibly Monday.
Okay.
And at least we have a choice between at least two people to consider.
Okay. I mean, just to be fair, I mean,
well, let's find out if he's interested and and sit there and see if we can get that done.
And I and I Yes. I think we I think as a board, we need to come to a consensus since, you know, that's
who we want to go.
so Eric, if we can if we can get Eric Richard Brown's I know that we have his email here, but if you could potentially reach out to him to sit there and see if he's interested, I'd appreciate that. I'm available all Monday. So if you want to set something up for Monday again and something again with Jim, that's fine. But you guys have time.
We would have to put Well, we have we got our meeting today, right?
I don't care. We'll do it Monday. I mean, I'm honestly I mean I we'll just do it Monday. We need to sit there and put somebody in place as soon as possible because Eric's last day is the 14th.
Yeah. If we're going to do this, we we need to make a decision before Wednesday next week.
Yes. Because if if we're going to we're looking at two if we're looking back at his 14th looking back we're looking at November 3rd 2nd 3rd
right
if you're looking at a twoe window so if there's a decision made it has to be made next week
now I will tell you and just simple I mean Jim Bolano was the the economic development coordinator in Windom so the way that that we understood what happened was a new new town manager came in. He made some changes. He he he terminated positions. He terminated Jim Balano's position. So the entire EDC in Windham has been carved out. And how many people have left Windom so far? And there's been three votes of no confidence on the current town manager. So it's it's it's a bigger mess than we are. So this telling the truth. so I would like to you guys, Scott, to meet him as soon as possible because he he may not have all of the skills on the public works side, but from a from a interpersonal skill and time, he has time right now, which would be very is very beneficial to us from my standpoint. So, Monday, what time?
Whenever those Well, whatever the candidates would be available.
Okay. So,
you're talking day, evening. What are you talking about?
Well, let's do it during the day.
I'm available.
I mean, we can't do it in the community room. We have to do it here. So, we got to make sure that there's nothing scheduled in here. We could do it in your office, but then
for transparency, if you want to videotape it, we should probably Are you are you available Monday and possibly the video?
Maybe.
Would you be able to do it Zoom? I might be out of town. I don't know for sure yet.
I'd like to have take part.
we can sit there and and can we work something about that out?
So you want to do it?
Actually, can you do me a favor? Can you do me a favor? Can you do me a favor? Can you can you take a little bit of a recess and can you call Jim Blan and see if he's free this morning? I know it's I know it's I know it's pain and I know you got bridge work to do. I do understand that Eric has to leave.
You want me to call Jim and see whether he's available this morning?
This morning right now.
Thank you.
Go ahead. Are are those MTP meetings? Would those be public or just executive? If Jim walks in the door and I'm going to have him talk right in front of this meeting. I mean, he lives in Windom. This might be a delay that we have to sit there put up, but we have another meeting at 12.
I I thought this was 10 to 12. I mean, we could delay this meeting and have Jim come at 11 and reconvene.
I've already met with Jim and if I have to step out to 12:00, it's fine. I'm fine.
Yeah,
I've heard all here.
no. if he has if he has availability and he can make it.
Can Scott can Scott because it's
Scott's gonna be here at noon.
Okay. Well, it's imperative that Scott will be here as well because I don't want anybody making a decision without me being a candidate.
No problem. so what let's actually talk about the other part of this decision. So now and maybe what we do is our next meeting is when November 10th time. November 10th.
A good part of that meeting really does need to be what we're going to do November 11th. what we're going to do related to the permanent position and that'll have to be some discussions we have with the board of finance. You know, as I told as I said at the tri board meeting, this is going to be a big issue. It's either we are going to go for an inexperienced individual and potentially have the salary range in the same position it's currently in or we're going to go and we're going to step up and it's going to be more money that is going to be impacted the total budget. So, we'll we'll communicate with the board of finance as to what we're what you guys So, you're you understand
because we can't have you guys push back if we as a as a board make a a decision that impacts the the future of the town and then you come back in your budget cycle and say we can't do that. Like that's not going to work. So even before we engage this a search firm, we need we need to figure out what we're going to pay for because obviously you know from our discussions previously at our salary range right now would be worth engaging a search for.
Yeah. No,
because we're not going to fund anybody.
So that gets us back to square one. We go back and look locally for somebody that maybe semi-retired or something is looking for a a local
Yeah. It takes takes an early retirement who wants to come to work to retire. You talking about me?
So Jim cannot make today. He has a prior commission. He is available all day Monday. So you want to schedule him for Monday?
and if can't make it, could just participate by phone
or just or just zoom through with me
or zoom through your office or
Yeah.
Well, if we're going to do it in here, we got to figure out a way to do it. So, we know the
we can bring we can bring the Zoom setup over here.
let let's do it. Let's schedule it for Monday. Let's also reach out to the other individual and sit down and see if he's available on Monday. the meeting is actually November 10th. It's on the calendar. It's November 10th. November 11th is Veterans Day.
For the record, the other guy I've never talked to him. I don't know him. I don't know any prominence about it. Well, we don't know if he's we don't know if he's even interested. He may say no to us, and that's okay. We're going to do this on Monday.
I want I want to do my due diligence and look at if there's anybody referred to us, I want to investigate it and take a look.
No problem.
I just It makes sense.
Yeah.
So, Jeff Jeff did investigate him and found out that Jim is an author. So, he's got some skills.
Well, I took a look at his LinkedIn profile and took a look, you know, just want to see who he was about before I met him. So, Jeff what? This coming Monday what day?
This coming Monday.
What time?
He said he said anytime.
He said he's available.
That's better for you because you work
this time. I'm not working on Monday.
You're not working on Monday.
Only work Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.
Are you guys okay in the morning?
7 a.m. Bright and early.
Early as possible. Well, what we have to do is we have to talk to the to the the senior center director to make sure that they're not utilizing this facility. Check right now and see when it's available.
Sure.
Everybody get a copy.
Can you spell his last name's last name?
B E B E L L A N O.
Who else? Spell. I'm sorry.
B E L L A N O
Eric? So, 9:00 post the meeting today. I realize it'll be a problem. I don't really
Well, is this
It's close. We have 3 days in between.
I think I think I think anybody in this room can agree that it's
all right. So 9:00 we have 9 till 10 and then they have chair coming in
9 to 10 Monday morning.
Same time, same place.
Okay. So that is open that is a public meeting will be a public meeting.
Yeah. If anybody has any questions for Jim please come and ask.
Yeah. So we'll it's it's more important that we sit there and get this step done and then really at our meeting on the 10th we really have to plan and understand. So, Eric, I will discuss with you the Sally survey request to sit there and see if we get it from our next meeting and potentially reaching out to the two search firms just to understand their parameters and how they work so that we can have a maybe a more robust discussion of that. would that search firm work in conjunction with a a board that was developed to be part of the search committee or would it just be just
We have to have we have to have a committee.
A committing committee.
Yeah. Okay.
So we're going to have a hiring committee. That committee will you know be two or one or two members of this board. Probably two. And then we'll have other board members and then we'll need some members of the community that aren't elected to participate.
That pro that part's actually laid out in the charter. So you just read the charter provisions for the hiring committee for the town administrator.
Yeah. And that's something that's recommended. Read let's all let's all read the charter issues before we get to our next meeting on the 10th so that we're all familiar with what the the issues are of hiring and what issues are specific to the town administrator's role. Anybody else have anything you guys want to talk about today?
We good? All right.
So, what are we going to know about the second candidate? Probably email.
We do have an email from him. I'll get there. We'll try to sit there and get a phone number from John if we can.
John didn't have it or gotten it.
Okay. All right, then. Let's email him. pulling on, you know, right after the meeting.
Okay. so if we're going to do that, I know we don't have public speak, but I'm going to go through it at the end. Joe,
I'm sorry.
You're good. Public speak.
You're good. Marcy,
you know, wait, I do have one question.
Go ahead.
Is there a price to keep you on?
Priceless.
Absolutely not. I'm leaving regardless.
Okay. Just had to ask. I already made commitment to another town. That's where I'm
I just I know you have time to think about this, but when you I when I started my business over 30 years ago, my main focus was fertilizer. And I've hired a lot of people. And you may not be aware, but when people fertilize lawns, there's a lot of brain work that they need. They need math. They need people. They need, you know, it's not about chemicals. I'm saying this because I have so much experience in hiring people and professional people. And what I found over the years was that when I hired people that were experienced, they came at a cost. Yes. But I was willing to pay that cost. But what I found was a lot of them had a lot of bad habits. That's why they weren't getting another job. the people they were working for weren't working out because of their bad habits. But when I hired somebody that didn't have experience, I hired them for their heart, for their for their love for the com for the work, the company, and I would spend a lot of time training that person, and I would have that person for a long time. You know, I I it's unusual for a company of mine landscape to have people for 10
years. And that's what I did. that had several people for 10 years to do our fertilizing. So, and this is what we found. That's is I believe this is why we were so successful with Eric. He has the heart. He loves this town. He did a lot of work. And I just want to just put that out there. And I know that it's very important that we, you know, try to make sure we have someone that's professional. And I know it's a lot of work when you hire someone that's not experienced to go through these pains and spend a lot of time training this person, but it's also something to consider that that's why we've been so successful. took the growing pains. But but what we can learn from this is that if we find somebody that we can do this with then after five or six years maybe we bump their salary up. Maybe
they treat them really well. But anyway, I'm just going on but I just want to just stick that.
Thank you.
Thank you, Bill.
I'm good now. Thank you,
Liz. I'm Nathan. Good.
Eric, thank you.
I've enjoyed working with you.
You as well,
sorry. She threw me off.
I'm blaming on her.
Okay, I'm fine. Thank you,
Bill. I I think it's great that you're looking to get an interim immediately while Eric is still here so that
some of the stuff can be recorded, written down, we can get the process down so that if we hire someone else for permanent position that will also be smooth.
All right, I didn't miss anybody. I'll make a motion to adjurnn. Seconded. All those in favor? I