HomeMy WebLinkAbout_06252018-6346Town Government Study Committee
Minutes of the meeting of June 25, 2018. The meeting took place in the Public Safety Facility Training
Room, 4 Fairgrounds Road, Nantucket, MA 02554. Members of the committee present were: Rick
Atherton, John Brescher, Kristie Ferrantella, Richard Ray, Linda Williams, and Tucker Holland.
Also Present: Cheryl Emery, Parks and Rec Commission; Curtis Barnes; David Worth, Fin Com
1.Chair John Brescher called the meeting to order at 1:39 with a quorum.
2.Agenda: Linda Williams moved approval of the agenda, seconded by Tucker Holland. All voted in
favor
3.Minutes: Richard Ray made an edit to the minutes to add himself as present. Linda Williams
made a motion to approve the minutes from the June 18th meeting. Seconded by Tucker
Holland. All voted in favor
4.Public Comment: None.
5.Discussion with Town Officials: Cheryl Emery from Parks and Recreation Commission. Parks &
Rec Dept was defunded in 2012 and put under several town departments (DPW, Police
Department, Community School, etc.). Because of this, our parks have deteriorated. Children’s
Beach still received regular maintenance since it attracts tourists, but others such as Tom Nevers
don’t get attention, so the year-round community isn’t factored into maintenance decisions. Ms.
Emery believes it is part of the charter that Parks & Rec be a department and would like for it to
be re-instated. With several organizations taking a bit of the project, no one department is
willing to put in any extra effort. Amy Baxter already oversees 12,000 licenses a year, and now
has to oversee more. The Town’s last Open Space Plan was in 2007 and expired in 2012. The
Town had hired a company to put together a new Parks & Rec plan, but then the company went
out of business. The federal and state government has $13 MM that we could tap into for our
parks, but there is no organization applying for these funds. The Parks & Rec commission
doesn’t know which parks they are responsible for. The original charter said they oversaw
Jetties, Children’s, and Madaket. Ms. Emery has met with the Select Board, Libby Gibson, and
individual Select Board members to ask them to bring back the Parks & Rec Department. Town
Meeting appropriated $150,000 for Tom Nevers plan. The Commission is moving forward with
creating a plan, but without a budget, they may not be able to implement it. Richard Ray is
concerned that there isn’t much the TGSC can do unless it’s in the charter, but we will
recommend Town Admin to look into this. Ms. Emery is going to meet with the other Parks &
Rec departments in MA and look into how the Vineyard handles their parks.
David Worth – Finance Committee. John Brescher asked Mr. Worth for his opinion on having
the Town Moderator appoint positions in the Finance Committee. Mr. Worth was neither for or
against. There are currently 9 people on FinCom and the heavy lifting is November – April. The
committee has a presence in other committees such as Capital Committee, Contract Review,
and Island Home Committee. Rick suggested that it would be helpful to have community
members on audit committee with town officials. Some places do not want the Chair of Finance
and Audit committees to be the same person; we have David on both. The FinCom has a good
audit firm currently and has received awards for the quality of public reporting of finances. The
Town’s bond rating has gone up. Mr. Worth’s suggested charter edits: The Town has grown and
there is not enough bandwidth with staff. We have a ton of committees that do the work that
staff would do, but the government is now run by citizen volunteers. This means that decisions
are only as good as the people on the committees. There seems to be a lot of underqualified
citizens making big decisions or committees that never finish their task. For example, the
committee for wages & salary bands went no-where. Was it a confusing mission or a knee-jerk
reaction to an event? Another example: The Harbor and Shellfish Advisory Committee has no
authority to tackle problems. Should Town Admin be taking care of these issues? Mr. Worth
stated that the town problems keep getting bigger and citizens must step in to tackle these. Mr.
Worth feels all major department heads are well qualified and the Town has a strong
department force, but the mid-management level is not as qualified. The Town needs to pay
market rate and understand that housing is an issue. If we had more staff, the Select Board
could focus on more policies and less day-to-day issues. TGSC asked Mr. Worth what he thought
about Special Town Meeting or a meeting for just zoning. Mr. Worth is not in favor of STM since
it is less attended and doesn’t represent the voting population. He is also not in favor of a STM
just for zoning. When asked his opinion on representative town government, like Falmouth, Mr.
Worth suggested that we will run into the same issues of people not participating. Suggestions
for Town Meeting Improvements: Pick articles out of a hat so people stay for all articles instead
of going numerically. Doesn’t see a need for electronic voting because he does not see a
problem with “social” voting. Linda Williams has heard that Fall is better because retirees are
not here in April. David did say that we early in our Town Meeting compared to other towns, but
we need to be in Spring, not Fall, for Town Budget.
Jason Bridges, Select Board Chair. Jason couldn’t make it. John will see if he can attend next
meeting.
6.Other business: We could make recomemndations that aren’t charter changes to show what we
learned from town meetings, officials, public comment. We need a breakdown of committees
and what is state mandated vs. select board initiated. We still need Lauren’s review of the
charter. We also need an org chart with the names of employees.
7.Next Meeting: Week of July 9th. John will check with Jason Bridges and schedule our meeting
around Jason’s availability.
8.Linda made a motion to adjourn the meeting, seconded by Richard, all voted in favor.
The meeting was adjourned at 2:44 P.M.
Respectfully Submitted,
Kristie Ferrantella, Recording Secretary