Town Council - Regular Meeting

He is dead. Is he here? I thought I heard somebody trying to open the meeting. It is 6:32. This is a London Derry Town Council strategic planning workshop on Monday, April 13th. It is 6:30. Could everyone please stand for the pledge? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

And I got a lot of questions about this. We don't have public comment tonight cuz this is just um the town presenting to the town council what their vision of the strategic plan is. Uh the public will have time to weigh in on it in the future. May 18th. Um so I will open it up. Ron, it's May 18th. Okay. Well, it's good to know in advance so they can plan.

And who wants to start? So, this is a facilitated process. As you indicated, it is a workshop and I've outlined in the cover sheet. It talks about the public's process with that, but I'm going to go over each role that's involved with this. On July 21st, 2025, the town council directed me, the town manager, initiate the development of a comprehensive strategic plan for the town of Londereary. It in the past has not had a strategic plan and has had a master plan. Uh, but now I've been directed to do that and we have been through that process. And in a few minutes here, Kristen's going to go over what that process looks like. The purpose of a strategic plan is to provide that guidance by the council. Um, the governing body of the of the town and to a certain degree, the legislative body other than for budgetary purposes is the town council. Uh, the town council should be providing direction to the town's various bodies, boards, and committees as well as staff as to where what what direction the town should be going in. what are the priorities of the town and how are we going to know when we reach those that's a a primary uh function of the governing body and I provided the examples of other municipalities across the country who have developed strategic plans and they all have slightly different variations some are for longer periods of time some are for shorter periods of time and they're they're all a little bit different and their formatting is a little bit different uh what you'll see here from the town of Vader what we have developed is different from all of the rest of those because each community is different and what its objectives are at the end of this process. And again, Kirsten's going to go over the timeline with you, but the council will tell us what the strategic plan is. So, our job here tonight is to work through that. This is a workshop to go back and forth with staff. You've got staff members here from departments. You have representatives from most of the boards and committees that provided the feedback. And we are literally here to make changes to the draft. This is a

draft document and when I say that the council will tell us what changes it wishes to make because then we will send that final draft to the public hearing on May 18th as was indicated. Uh and then hopefully after that the council will approve a strategic plan and that is the kickoff of the budget cycle because now we will have the direction as to where where we are supposed to be going and uh and that translates into in many cases resources that are needed to get there. So um again this is about goal setting implementation of a framework by which this occurs this process or strategic plan. It's done on an iterative basis every year or every two years and some communities have longer periods of time. The longer the time in between you update things, the less tangible it becomes and the more of a document that looks nice on a shelf that's never implemented. That is a waste of resources and time for everybody involved. So this is not supposed to be aspirational. It's supposed to be realistic. What are we actually going to do? What are we going to commit resources to do or not? And again, Kirsten will go over the process. I'm not going to waste a whole lot of time on that. So, tonight we have workshop number one. We'll get through hopefully half of them. And then the other half will be on the 22nd, which is a Wednesday night, to get through the second portion of these. Uh hopefully that's the time frame. Sometimes it may take longer and if it takes longer, it takes longer. We don't have to rush through this. Uh but the goal is on the 18th if possible the council approves and votes for a strategic plan and then the same thing on the 18th. Usually what falls after that and what I propose is the council will provide guidance to the town manager and what uh what the council would like to see in terms of of budget or budget options. And then the next day I would turn around and issue that guidance to staff to produce the

budget for the FY28 budget which would be due to me by the end of July which is earlier than normal. So we can elongate the process a little bit longer and then hopefully we're not bunching all of it up into the November December time frame and then into January. So that's the large u big picture of goal where we're going at.

So to bring you up to speed on what we've done so far. So after the July uh 2025 meeting where you voted to direct the town manager to form this, we went through a series of gathering inputs. Um we started out by meeting with departments to speak with them, ask them to send us in their ideas of what their objectives were, their action items, and then we met with them to refine them. went back and forth with different department heads about what to include and how to take them from kind of big ideas into tangible objectives, action items and goals and KPIs. We did the same thing with some of the boards, committees and commissions. I think we ended up meeting with everybody uh or at least connecting with everybody and not everybody gave feedback this time around and that's okay. Um but a lot of the their contributions made it in there. We also held three general public input sessions. The first one was uh December 18th and that was focused around economic development. Although people were free to give input on a variety of things and you'd if you look at the input from that session you'll see that there was a general public input session on January 31st and there was one at the Baldwins on April 1st. We also put out an online form that let people submit comments and then we also had email and personal outreach. Those were the conversations that when people came up and wanted to speak with us about it, uh some people sent individual emails saying, "Hey, we'd like to see this incorporated." And so that was the input gathering process. And you can actually see all of that input on the town website. So we've uploaded all the individual contributions on the strategic plan page of the town website. So you can see the notes from each of those sessions. You can see the emails that were sent to us. Um you can see the some of the notes and the back and forth um some of the notes and some of the refinement from the department and board and committee meetings. And I think what you'll find is that not obviously not everything from everybody's input made it in

because this is a townwide plan and a lot of these individual uh contributions will be reflected in the individual board and department goals moving forward and their individual business plans. But I will say that there is input from every single solitary source in this final plan. Every there was input and material impact from every single conversation that was had. Um after we did the input, that's when it became the analysis, cross referencing and assembly. So we went through and um sort the data had to be sorted, standardized, um searched through, analyzed, compared and we came up with these seven functional areas. And then we had to incorporate the action items and KPIs and see which departments and boards would be accountable to which area. And again, this is all part of the draft. All of this is subject to change. And so now the process is in front of us, in front of you. As far as the timeline, this started in July 2025, as I mentioned before, and then from August through March, we met with boards, departments, and the public to ascertain priorities and the major initiatives needed to meet priority, safety, service, and compliance objectives. And that's really important. We're focusing on the key basics for this plan. And one of the themes you'll see as we go through these action items and KPIs is it's a lot of roadmap plan out start tracking. It's about the the very fir a lot of these steps that we've suggested and they are just suggestions are very first steps on how to figure out where we are benchmark where we are. So we want to know where we need to get to. Then now we're in April, the strategic plan workshops with the town council, town staff, and board leadership. And the intent on these is to revise and refine this plan. Moving forward into May, the feedback from the workshop sessions will be incorporated and published in a second

draft for public feedback. The public hearing on May 18th, and then the strategic plan is revised as needed based on that public hearing and adopted. As Sean mentioned, that guidance turns around, goes out to department heads, and that's where strategic plan implementation and tracking begins. And then over the course of the next fiscal year, strategic plan objectives and action items will provide direction as to priorities to all staff, officials, and residents. And then the process starts all over again, and we start refining for the next one. So, this is a facilitated workshop that we're going to be facilitating and helping the council through this. This uh you're going to have staff members that may talk about certain items. You can certainly ask them about those items and we have representatives of most of the boards and committees here and I would encourage staff members and members of boards of committee to come up here to speak at that so it's recorded on here to have that conversation back and forth. This is a very much bottomup approach because again we started out with staff and then we went to boards and committees at the same time and we got a lot of feedback and then these public engagement sessions what the public was looking for uh to provide that stakeholder feedback to the council to make decisions. So this is a workshop if you want to change something then you by consensus you tell us that we will start to make those changes. We got Tanya over there that's going to be recording that information down and we'll start to do that. Again, the goal between now and then at the end of the day and the 22nd is to get it changed to the point where the public can provide constructive feedback on what it is or what it isn't, what things they'd like to see that aren't in there, uh things that are in there that that they don't think we should have or how some of those should be modified. And then again, it'll be up to you to do that. Members of the general public, again, this is a workshop and so isn't the 22nd. Uh your role is to obviously take uh copious notes about what is going on. reach out to your counselors in between now and the 18th and certainly be prepared on the 18th to

provide that feedback. You can do that in writing. You can do that in person or both uh to provide that feedback to guide the council on that. If the council hears sufficient public feedback on the 18th and they want to make further changes, they can do that on the fly or they can wait till another meeting to approve it. That's up to them. But that's how this process is supposed to function. Um unless there's any questions about that we will move into uh the process the functional areas talk about what they are.

All right. So the functional areas these are kind of the big organizing ideas behind the strategic plan. So rather than do something like treating departments and boards like silos, right, which have no interaction with each other, what we've done is we've taken everything that people put in and looked for those overlaps, for those areas of interaction, for places where I think I use the word shared responsibility in here. These are all areas where the goals are much more easily achieved if we all know what each other's doing and where we have common goals. And so we've organized them into these seven functional areas. And I cannot, like I said, I cannot stress enough, this is supposed to be the first full conversation. So if you have questions as we go through these, please let me know. Um, I'm just going to review the seven areas really quickly and then we'll get into the individual objectives and kind of dig into each one. Ideally, we'll end immediat right at 8:30 today. So, that gives us probably about 10 minutes on each objective. But obviously, if it takes more and we have to shift this like the town manager said, we are absolutely happy to do so. So, the first one is the big the big one. Basically, this is an area that has four objectives and it's government excellence, digital services, and fiscal stewardship. This is all about being effective, efficient, responsible, transparent, particularly with our public-f facing services and resident interactions. Um, we want to make sure that we are being transparent and clear in all our financial decisions, making sure all our compliance is up to date, and making sure that we are flexible enough to meet both our immediate demands and our future demands. I'm not reading verbatim. If you want me to, let me know, but I will. No.

All right. Any questions on that kind of big over over one.

All right. So, the next two here are the other two that we'll be addressing this evening. Communication, civic trust, and community engagement. And um I think Sean might owe me $20 because I might have bet him that this would turn out to be one and and I think I won that. Um so, this really focuses on communication. And this came up over and over again as we went through the relationship between go town government administration and everybody in the community and also internally as well. So the more people know, the more clear information is, the better they can make decisions and the better they feel about their life in the community. So again, encouraging participation, encouraging and highlighting ways people can do that, improving public confidence, and putting as much good, true, consistent information out as possible. The third area is one that kept coming up again and again which is growth, land use, housing and economic vitality. So what does lenderary look like in the future? What does growth look like? What is how is growth managed? How does it align with community values and the character that people expect to see in Londereerry? and how do we protect the quality of life while still facilitating responsible development in the ways in which we legally can. So those are the three we're hoping to get through today and then I'm just going to quickly go through the other ones just so you know what's coming up. So if you don't see an objective in here today or if something's not in here you might bring it up. I might say hang on that one we're covering on day two. A big one is infrastructure, transportation and asset management. Um, I joke around this being the Dave Wallally show, but it's kind of the Dave Wallally show. Um, but not entirely. This is about how our community is physically organized, how we maintain the things that our taxpayers have entrusted us to purchase and use to support residents in this

town, how we maintain our town infrastructure, and how we keep it safe. The next one, environment, water, and conservation. also a tremendously huge topic when we went out for public comment. Um this is about the health of the community, the in being able to preserve resources for future generations, being able to protect public health and protect open space. The sixth one is public safety, emergency preparedness and municipal resilience. And this is one that I think is evergreen and will be on pretty much every strategic plan we have because as conditions change, we need to constantly adapt to this area. Um, it's about readiness and preparation. Not just reactivity, but prep honestly preparedness in advance. Like making sure that we're ready for what we don't know is going to happen. If that makes any sense. Prevention and recovery and resilience are the key words here. The seventh one, but by no means the last one, is community character, recreation, arts, and culture. Again, this was a huge theme in public in public input. And and this is an area in which sometimes residents vote with their feet rather than their voices as well. really looking at how we use our spaces, our programs, how we use our incredibly talented agencies and departments to enrich quality of life, provide opportunities for health, recreation, art, civic pride, and to keep alive all those traditions that really make Londereerry Londereerry and that people value. So those are the seven major functional areas that we came up with. And again like everything else 100% up for discussion.

I have a question. Yeah. Um so just a question how I guess how how did you determine the functional areas? My my my question is more specific like infrastructure and transportation are two huge issues. You put asset management with it. Was there a reason that we didn't separate out infrastructure and transportation and asset management in a different category? Was just want to know what the thought process was just so sure how they um partially linkages in terms of function. Wow. Sorry, I didn't mean to do that uh circular speaking there. Um it's partially because of the way that they're linked together operationally. Okay,

so if you when we talk about asset management infrastructure, the way that we maintain our infrastructure is inseparable from to some degree to being able to track the condition of that infrastructure to be able to track the condition of those assets to know and understand what condition it's in. And I'll even just throw you a loose example from today. So for example, the um beautify lenderary signs that are uh the welcome to lendary signs that are currently down, right? I was chatting with John man today about you know when they go back up rather than doing a massive once once a year or once every 10 year like take them down, spend all the money putting them on like a maintenance rotation plan, right? But in order to do that, you need to be able to track it and you need to be able to understand the condition you have. And another example of that is the pavement condition inventory that we're doing right now. Getting an idea of the baseline so we know where we need to focus our efforts and where money will be most efficaciously spent. It's also linked to, for example, we'll talk about this more in the 22nd, the priority traffic areas. And I'm going to let Kim do most of the talking on that because he's the expert on that. But you know understanding and having the data to support these things and the traffic group has been doing that we need to do the same thing on the infrastructure side.

No I I fully agree with you. I just I just there was such two big issues. Yeah. If we should separate them out because environment and water are definitely two huge issues and I like that they're separated. So that's why I was just trying to throw them there. Any other questions? I want to dominate the whole conversation. Go ahead. Well, so I I tried to find the input pages

and I was having a very hard time and even just now trying to find them on the computer here. Um I I maybe I'm just going to the wrong section. Um I I I wanted to look at them prior to coming here. Um and I couldn't do it. And again, I I like and hate this new website all in the same breath. Um, I'm just going to say that. I have a very difficult time finding what it is I'm looking for. So, if you want, just so people at home too, they can find it. So, there is a link on the bottom of the agenda to the page. All right, let me go back. So, we're going

So, if you go on the agenda, it's on the bottom of the page, but if you go here and let's see. Sorry, my typing is a little bit. So, if I go to meeting minutes and agenda, correct? Yep. It's a link on the bottom of the page. Very top it says um the workshop, right? Yep. And then scroll to the bottom of the page. Strategic presentation draft. Nope. Very bottom of the page, the red link. It's also on the website if you go to our community strategic plan. Okay. And then underneath it on the bottom, those three links, those are the inputs. No, you that's the there's a So, this is the strategic plan page on the website,

right? So, this is where all the inputs are down here. There's every single one is on the bottom of this web page. Oh, at the very very very bottom. Yeah. So, it's a it's all of these are on the web page right here. So, this is where everything Sorry, I'm not pointing at you guys. I'm pointing at my the monitors where I see it. Yeah. So, this is everything, a PDF of everything that we created. There's a lot of them and it'll take a while to go through and well, and I think it's important to go through this so people can see where they are and what they need to look at.

And while I'm on it, I can actually just show you that on the strategic plan page. So, if you go to our community strategic plan, there's a form embedded right on that page. So, if any of the public has input, they can just actually type it right on that page and submit it. So, it has a link to the all the agendas. It has a link to the draft documents that you're looking at right here and a description of what the strategic plan is and how we got here. So, that's what's on the town website for it. And again, if anybody's watching at home, our community strategic plan right here. And I'm sorry for being a pain to bring this up, but

No, it's fine. I was having a hard time trying to figure out where it was and sometimes you don't know to go all the way down and you miss it and it's important to have all the

and so these were all on there and part of that is just simply the um the manageability of the agenda packet as well trying to make sure that we are not um creating an agenda packet that's so large that it has trouble downloading with images and everything. So part that was part of the logic between st separating it out and putting a link. But much like with the budget process where we put a lot of it on here, we're doing the same thing with the strategic plan. All right. and part of the um strategic plan. Are we going to have like I know we broke it out into different things and some of them, you know, are we going to break it out into the feasibility of doing what is on there and the cost of it and who's responsible for it and who's going to manage it, who's going to be in charge of being the overseer of it, making sure that it's actually being implemented. Is it who who's that going to be? How's that going to look? How's that going to work? And I know that's not related to these topics. It's really just all

Well, it is. So, actually, I'm just going to skip forward a page just so you can kind of see what it is. So, as we go through each page right here, you'll see this department. I'm going to go back up in a minute, but you'll see this panel off to the side, which is departments and boards. Right now, so that would be the project for this one particular for this objective. And we'll break it down even further by action items and by KPIs. We'll link individual departments and boards to each individual one. However, until we know that it is a priority of yours because this is your strategic plan, right? Mhm.

We didn't want to we didn't get down into the weeds of linking every single action item and objective to a department. But a key part of a strategic plan is accountability. So, we will do that. So, just for more clarification, you guys mind? No, Deb, this is why we're here. Okay. Um, so the one we're happen to be looking at is this government one and it says departments, town manager, planning,

uh, building clerk, blah blah blah blah blah. So it will be their responsibility to make sure that these things are getting done in the strategic plan and then will they like do a report and come back to us like publicly or how how will that work in moving?

That's a phenomenal question. Yes. So right now this is only in PDF form for draft form. This will actually this will that strategic plan page and the website you're going to see that it's going to be built out further. We'll have periodic status updates posted on the website and then we'll also do quarterly status updates with with the council on where we're at as well. So that is the plan is that you will be able to do that and you'll be able to look at each objective and KPI and see who is specifically responsible for that one. So, for example, on here, um, recreation isn't necessarily going to have anything to do with doing map GI map. Argis, right? So, even though they're on this page, that particular action item, that's all planning, building, and cyber services, right? And so, they'll be the ones listed next to that. Um, some objectives will belong heavily to one department over another. Others will be all departments, and everybody is going to be responsible for their piece.

Okay. So then this is the the the loophole person in me. Um there's no mention in here of like do we have any idea of like what the cost of staff time cons you know like how much time making sure these things get done will it pull staff away from their regular day-to-day duties or will it just be incorporated into their day-to-day duties? Do you know what I'm saying? So this is a building block approach. It's not it's this is a building block approach. You start at the 60,000 foot view.

Go get these things accomplished. The things that are listed in here, all of these things can be done if we're willing to commit to doing them. Some of them take money. Some of them take re resources to do that. Right. So then this that's why I said this is critically important. The governing body directs us to do this. Okay. If we're not committed to doing these things, do not put them in there. Well, I agree with you, but I think that you need to see a cost. You're not going to be able to do that until you tell us the direction to go in. And then we then we come back and say, "Okay, to do this is going to cost this much."

And when that and that's part of your budget process. That's why this is the kickoff of the budget process. We go and make a determination as to what it costs to do that. So, an item may say, "Well, we want to accomplish that in the next year." Well, we can't do that one, this one, and this one. So, this one's going to be stretched out for a longer period of time. And that's what you have to figure out. that's part of that process to do that. I I kind of get it. I just wanted to know when that was going to be like kind of incorporated into Yeah.

everything. So once we've decided that we want to move this strategic plan with all its changes or whatever no changes changes forward um we then would get down into the the nuts and bolts of like you know the time staff um how it's going to change the current process of things um you know expected and and measurable improvements and things like like how that's all going to get functioned into it comes after the verbiage in here is correct. Am I getting this right? You're getting this. It's a building block approach and a lot of this is building a road map because we haven't done it. This is our first one, right?

And you have to build the road map and the road map may say, okay, we got to do this thing in this year, this thing in this year, and this is what the estimated costs are to do those things, right? Uh and you'll get a flavor of that as we go through the process, but that's that's how you do it,

right? Because I did look at the other cities. I don't know if any of you guys did. I mean, I was having a hard time trying to compare some of the stuff to London. Like, some of them were big big cities and I was trying to figure out what you wanted us to focus in on. So, I had a hard time like going, "Well, that's great that they got it and I can understand theirs, but um so, okay. So, we're just going to focus in." So, these this this right here is is um where it says FY27 Priority Act. These are the ones you really want us to zone in on. We haven't got there yet today. We're still on We're still on functional areas, but we're still on functional areas. We haven't got to that page yet. May I May I suggest that go back to another

maybe? Well, we've gone through the functional areas. So, if anybody has any questions on those, no, I just don't I just want to know because our standpoint does anyone have else have a question I want to do? I do have a followup just quickly to Deb's. Please. So, if we go down and get into the specifics of like say one of these items and it's tied to a cost and we find it unfeasible, that doesn't mean we're committed because we put it in it's like, "Oh, that costs $4 million. We no longer want to do this." It's is this a living document where you can go, "It is." Yes. Okay.

And that's why it can be changed during the year. And then what happens is if you look at the city of Lebanon, you'll see several items are stalled because there's a cost factor that they weren't able to do that. We had five things we wanted to accomplish, but we're only going to be able to do two of those. These other ones are going to be stalled and they're going to be pushed back in subsequent years. Okay? The state of New Hampshire does this with a 10-year highway plan. That's a plan, right? So, they well, they have to constantly move it around because the revenue that they get changes all the time. And we don't know what our economy is going to be like from one week to the next, it seems lately, right? Fuel fuel prices are going to go up. That's going to affect a whole lot of things and you're going to have to delay some things. But it again, you need to have a framework and a plan to move it forward.

And some of these things we're actually doing anyway without a written plan, without guidance as to where where we're going. Right. I just have one more question on functional area and then we'll move on. Okay. I don't want to be um could we note that would there be any objection or any consideration to moving the asset management piece up to the fiscal stewardship piece? Is there any validity in that? Just cuz I'm just thinking where infrastructure and transportation are like two huge issues here in town. I may suggest No, that's why I'm talking out loud. Asset management is your things, right? So, roadways, buildings.

Okay. uh these are your things that's why they're clustered together and they all if you look at all the feedback I mean there's a lot of it there right you try to take those and put them into narrow them down into functional areas so infrastructure transportation those are roadways there culverts right uh bridges uh buildings uh rolling stock vehicles those are things and they tend to fit in a category more neatly in this fashion okay so uh like we talked about the pavement condition index that goes into your asset management plan so you can track those because if you go out and build all kinds of infrastructure and then have no plans to maintain it. Not that that would ever happen here.

But anyway, um then you have all kinds of problems. We have a library that's you can't occupy, right? Um and we got a fire station. If you go look by station is rotted wood. You can see it as you drive down the road. That's what you have and we want to avoid that. I think you've explained it very well. Any other questions on the functional areas? and we're going to go through each section line by line. You're going to leave asset management where it is. Yeah. I think I just wanted an explanation. I just I me I just look at it as that infrastructure and transportation are such a big deal for us. I didn't want it to be taken away from but I think they explained as a protection. So um well they kind of feed on each other. Yeah, I'm I'm fine with it.

Okay. Great. So that brings us to the first functional area which is the government excellence digital services and fiscal stewardship. This area has four objectives and what as we're going to move through them just to give you a heads up on how we're going to operate. Sean will talk about why this is an important objective and then I'll go through the action items, KPIs and kind of where they came from and what the priorities are. and then we'll give you a chance very I'll go through those very quickly and then that'll give you a chance to ask questions if you have it of the people who are here.

Just one other thing, there will be a vision statement at some point but we don't want to do that until you have finalized what the priority action items are and you concur with these and then we'll write vision statements for each one of these.

All right. Complete the open gov permitting roll out and integrate it into planning and building department workflows and standard operating procedures. As you know, this is already underway well underway. create a records retention policy and expand digital records management for vital and registration records. This is required by statute anyway and that's an area that we're working on. Uh Sherry uh is uh leading that effort. Sher Ferrell as the clerk and that committee has already met a couple of different times and they're working on there's a number of items that are not on the statutory list that the local records uh retention committee is supposed to develop guidelines on which is what again they're working on. expand townwide use of um M365 digital record storage and collaboration tools. Phase out paperbased processes where legally permissible. As I indicated even before I got here, you already have most of these tools and you're paying for them. You've just never used them. So, it makes sense to use those. And that's what our new cyber services director is actually uh accelerating that process to use SharePoint, which allows people to work collaboratively. And right now, they work in silos. these people have their files and you may have duplicate files over here and over here. Now they're working in the same uh sandbox together to achieve an objective and again he's already made quite a bit of progress on that. Create an addressbased SharePoint system centralized property specific records. The other thing that allows is us to collaborate with boards and committees. They get to see the documents which is helpful special utilities committee in particular. It'll be help for the planning board but all of our boards and committees but they'll be able to operate in that same system and look at similar documents together. Uh convert public facing mapping from map geo to artjis online and standardized access to parcel permitting and infrastructure information. Uh we got a lot of work that we can do in terms of uh layers than our our GIS system and then transitioning that will be will produce a lot of value which we're already we're already in the process of working through that. develop a phase digitization roadmap for

finance, recreation and facility reservations, assessments and other resident facing services. The objective is to be able to do it faster, more efficiently and with less staff involvement. So that uh because that's costly. Uh so we're trying to modernize our operations which is a key initiative that we had talked about from the beginning and those efforts are already underway and go ahead. Yep. So the key performance indicators um you'll notice all of these have deadlines. These are much more kind of number or binary yes or no focused. So just one more thing on the deadlines. If you don't put deadlines, things don't get done. That's just the reality of it. You know, you do need to hold people accountable and you need to some sometimes push them

and then you keep reminding them this is the deadline. Where are we at on that? Why are we behind? What do we need to do? What other resources are necessary to get them done? So that's why it's important. Otherwise, this becomes a nice dusty document on a shelf. Yeah, we did that. It looks nice, but it means nothing. Um

I even when I did this, I said that if there wasn't a date, the date was implied to be the end of fiscal year, and he made me go through and put it all in. So, we're taking it seriously. So, the initial thing, uh, so you'll notice these link to the action items. Complete the initial five permit types in open gov by September 30th of this year. increase use of online town clerk and tax collector services by 15% over fiscal year 26. That one's ambitious. Um that one comes from the town clerk one. That one has a lot of links to communications. Um but we need to establish our fiscal year 26 baseline first. We don't have readily have exactly this many comes from online versus in person. So we're going to gather that research. So this is also linked to permitting 80% of site plan and subdivision applications assigned review deadlines within three business days of intake by next year by September 30th, 2027. Provide initial response to 80% of all permit applications within two business days for residential and four business days for commercial by June 30th, 2026. That came from building and from the work that Christine Wallally has been doing in there on permitting. uh complete the records retention policy that Sean referenced by December 31st of this year. End our contract with MAP GEO by fiscal year 27. So complete that transition and that's actually an efficiency that will actually likely save us money. Transition one paperbased resident service to digital each quarter. Um SharePoint and Teams used by 100% of the town departments by the end uh by 6:30 2027. 100% of new assessing documents stored in SharePoint address files by the end of this calendar year. And the reason assessing is the target for that is one capability. Um we have very technically savvy people who are eager to be part of this digitization effort down there. And two, it's very

easy for them to start saving new documents in there and then have the when the existing paper files are digitized to know where they go. It's going to be the smoothest one that'll give us some ideas of future impediments. Laura's the powerhouse and Amy in that department there, they they want to run with it. So, yes, let her. Yep. She's so sweet.

Um, digitization, the digitization road map completed by 331 2027. And you're going to see this word roadmap a lot. It's us coming up with a plan of how we're going to do it. And that's why in this fiscal year, we'll come up with the plan. And you'll notice a lot of those roadmap deadlines are March of next year. That's so we can have them if our goal in fiscal year 27 is to build the road map. That's where we that's where we're going to figure out the cost of this. And then that will play into future year's budgets. And then the last one is in order to understand where we're at with permits and applications, spend this year assessing the error rate and causation for errors for permits and applications. So what we're doing right now in the first year just if I heard everything you said and it's great

is we're creating the baseline to become more efficient and effective and transparent in this part of our government that the open.gov is now kind of driving. I mean it's not the sole driver but it's the main driver. Am I correct on this? That this is the the way this is the year we collect the baseline for this to move out years to come. Correct. For some things some things we're already doing. Yeah. As you know, open gut permitting is already underway. I missed the very first part of what you said. Sorry, Sean. For some things, yes, but some things are already underway. Open permitting is already underway. I mean, that process is being implemented, right? So, we're we're ahead of schedule on that,

but we don't know what that is. So if you could give us an idea of which ones are already started and kind of where they are in the implementation of moving forward and how that baseline will be presented to us because I think that's really important. Yeah. So open up perming as you know is already well willing where you get the status reports each week from me on those and Laura is already working on the assessing piece. They'll they'll they'll beat that schedule. I I think to Deb's point though, I think it'd be good to have it down like where we can see it in reference to this document so we don't have to compile it from multiple sources so we can see what's in flight that's already in here and what's not. Correct.

Well, that's I at the end I mean I when we get through it all I I think that's what we want is a chart. It's well it's a status report. So what you have is a stat there's a whole column that has a status report as to where we are and you get that on a quarterly basis. But I don't I don't even know what you want to do yet. this is what we think the feedback from the staff from boards and committees and from the general public. So you're going to tell us where it's going to be and then you're going to see a status column and that status column is going to tell you where many of these things are already at what the updates are are whether they're stalled or not and you you'll get those status reports.

I think what Deb's getting at is as we decide on these and we look through these and evaluate these before we agree to put it in the strategic plan, it'd be nice to know like if it's already in flight or if it's 50% through or 25% through. So it' be good to be able to see that information. So for that particular one, that's our launch date anyway. September 30th is our go live date for the permits for the five that we're working on. So I can tell you that that is actually that aligns with our implementation schedule. Exactly. So that's the date that we are hoping to go live with residential, commercial, site plan applications, subdivision applications, and driveway permits. Those are the initial five types that we're looking to go live that date.

Now, Yep. Will the employees in this and I know I can't tell them what to do. I'm just a thought. Um the employees in this these areas kind of be cross-trained on each other's.gov gov so that they all so if a customer came into assessing and then had a question about planning would Laura be able to pull it up on the computer and service that person right there and then as a or would she have to tell them you need to go up to planning it like do you know what I'm trying to say you need to go up to planning because what I don't want is planning the planning folks are up to speed on what's going on on a regular basis Laura is down in a different office on a different floor of the building okay

and she doesn't necessarily know all the things that are going on that would not a good idea because you're going to have problems. Well, Laura told me I could do this and now you're telling me I got to do that. So that's why and not only that, open Gov when you click on it, it gives you drop down menus that guides you through the process. So it doesn't require as much human interaction as you have right now because right now people don't know what they're supposed to do half the time,

right? And I'm and and for me again, we're a service industry, right? I'm trying to make it as service friendly as possible. And I'm thinking of the people who may not be um computer savvy or phone savvy or have a little watch like get smart that tells them what to do and whatever. My point is it would be nice if they could even if they didn't tell them, they just showed them how and where to go to things because I don't know. I'm just trying to make it less frustrating because I know like it's being on a phone call, right? Oh, I can't help you. I can only help you with this. Hold on. want to get a transfer, you need to sit on hold for another half hour and you get transferred to somebody else who says, "Oh, well, that's not all me, but you got to go from me over to zoning." Do you know what I'm trying to say? Like, it would be nice if we had some sort of

I know what I'm saying, but I I'm not saying it. Well, the difference is we're not like one business that has one product. We have a very diversified function here. We have very different departments that do different things, and there's a lot of statutory requirements. to expect that someone's going to be a jack of all trades. That's when you get into trouble, when you expect assessing people to talk about zoning things, which they're not trained for. Well, maybe not so much giving them advice, but direction.

So, what we did is when I did this before, the library was a key player in this because people would go to the library and those folks who were not techsavvy, they would show them how to do the different functions. And we trained library people. We had a real close partnership with the library and they really help people out in a big way for those types of functions because they have computers there as our library does when it's open uh that you can go and use those tools. So that's a relationship that I'd like to have with our library. Obviously they've been through some turmoils. We're all well aware but I think things are stabilizing to the point where we're we'll have a similar relationship with them and they can provide an even extended a further extended public service by a lot helping people out with those things. Deb to your larger point too, I'm just going to have you remember that when we get to the fourth objective in this area that does address when

we get to which one? The fourth objective in this area does touch touch tangentially on what you're talking about there. Okay. Thank you. Sorry. No, that's quite all right. So I guess from the council, any else that you would like to hear about the I I get I get a couple things. um the cost of map geo to the ArcGIS online system. What is the savings that we will see as a as a town?

Not 100% sure of that dollar amount. We can certainly get that for you. Um it's not but it's not just the dollar amount of map itself. It's the fact that right now um we are assessing information lives in one database. Our mapping is created and done in another database and periodically we need to sync those two into a third mapping program which is kind of linked to our assessing program but not really and it means that updates aren't done as quickly. They're more labor intensive. Whereas, if we just work in the program where we're building the maps and maintaining the maps, and that has an incredibly robust user interface, and it's what most other towns use, we can cut out not only the software subscription, but a massive inefficiency within our within the planning department

and wasted staff time. Yeah, Mike will be able to get so much more done if he doesn't have to do that. So, overall, we would be saving money by converting over. So, we're not going to be Yes, that's a saving money and efficiency, money, and time. um and probably more detail. Um okay, the next question is what hap so in a lot of these things there's deadlines and there's goals. Um what happens for I want to ask a specific question. What happens specifically if we don't make the 15% deadline uh for the tax clerk? Like there's no like if that doesn't happen, is there like do we readjust the goal or like I just want to know for the planning. Yes.

So we don't we don't put them in the stocks out in the green. No. No. I know we're not I know we're not going to Is we look at Okay. Why didn't we meet that objective? Yeah. Was it too over ambitious when we when we came up with it? Was there something that came up? Was there a shortage in that department with staffing which is going to happen from time to time, right? What was the issue? Was there a technology issue? Did we have to shift money from someplace else because something happened in the middle of the year? Like the library falls apart and we got to spend you know x amount of money on that. So just examples of that. So that that's what happens. And then you either readjust that or you make some changes to it as you need to to be able to achieve it or you say, you know, we're not going to achieve this goal after all. We decided we're not going to do that anymore.

Those are the those are decisions that you make and you get a status report so you know where that is at. Yep. Have we considered at all as a town incentivizing people to do it online? I know out there that some towns will give you, you know, a benefit if you do it online as opposed to coming in. Have we thought about that at all? So, we do things online right now. Motor vehicle registration, renewals, so it reminds people so they don't have to come in. They can fill out the paperwork. Saves them time and effort. So, you're already doing a lot of those things. The question is, can we do more of those? Save more time, make it more efficient for our customers, which are our residents.

Because I know the one thing that I like is the dog registration, for example. I get an email now as opposed to a postcard. And I know that saves the time money and it makes it easier for me because now I see it as opposed to my mailbox. So, I just think some of the efficiencies we might be able to help our constituents and our residents and also save us money. Well, you say save money for the town, but now let's think about the taxpayer.

We offer these fees, but we charge them for that online service. So, eventually would be nice to have a goal if we get an kind of like the aggregate, right? If we get enough people doing it online, will we be saving enough on, you know, an employes time effort that we can say, well, because you're doing it, you're going to get a 2% or it's just cost. There's no,

you know, thing to it. So, a lot of people, you know, they look at that and they go, I got to pay 2% more. I'm going to put it in the mail. I'm just saying there's people who look at it that way. So that's something to think about maybe in the future once we have a baseline figuring out how much we're actually doing and that's what this will do for us. And to your point, the private sector looks at how can I make it more efficient for my customer. Some are willing to pay a little bit more for some things. They're willing to do that. It's about it's about the customer. That's where the money is, right? We're not in the money business. However, we are here to serve our customers. And if we can make their lives easier and make these government processes easier and some of them are very complicated, try to build a shed or something like that and what you have to go to to figure that out, it should not be that hard. You should be able to if you want to go online and it walks you through that process and covers that without having to come here and ask somebody, which you can do that. That means during the daytime you have to take time out of work. You got to come here to do that. It's not as convenient. We can make it more convenient by using different tools. My last question on this section is it says SharePoint and Teams used by 100% of the town. That's great. Can we are we able to get everybody on board with that and get them all trained and know everyone know how to use that by that deadline? You think that realistic?

You think so? That's our goal. Yeah. Okay. I know it's a goal, but I just want to know if it's realistic cuz you know Jeremy, do you want to speak to that a little bit? Yeah, that's I just I just it's an open discussion. I'm just curious. You're the first one put on the spot. He is a nice he is a nice fresh perspective to this too. So yeah, please. So um

we already have SharePoint, we already have Teams, we already have Outlook and all of the tools. We're already paying for them. The time, energy, and effort here are are really twofold. First off, we have to build out the different pages and repositories for the different groups to use. The main one though is we have to train everybody. And so finding time in everybody's busy day to to sit down and train and learn how to new use the new tools is probably our biggest challenge. That's

I have done this for Fortune 500 companies and we did full deployments within three months. Um that's where you can take a day or two out of people's time and dedicate to training on a new roll out. We don't have that kind of flexibility here. We have too much work to do, too few people to do it. So having a date of of June of next year should give us plenty of time to take 15 minutes, an hour out of time here and there to get each of the different groups with their space built out, customized to their their needs and and ways of operating um and then trained in how to use the new tools.

Thank you. No problem. That's just one. Anybody else have any questions on from you? Wow. Shock, huh? You're good, Deb. All right, we're good. All right, let's move on to objective two, which is standardized workflows, training, and service continuity. And so, you'll notice on these descriptions of the objectives, too, a lot of them are multi-year objectives. So, we know we're not finishing them in one year. We're starting them. And that's these action items are about starting our movement toward them. So,

so I want to run through these. Um, and I want you to stop me as I'm going along if there's questions about them. Identify mission critical processes in each department and create uh documented SOPs. As you know, we're doing those at the higher level, the town level. They were seeing them on a weekly basis. And as you know, staff has said, "Can you give us some more of those? Can you give us some more of those?" And they're not really saying that, but anyway. Um, and then you have departments like the police department. They're accredited agency. They have SOPs for everything. um fire department has some some of them are outdated. They're working on those but those departments have a long long histories those professions of having standard operating procedures that are written uh and there's accreditation for fire departments too. We're just not quite there yet. Um but I know fire department is already working on they have a plan actually to to upgrade all their SOPs and like I said the PD is required those get evaluated when they have accreditation. So they're sort of the gold standard with that. Um, but DPW and planning need to have those and start building those up. Right now, they don't have any. Uh, but they should and how they do business. When somebody new comes in, that's how they learn how to do this is how we do it here. Here's the process. And other people, citizens and people like you get to see what is the process that's supposed to be followed and the benchmarking. So, that gets done that way. Um, all right. And so again, we're going to identify when and you'll see the the action the key performance indicators for each of those. Conduct workflow analysis for permitting, election administration, taxation, dispatch, inspections, accounts payable, and other high volume processes. We don't have metrics for most of these right now. So we really don't know how how what we're processing for numbers in many cases or how how quickly or how slowly it takes us to process those and is there a better way to do that. So you got to start developing data and then the workflows to get those done. And once you start looking at those workflows, that's where lean comes into place. Here is all the processes. Boy, there's an awful lot of waste in that process. We can cut two or three of those out,

streamline that process, and make it more efficient. And Ron, you and I were talking about lean today. This was created by Toyota Corporation and Ford Motor Corporation, and how to make their assembly lines more efficient. How to get rid of that waste, squeeze that out, and make it more efficient, more effective. And that's what that's that's what we're talking about here. In many cases, we have multiple people involved in a workflow and one group doesn't know what the other's doing. That would be like building an assembly line with Ford where the guys who are building the wheels don't know where the brakes go and they're not working together. And we've there are some serious issues in between and we the land use change tax was a perfect example of that. There are some that we're not collecting because we missed it. We don't have a good process and we're losing revenue. So, Kelly brought together a team because she's our lead our lean team leader. Our folks got that training back in uh in October to start going through those processes and identifying that. Bring everybody who's involved in that, looking at it so they all understand it from beginning to end and how we make it better. Create department cross trainining plans and named backups for critical roles and annual refresher requirements. develop onboarding and role-based training plans for new staff, including cyber security and technology use. If you work for a larger company, you have a very scripted onboarding process um and an offboarding process when you leave when you retire, of course,

u because there's no place better to go than here. So, you wouldn't leave for other employment. But if you do get retired though eventually, because we all have to do that someday, um that's when you want to have to go through that offboarding process and that should be spelled out so we don't miss anything. and we get those things back which belong to us and passwords and things that that person may only know themselves and make sure that gets passed on to others. So right now we don't have a process in place for that specific HR does on the on your benefits and those and they do a really good job with that but all of the rest of it we should have a complete checklist issuance of gear uniforms passwords what software programs need to be built out when a new person comes on board that person should walk in and their desktop should be all set up for them

they should have access to their passwords the cyber services person should be going in okay here's your passwords log in and you have access to all the things that you have instead of sitting there can take a week sometimes or longer and you can't do your work. So that should be a streamlined process. It should be electronic so digital. So when someone is in the hiring process that gets lined up so when they show up on that day everything they need is ready for them and they're ready to go to work. We don't have that yet. So that's what we're trying to accomplish. Review staffing capacity with departments explicitly identified cycle time or workload constraints. So before you talk about adding more people, you need to make sure that the ones you do have are you're making the best use of them. We don't have a process by which we do that. That's important to work through that. Apply lean principles across departments to revise processes and improve efficiency and I talked about example of that. Create continuity of operations plans for each department. That's critical. We do not have those especially if you have a crisis situation. uh if a build if if a department has to vacate a building for because something happens to the building, not that that would ever happen here, but if that happens, we should have a plan by which we do that. Where is that temporary site going to be? How's that going to be operated? How are we going to make that function? How are we going to have connectivity with uh uh cable and all that sort of stuff that needs to be done?

Would you equate that to what we did with the library? Yes, but we'll have a plan. Actually, we put it together really. I see you smiling. So we'll have a written plan of what happens if the library right? So if that has to happen but more importantly like a police station or a fire station because those are critical public safety functions or if we had to vacate our DPW facility for whatever reason we should have a plan of where we're going to operate. If the clerk's if this building goes down, we should be able to go to another turn town clerk's office. Other towns have mutual aid agreements with that. So we could send our residents there to register their vehicles and we might send staff there to be able to do that. We need to have a formalized plan and be able to execute that like that so our citizens don't see a disruption in service.

So um since Sean decided to steal my thunder and go into the details on that one right there ask question one here. So you said to ask questions as we go. So

I'm just teasing got to keep it light in here. Um, you'll notice the very last one of the KPIs is specifically identifies police, fire, finance, town clerk, tax collector, town manager, cyber services, and public works to have created or if they already have it, reviewed and finalized, a continuity of operations plan by the end of next year. It would be lovely if we could get all 14 town departments, but in one year, the amount of work that goes into these is unlikely. However, these these are the key ones that if they go down one day, you need to have something going the next day. And so that is that that's the cru those are the really crucial ones in order to keep the town running. Um, absolutely every single day. So that's why we prioritized those by June 30th, 2027. So now I'm going to loop back up to the beginning of the list, um, which is 100% of departments have a list of mission critical processes by the end of 2026. so they know what they are. 100% of departments have a minimum of one reviewed, updated, and documented SOP or workflow. So, some departments have a bunch, but trying to get at least one department to have a documented SOP. Um, I'm going to use recreation as an example here because right now working on facilities management and how we manage our the use of our recreational facility space is one that they've identified as a priority for them to document and get in down on paper the workflow. Sorry, digital. I can't say the P word anymore. Um, department heads review 100% of job descriptions to identify cross trainining needs by March 31st, 2027. 25% of cross trainining needs have a plan by 6:30 2027. Onboarding and offboarding checklist completed by 6:30 2027. And then 100% of departments who identify staffing limitations at the end

of fiscal year 26 have a staffing plan complete by the end of December by December 31st, 2026. And this goes back to what Sean said that if you're saying you need additional staff, you need to have be able to articulate that, lay that out, show the impacts, and see what your existing staff are doing.

And you saw that in the last budget process. Those documents are still on our website that those departments had to fill out to do that. And that's going to be a standard process going forward. You have to look at alternatives and u there's a whole range of processes involved with that. run one lean workshop next year and send four additional staff to lean yellow belt training and four staff to lean green belt training. Yellow belts the basic level and then green belts the next one up by the end of next year. So the private sector calls it sigma 6 that might be more familiar with it. So what do those belts cost for the training?

It's $400 a person for the yellow belt and the green belt I believe last year was 750 but it might have gone up since then. And and that takes um one day, two days, three to five depending. It's three to four. Uh the yellow belt was three days, I think. Green belt is 4 days. And it's done by the state of New Hampshire. Okay. And and so they got to go to conquered to do it or they come here. Last time we had them come here because we had so many, but that's not their normal thing. When we got we had a critical mass, so it made sense for them to send a trainer down here. Um normally it's going to conquer. When did we last do that? When did we last do that? October. Okay.

Normally they don't they don't you have to go there, but we were able to convince them to come here. So they don't they don't normally leave their training facility off of South uh South I think it's South Road, South Main Street and in conquered at BET, but we were able to get them to come here, which saves us travel time of all of our staff that drive up there, which was good. Is the money that we pay for each individual to do that, is that in a budget? Do we have to do a warn article or how is that? Is that in the budget already? Just so we know for cost comes out of the training lines or the respective budget. Yeah.

So I see this page as our manual. This is the manual to run the town. And again, we're creating all of the baselines for this manual so that you can actually kind of hand it off to somebody else or anybody could pick it up and say, "Okay, this is what this person. this is the you know not in a paper but on on the computer that's what I see this whole thing as being am I correct in what I'm thinking

in a way because you should be able to look at this if you want to come work for the town of Londereerry what is the town of London what are its trajectories where's it going or if you're a citizen moving for the first time it's all listed out for you what the top priorities are at that level and then when you have business plans you'll be able to drill down into much further and those are a lot more nit oid detail of each department and in the and in the case of the library you you got a board of trustees that would outline that for them in the case of the conservation commission they're going to have a whole list of I call them mini objectives that are specific to that function and then you can read that because otherwise trying to when I apply for this job I'm trying to figure out where is this town going what does it want to do and I got bits and pieces from newspaper articles there's clearly a PAS problem in the water right but what are its objectives and there's no way to tell that this is going to be that it's sort of that road map. I wouldn't call it a manual. Sort of the road map of where we're going, what our objectives are, and how we're going to accomplish them and what our goals are.

Well, I think that's the overall strategic plan. I was talking about just this page of being an like an operational manual in my mind. Do you know what I'm saying? Like I understand what you said perfectly and I totally agree with you, but I think this is that's more of a a whole like a manual of how the whole thing works. You're thinking about like operating like this this is heavily focused on operating procedures. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. And standardizing them. There's definitely an element in here, but part of that and that's the element of the outcomes, but the uh the thought process and the um analysis that goes into it is the other component. Yeah. Yeah. Making sure we do that.

I look at a manual as one of those things when you buy a TV and you throw it in the corner, you don't read it. And then when you're halfway through, it's like, I should have read the manual. I know what you're saying. That's not what I meant. He's so fresh. It's a man thing because we don't read the directions and we get halfway through it's like, I should have read the directions because then you start over again. And and you have the antenna coming out. Oh, wait. There's no more antennas um coming out of the back of the TV.

All right. Excellent. Um, back on the department head has reviewed 100% of the job descriptions. Who was going to be in charge with writing the job descriptions for each area? For example, um, one thing that we discussed, Sean and I discussed is who's going to write the town manager job descriptions? That could be the town council. Like who, like I'm just that's just an example like who's going to write for example Dave Wallally's job description. So, we do have job descriptions, okay, for the vast majority, if not all of our positions we have. So, this one is focused around not necessarily writing new job descriptions, but we're saying looking at these job descriptions

and figuring out where are those critical cross trainining needs. Like, for example, if somebody gets a respiratory illness for two weeks and can't come in and send out the strategic plan, who has who knows how to do in design and pick up that project? Just speaking strictly hypothetically and not what happened last week. Um, okay. No, so Sean, that seems pretty specific. Good example. You know, it's what they have to be updated. Most of what happens is the the process we're doing right now is when the job comes open on a position. We have HR review with a department

and it's a back and forth between the two. HR needs to make sure that we we meet certain criteria, physical requirements, and those sorts of things in there and that they're standardized. departments say, "Yeah, this is what this job actually does." Because it does change from time to time. We don't do those things. Well, then you take that out and you put the things in they actually do, right? Because they get scored. Now, with the wage classification system, all those positions get scored and it's based upon what you put in there. That scoring, right? So, that getting these modernized is important and keeping them modernized is a critical function. And

so, departments are going to do most of the review themselves. They have to look at it to make sure that they are right for the work that's being done in their departments and then HR will scrub it to make sure it meets the the basic requirements for a job description and then where those are missing like the town manager for instance um that we go and build those or even the HR position for example is that something that you would write the description for HR like I'm just thinking that the ones that kind of are outliers like you and HR who would write those job descriptions for for department head so she'd write her own job description

uh no I I would do that, J. I would review that the department heads because they they answer directly to me. So, I would review all those and make sure they're correct. And then, for instance, uh Dave Wallally would look at all of his people and all those different jobs to make sure that they're right. And then they get run by me because I sign them. And then I'll kick them back if I have concerns about them or what I think should be added or subtracted from them. So, it's it's a process like any good bureaucratic process has to go through a number of people to be approved. Yep. Um, as far as onboarding and offboarding checklist, who's going to complete those? Who'll be in charge of those?

So, uh, those are going to start out with HR because they deal with the first parts of that and usually their benefits, but the department also has a piece of that. Cyber services has a piece with that. So, everybody's interacting with that employee, they complete their sections. And if you do it with a digital platform, which we don't have yet,

uh, then you can see where the status of that is. everybody who's who's playing in that field, HR can see it, cyber services can see it, and the department head and the supervisors within that department can see and then to to sign off at the end and make sure that everything was covered. Did you go over the ethics policy with that person? Oh, yeah. We get Wait, did you go over the code of conduct with that person? Yep, that's checked off. They saw the video. They didn't have any questions. They signed off. They signed the acknowledgement that they read that. All those things get done and they get checked off and they it exists digitally. Right now, it doesn't exist at all. Right. That's I think it's important. That's why I'm I agree. I fully agree that we need we need a process cuz every, you know,

we need we need some kind of process. Everyone gets treated the same so no one feels like they got left out like, "Oh, you didn't tell me that." So, um, anybody else with any questions? Feel like I'm being Dan today. I'm feeling being Dan today. I know my homework already. So, all right. Well, then All right.

Let's move other way. Let's move on to the next one. uh this is the improved long range financial planning and budget transparency. So this is dealing with strategic budgeting, resident facing budget tools and budget education and making sure that our financial platforms are sufficient for the work that we have to do. So road mapap to replace the town's existing ERP program which as we know is significantly outdated and does not perform the functions that we needed to do. For clarification, could you tell everyone what an ERP is?

Yep. Uh it's the finance package, finance program that you have, your budgeting program, your accounts payable, accounts receivable, as well as all your HR programs, payroll, and those sorts of things, right? And we we definitely need to do that. I just wanted people to understand modernize the chart of accounts to comply with the Hampshire DRA administrative rules which we presently do not do. Oh boy.

And we are required to update and maintain the fund balance and debt management policies and align capital reserve funding with the master plan and departmental strategic plans. Again, the purpose of a strategic plan is to direct where we're going to be putting our resources to accomplish the particular task that we have said we want to accomplish. create resident facing budget tools such as a glossery, budget simulator, educational content, and short budget briefings. This is even more critical in communities that have a town meeting where people are making the decisions. We have to be able to get the information out to them in a format that they can digest and people at different levels of understanding so they can absorb those uh materials and make the appropriate decisions that they need to make. That's a key task that we need to continue to build on. We've made some progress on it the last year in terms of what we put out there, availability, but there is more to be done. Uh, train departments um, oh, I I missed one. Create resident facing budget tools such as a glossery, budget simulator, educational content, and short budget briefings. And again, that budget simulator requires new software, which we don't presently have. And then educational content, we have a variety of plans we want to put into place. You've seen some of the status updates I provided to you on a weekly basis on that. Train departments, budget committee, and town council to build multi-year budget request using data, performance indicators, and capital planning assumptions. Um, a lot of towns, and we're one of those, plan one year at a time, which you have to appropriate money in one year at a time. However, you have to have, I would suggest to you, multi-year budgeting and a long-term plan. Otherwise, you're just going from one year to the next and you don't have a plan into that next year. explore strategic uh priority based budgeting model. We've talked about this many times and uh at some point we need

to pull the trigger at least on going through the process of exploring that and making the decision as to whether or not we're going to do that or not.

All right. And so of the key performance indicators complete roadmap for replacement of town ERP by September 30th of this year. Um, this is an early deadline because as we move through the budget cycle, we're going to need to know um what our plan is for doing this and the length of the plan and what our runway is in order to make sure that we execute this um before we are in a bad position with our current software. Worst position. Justin would want me to say worst position. um complete analysis of the conversion from the current chart of accounts to the modernized chart of accounts. We want to have the analysis of how we're going to convert that overdone so that when we do convert ERPs, we don't have to do them at two separate times. Update the fund balance and debt management policies. Have that completed and improved by December 31st of this year.

And as you know, those are already on the schedule. Chairman Dunn as we've already plotted those out. 100% of known capital projects are submitted for consideration on the CIP by June of next year. We say submitted for consideration because that's only halfway through next year's CIP. We're making huge strides getting it on this year, trying to get make sure that every potential capital project is outlined and out there for people to see and for it to be discussed by the CIP committee. Um, we know that we're not going to get absolutely everything that we know needs to be done on there by May 1st. So that's why we said by next year they need to be submitted. A public-f facing budget education program in place by September 30th, 2027. Increase deliberative session attendance by 15% over 5-year average by next year.

Good luck with that. There was a budget committee that recommended that budget committee public. You know, you got to have some whimsical ones in here. I mean, sure. I certainly can.

Welcome. Thank you. Thank you. Kate Burbage, chair of the budget committee. Um so part of this was if we can increase attendance at deliberative session um we can get a better idea of uh public input into the budget on the whole finding out what's more important to people hearing their voices those kinds of things. Um ideally some of this participation would happen earlier than deliberative session so we're not hearing a lot of the same questions at deliberative sessions that we've heard throughout budget season. Um but we do feel that increasing attendance at deliberative session would also increase attendance at March elections um which helps overall participation in the community towards the budget and things in general. So

do you or the budget committee have any good ideas on how we can do that? How we can engage the public to come to the session? Uh we will by 22820. No, I'm just just uh No, but we actually have Thursday and I can add that to our

um but no, I I think one of the things um you know in increasing attendance and delivery session um I know on the school side some they offer child care. I don't know if that's something maybe we could offer to get younger families in involved because um that might be helpful. Um I know when I attend deliberative session my husband doesn't because somebody has to be home with the kids. Um, so I think, you know, something very simple like that could help, you know. No, I I appreciate that. That's a very You almost think it's a goal that we should already have, but it's, you know, transportation should be added to that, too, because if it's bad weather,

like older people might not want to drive in bad weather to have it so that or even at night for the schools. I know the school used to offer that um that they would, you know, they used one of the buses, they'd do a list, you know, people would call in advance, they'd drive around, get them, take them home to get people to go to the deliberative. Yep. But I also think pizza and beer is a good push. Should we add that or I thought you were paying. While Kate's up here, do you have any other questions about the budget education, public facing budget information? That that that was something that we drew heavily from the budget committee input for. If you have any questions about that for her while she's up here,

I think it's great that you're trying to get people to come more to the meetings, be more engageful engagement with them. Yep. Um, I think it would be be nice if um somebody from the budget committee kind of did um and they could put it online on the town website and stuff. Um, like prior to the meeting, so I'm making up dates because I don't know. Yep. But just say June 25th, we're having our first budget meeting. We will be going over schools this and we welcome people to come. You know what I mean? Like so you put it out in advance. Yes.

That you're going to be doing this and then you kind of Mr. Mahaland has said this a billion times and hopefully we'll get there to the point where we can have Zoom. Yep. People can zoom in or email their questions into you guys. So you'd have more of an interactive way early budget meeting because like you just said, people just can't, you know, I'm putting trying to put the kids to sleep. I can't run out. but I'm not going to pay for a babysitter to run to the budget committee meeting or it's, you know, bad weather or whatever the reason or I got to work late. Whatever it is, I mean, having that there I think would be a great tool. I don't know how close or far we are to some of those things. Yeah. But I agree with you. We've got to start

being a little more proactive. You know, come on, come on down. This is what we're specifically We want your questions. you will be heard because so many people in this town feel like they come, they speak and nobody listens.

Yeah. One of the one of the things I will say about the public facing bug judication program uh one of the things I was thinking about um as I was writing the annual report um for the budget committee for to to be included this year um was that I focus on a couple of warrant articles that we all agreed on and I thought wouldn't it be great if maybe next year when we all vote on as a committee on the war articles when we go through them anybody in favor of it writes a little blurb about why they're in favor of that war article and somebody who's against that war article writes a little blurb about why they're against that warn article. And that way you can have voter education in a this is why I support that or this is why I don't support that. And that kind of gives you a both sides approach to why this is good or why this is not good. Um and and I think that might be something that we can potentially try to implement this year. And if all of if all of us on the board are in favor of something, there is no opposing viewpoint obviously. But um I think that would be good um for because we get to the deliberative sessions, right? Why did you vote in favor of this? Why did you vote against that type of thing that already explains everything and I think that helps clarify things for voters when they go into deliberative session

and that helps streamline the deliberative session in of itself and that shortens that duration so people aren't thinking gh I go start I'm there at 9:00 am and I'm there until you know dinner time. Yeah, exactly. I think that's something we need to add to this is what Kate just said. We can't have a 6 and 1 half hour deliberative. We need we need that we need we need that to be one of our strategic um goals is to shorten that. So increasing attendance could be streamlining the deliberative session in of itself. But I think you know we should probably have something maybe reduce it by at least two hours to keep more. Okay, I'm doing more. As you know, Chairman Dunn, you are coordinating a meeting with the budget committee in the school board for the first time to coordinate the budget schedule.

So, we can start earlier and you've got that meeting coming up. It's coming up in May. May 15th. Yep. Yep. So, you've got that coming up. And Drew, if you back in your room there, could you come out and talk about how we're going to be integrating in May? That's the That's a future one. Hold on. It was brought up in here. So, that's why I was covering it up. That's a different objective. Anyway, there's a number of things and also creation of videos, which is something I've got Drew working on as well, and I talked to you about that today, a script for that that talks about our budget process. A lot of people, they don't want to read something, they want to watch a quick video and get a better understanding of what it is. And if we can do that for each one of those warn articles, and hopefully there are a lot less of them. Um because we heard that complaint when we went to the Baldwins.

Way too many warn articles and for people to try to figure out and work their way through and you and I talked about that and you were had a plan that you were looking at with that to u sort of modernize that process and see what our options are. Yeah. And I think a good example of a good video would be the community aggregation one that we put out where they can go right to the question. The resident can go right to the question they want. the whole video is there, but they could watch certain parts of the question if they'd like. And I that was very effective. Got very positive feedback on that video. So, um, that could be another example. I know. I got a question for Kate. Uh, oh,

so I I reviewed this whole document. Okay. This whole strategic plan and I want your thoughts about um the plan involving the budget committee. Sure. Okay. I mean, what's your thought of this? I mean, I I look at it and it seems like we're involving the budget committee much more. Yes. Not only at budget time, but throughout the whole year, which is something that I've been a proponent for for years, saying the budget committee needs to be involved year year round. What's your thought on that?

I agree with you. I do believe that the budget committee needs to be involved a lot more on a year- round basis. I think moving some of the budget stuff to earlier in the season would certainly help. Um I know it's a big lift to have us attend meetings sometimes two or three times a week during the holidays. Um because we'll start in November, we go through Thanksgiving till after Christmas. Um so it's kind of a big ask. The earlier we can start that process, the more we can be involved and the more we can meet with we the more time we have to meet with the department heads instead of meeting in these big group meetings with both the school board and the town council. that doesn't leave a lot of time for us to meet with you know our liaison and things like that to really dig into some of the details. Um you know one of the ideas that we had is that when we start building budgets this year um we should be involved right from the beginning so we have a better understanding of how budgets are built. So for example do we start from default and work our way over from there or do we start from a zero budget and add things in that we think are necessary? Both are two very different philosophies behind budgeting. So, how are these budgets built? Um, and trying to integrate from, you know, the very beginning. Um, I I do think we have a a very strong budget committee and I do think, um, we are underutilized a little bit. Um, so I think rearranging and and rethinking how we use the budget committee would only benefit London Dair.

Great. Thank you. You're welcome. All right. Any other questions for Kate? Thank you, Kate. Appreciate it. Thank you for being here today. Number four. So number four is implement staff development and retention plans. So this is a long-term one that we moved on. Oh yeah, I'm sorry. I have a question on objective three still. Um sorry, be that guy. Um just a question on the ERP program where the voters didn't pass at this time. Yep. Are we going to work on a is the goal to get a new warrant article together and educate the the population that we need this program? Is that what the objective is here? I just want to make sure.

It's to build a roadmap to do that. So, I'm not going to say we're going to do this or that. It's to build that plan. So, we just went through a process. Now, we need to decide what we're going to do next. Okay. So, that is the task. Okay. So the task is to find a way to what are our options, right? And then how are we going to do those and when are we going to do those things? Perfect. All right. Go ahead. Sorry. No worries. Fine. All right. So this is all about staff development and retention. Keeping people and making sure they're trained adequately superiorly. Really?

All right. Complete wage classification study and implement salary adjustments to align town salaries to the 60th percentile of comparative wages. The council is aware of this. I've had this discussion with you. So, if we have 10 employers, let's say it's 10 police departments. Where do we want to be? I'm saying that we be we should be at the number six position out of those 10. We're not going to be the highest paying or the ninth highest paying or the eighth or the seventh, but we don't want to be the lowest. Lowest paying, of course, is number one. Usually, the rest of them are going to fall someplace in that middle. We want to be slightly above the average at 60th percentile so that we can be competitive. Now, we're not going to be competitive uh trade for trade with those departments that are paying higher, but so some of our people may leave to go there, but they only have so many slots open. So, it's a matter of of risk assessment about how many people you might lose to those larger departments or the ones that pay more. They don't be larger. So achieving that 60th percentile seems to be the sweet spot to be able to retain the majority of your staff. So that's what I'm proposing there. The wage classification study, as you know, is well underway and we're finalizing that process. So that's uh moving along quite well. Next one, conduct a townwide workforce risk assessment to identify hard to fill positions, retirement vulnerable roles in departments with recurring turnover or recruitment delays. Establish su succession plans for department heads and other missionritical technical or customer-f facing roles. Some departments are better at this than others. We need to be doing this townwide. Standardized annual employee development planning expectations by department including role-based training, supervisory coaching, and documented career path conversations. This is an area that we are pretty weak in that we really need to make some improvements on to allow us to retain the people that

we've spent a lot of money to develop and train and to keep them and allow them to take on the higher roles that we want them to move up into. Ideally, we want to be promoting people from within where we can where it makes sense to do that. So, we need to train them and get them ready for those positions. We all know how difficult it is to hire people within this day and age. Integrate wellness supports into retention planning for high stress roles. Increase staff awareness of training opportunities and employee benefits.

Okay. And so I'm not going to get into too much into this. Sean already mentioned the wage classification study. Implement recommendations for two of the groups by 2028. Um calculate the fiscal year 26 baseline turnover by September of this year. So we actually have a turnover number that we can look at. risk assessment report. So identifying those positions that are at high risk of turnover from retirement or departure or that are difficult to fill. Have that done by March 31st, 2027. 25% of our mission critical rules have established succession plans by the end of f end of FY27 and 25% of municipal departments have development and retention plans by the end of 2027. 25% of employees receive a documented career path discussion by the end of 2027. 95 of percent of all employees are compliant with no before security training by the end of this calendar year. Annual LPD wellness survey participation above 80% by the end of FY27. This is already underway, but develop and implement the mental health awareness program for LPD and LFD by the end of fiscal year 2027. and threearters of department heads attend a leadership or supervisory training and threequarters of employees attend at least one position specific training in person or virtual by the end of FY27 and then a 10% increase in attendance at the annual benefits fair which is will be held in May 2027. So, with um all of this uh new training

that we're implementing, and not that I'm against it, that will affect that line in the budget, right? Maybe sometimes, not always. Um sorry, that was a very sounded like a movie to me. There are a significant amount of training opportunities that we get through our um through the New Hampshire Municipal Association, through Primex, and through other professional associations. It's a benefit of having those memberships. Okay.

Um, when we talk about position specific training, they have online webinar training. They have all kinds of trainings that are then recorded as a webinar then passed on. So, these are not necessarily big expensive events that cost a ton of money. Um, emergency preparedness training, most of that is is free. It's you don't have to pay for it. Any of the FEMA type trainings, right? So, it's a matter of increasing our awareness of who needs to be going through what training

and getting them started on that process. It doesn't necessarily have to be an expensive one. So, I know this strategic plan is focusing in on the employees right now, but as we talk about this training and a free training that's available, um, which I'm I'm I'm protraining, just so you know. Um, I would love to see somewhere that we make that certain boards get trained in certain things like the planning board should go through the state's planning uh training program. I I mean it's I I I just feel like you know the you know we're volunteers we step up and and they is that going to be somewhere in this strategic plan that those boards and committees also get added training.

So as you know chairman Dunn had me uh coordinate a right to know training and we got a very large participation. These seats were all filled in here. I was very impressed. Um so you can't make people on boards or committees participate in training. You can ask them. you can make it available to them which we're doing and like I I like I said I was surprised at 51 people in this room from boards and committees very surprised. So you've got a pretty good uptake with that but as you indicated they're volunteers and they do have other things in

we're lucky we get them to you know be able to participate in the meetings they do and it's a lot because they got to read materials and all that in advance. So we'll continue to provide those opportunities but a lot of times like the budget committee was never notified. There's a training session NHMA puts on every year about the budget process. Well, that's what I'm talking about, right? But they were never notified of it. So, we're going to be doing it because it'll be coming up this fall. So, a lot of it's simply communicating here's the there's opportunities to do that. If you drive to conquer in your car, we will pay for the mileage back and forth. That's, you know, that's part of that process, right? Um, but they don't know any of that. And that's about onboarding members of boards and committees, which we don't do either,

right? And being volunteers, this does help them. do they spend less time reading and investigating by taking these classes because it's like you take this one class and you got all this knowledge now you don't have to research as much. So it does help them with their participation on these boards. So I'm happy that you're putting that out. Um and I know it didn't have to do with this but

well it does but so it's it's about us communicating to them which we are not doing a good job of to boards and committees this is what's available and this is we can sign you up for it and if there is a cost we can we have obviously issued credit cards we can pay for those because that's how you have to do it now if there is a training cost for that and then allowing them to go so that I think if we try that and see how well that works and what again what I saw from participation here you've got some pretty good volunteers in this community a lot of them will probably take advantage of that where they can.

I think you'd see more knowing that they were going to get some education even if it was just the process of the meeting, some education in the overall board that they're on. I think that would help them and encourage them more to step up so you feel a little bit more comfortable. I mean, sending out manuals, guidance documents to them, which I don't I don't believe was done before a lot, but at least getting those to them, online webinars and online training opportunities. So again, they don't have to travel. So those those are tools that are available that we need to continue to do more of that. Um yeah, I agree with you. Thank you.

I just want to highlight the succession plans and succession rules. That's very very important. We if we haven't been doing that, we definitely need to do that as a town. It's critically important that we know who's going to because you never know when something's going to happen. And so it' be I think that's that's something that I think we might even want to think about increasing the percentage on that and maybe putting a little bit more focus on that because I think that's really important that we have a succession plan because you never know someone could you know be gone with a health problem immediately or something or happen and then if we don't have anyone to step into that role. I just think that's really

I'm speaking for myself here but I think it's really important that we have that So he doesn't let me say in case I get hit by a bus anymore. It has to be in case I win the lottery. Just so you know. That's the that's the that's the angle. You get hit by a bus, you have to still come to work, right? So, all right. Awesome. Anything else on this one or Yeah, I a want to just just for everyone at home, you said integrate the wellness supports. Um, does that mean we're going to put it under one group and have one wellness support? Are we going to still have a group of different wellness supports but kind of all

No, just better integrate it into our how we plan to take care of and keep our employees. It's a process that has very much been on the mind of our public safety Yep. chiefs. And so, it's a matter of making sure that we as a town are putting the proper emphasis and priority on it. Mhm. And I agree with that, I guess. Go ahead. Sorry. No, I just wanted clarification on developing and implementing mental health awareness program for for the LPD and LFD. Kim, do you want to just roughly what that is? Both fire both chiefs, if you could just come up and talk about what you're doing in that area.

That's great. So cute. I know. I feel bad for you. Appreciate my company. I don't mind you at all. Briefly summarize. Sure. We're talking about

So, yeah, we we've had a plan in place for several years now. Uh we have local clinicians. We debrief after uh every casualty incident or um what we like to call them like uh like fatalities or things like that. We have people come in. Uh we also do uh they do uh sponsored checks with each other. um you know, buddy checks, whatever you want to call them. And we're also working on a program right now where we could incentivize them to come in once or twice a year um and speak with somebody for an hour. They can talk about sports, they can talk about workrelated incidences or complain about me.

Uh similarly, we have implemented um the well, we're implementing this coming year, but we started two years ago. So, we have um four members, myself included, that are part of a CISM or critical incident stress management team. Um we work with the police department who also has a CISM team and we kind of work with each other so that when we do have these incidents, we check in on each other through that program and through those certifications. We have the resources for clinicians to come in and hold um debriefings. Um, so like the chief said, any major incidents, uh, uh, I don't want to say just deaths because we see a lot of deaths, but but specific areas within that that that can be can be troubling. We, um, we do internal check-ins. We reach out, like for instance, things that have happened recently, we reached out to the PD and said, "Hey, we're here for you." Right? And likewise they've done that with us because we found that um sometimes we don't want to talk to our own people so we go next door and there might be open to that. We've also implemented uh sending more members to those classes. And like the chief, we just signed up and we have a clinician um out of Bedford uh who is who has taken the Lary Fire Department on and we are currently in the process of setting up those hourlong appointments for all members every year to like the chief said, they can talk about the weather, they can talk about their problems, they can talk about sports, uh their dog, whatever they want, but they're given an opportunity, right? And what we've learned is that if you give somebody an opportunity who may be skeptical or or resistant to wanting to talk about things that might be troubling them, when they have the opportunity, they actually take it. Um, and so we're working on building that every year and then bringing programs with to the fire department um through our clinician coming in and talking about different things. A few years ago, we had um Dr. Dr. Nicole Sawyer come in and talk to

the department about uh uh our mental health struggles and the mental health struggles that come with this. We also held one for members and their spouses and so we probably had half the department and their spouses sign up to come in and hold the same training with her. Um so those are the things we're working at and kind of trying to build on. I just wanted to bring this up because I think it's very important for the community to understand some of the struggles that our first responders face. And I know that years ago it was suck it up. You know, you didn't complain. You didn't talk about it. you and uh you know you go to a situation where you know a child has you know mishandled a weapon and and dies. Um it's good to have somebody that you can talk to and I think it's great that you guys are doing that. Uh all support I'm 100% behind it. I think it's very important. So thank you for doing that. I um I want to echo what Dan said, but I remember when I first heard about this was with Bo

and he brought it forward and I had a long conversation with him and I it really it's something people don't think about the pressure and the this the visual scenes that you have and the replaying in your head of how you could have did it different and some of them are war, you know, and it brings back a whole bunch of other things. And I'm very very happy that you guys are doing this. I'm getting emotional and can't help it.

And with this too, especially specifically with Bo, but when Bo and I were talking about this 2 or 3 years ago, the thought process was not just within our two organizations, but within the town, right? So, if there are incidents that happen with members from town hall or the library or other town staffs or even the school staff, there is a town resource that's already been built between the two organizations that can support that also. Right. So, so like the town manager said, try not to silo things. Mental health is not something we should silo. And yes, our jobs do expose the the employees of this town to a higher mental health um uh crisis opportunity. But I think just understanding that there are other people who may not be in those higher stress roles that may still need help. We're here to help with that. Also,

I think it's important because you know, you you all work together as a team. and the whole, you know, all the town employees and you know each other and god forbid somebody passes away, you know, a motor vehicle accident or accidentally whatever um it affects people. So, I just want to say thank you and I think it's something important that should be throughout the whole town. Yep. Thank you. Great. Appreciate it. Thank you guys. Moving on to B1 unless there's any other questions about this.

Okay, so we're going into the second area has two objectives. They're pretty related. Um, so I'm thinking we can probably and none of these things are going to um blow your minds in terms of action items or seem really unfamiliar. So we can probably move through this one a little bit faster than the past ones. Just to

So first one, create a municipal communications calendar that coordinates town hall content, cable programming, social media, and public notices and initiative of specific outreach. We need to do there's we need to make some improvements in here to blast out information to people. provide evergreen explainer content for recurring service topics such as assessments, elections, water, permitting, budget, and uh recreation offerings. So, an example, when we have a reval coming up, we should already have stock material to how what the reval is, how it works. We know what the questions are. We get them every two years when we do them. Those can be prepared in advance, and those materials can be on our website. So, when that does come up, people have those materials there to be able to understand it better. increase professionally produced local programming and partnership content through the access center and community organizations. Uh I want to transform uh what we do with with cable and I want more public communications out of that about what the town is doing and how it functions. Being able to show that by video format is a lot better tool. Pictures worth a thousand words while a motion video is even more powerful than that. So using that tool more effectively and we have a department that does that very thing. use inerson outreach with seniors, veterans, youth, neighborhood groups, and civic organizations for major initiatives. Now, the council has already done that over the year. We've had several public engagement sessions. We want to continue to do those and enhance those. Develop initiative specific communications plans for water expansion, saw waste, septic education, master plan implementation, strategic plan uh implementation. I don't see Rey here, but Ry led a very powerful one with a lot 1023 people showed up. 130

that's even better. 130 people showed up. So that's an example of the sort of thing that we have a hot button topic. We should be on top of that and we should be allowing an opportunity for folks to understand more about it, what we're doing about it and also for us to take feedback from them. Go to

All right. And so the performance for this one is have the calendar for next calendar year done by the end of this year and in the first half of the year hit 90% of planned activities. You're never going to do a hundred stuff comes up, but 90% is realistic. Six evergreen content videos and two video features for community or nonprofit groups. And I suppose we can consider our our boards as as those for that purposes. Um, increase engagement on Facebook by 10%. That one needs to be refined a little, but it's a good placeholder. Hold at least four new public outreach or engagement events in the community. And when we're thinking about these, we're not just thinking about town halls. One of the things that came up when our conversations with assessing was outreach to like the Legion to talk about veterans benefits, right? Or um you know talking about the elderly exemption credits in 55 plus neighborhoods. And 50% of new projects have a communications plan developed at the same time as the project is developed. That's a new muscle we need to build, but we should start building it and we should shoot for half of the projects in fiscal year 27 when they start the communications plan is done.

So, we did a little bit of that in the sewer project, but we really need to up our game with this. This should be a video by nonetheless than John Troy are talking about. We've got a a force sewer main. But if people can can see that, they can understand it like, "Okay, now I know what they're doing." He could show a map of it and he could do the voice over. This is where this line's going to go. This is what it does. and then some video of, you know, out in the field. It's going to go down this road here. This is what the pipe looks like about this size so people can understand it a little bit. That's what we need to do a better job of. We're going to have road closures and so on and so forth. And that could be a short video, just a few minutes long, and I mean like two or three minutes long to articulate that on that project page to get to allow people to better understand it. All right, questions on that one before we move on to the next one. I just want to say that the in-person outreach to the seniors uh when I went there talked about the warrant articles uh a lot of good feedback on that and Kate um you know if I did that and I had somebody from the budget committee there

also to explain the warrant articles that'd be great so I I'll definitely reach out to you definitely okay thank you moving on to B2 we're good all right so this is expand civic participation election election readiness and public trust. So, this is all about getting the information out there in plain language. Um, explainer text, expanding access to meetings, and expanding access to participation.

Develop uh explainer test synopsises for warn articles and text synopsis for warrant articles, including issue education materials where legally appropriate. Other communities have voter guides, and like I said, I'm talking about short little videos for each warrant article. Click on it and it just tells you what it is and what it does. Ex expand hybrid or virtual meeting participation where feasible and publish participating uh participation uh uh policies and workflow standards. We're going to be doing this that we're going to be doing an upgrade to this room in May which has been planned for quite some time to allow uh for virtual participation and I want to do those for the events that I conduct in here so I can allow people to participate in that fashion. It'll be up to the council and the other boards and committees as to whether or not they choose to do that. Uh but I plan to do that so I can allow the maximum amount of public participation in those community events that I uh run here. Uh okay. Create targeted engagement modalities for seniors, youth, schools, PTAs, and civic groups including internships, ELO opportunities where appropriate. As you know, the fire department has one of those which has been pretty successful. We want to expand those where appropriate. host recurring public forums, office open houses, coffee chats, and strategic plan progress sessions. I've been doing several of those. Dan talked about one that he did. We need to do more of those, and more of us need to be doing them. We do a lot of those at the Baldwins um on different topics. Uh Dave Wallley's been in there to talk to them about different things and uh the other departments as well and want to continue to enhance those. uh publish annual and period public safety and town clerk tax collector performance reports. Expand youth engagement and school-based outreach initiatives. Begin tracking response times to resident issues from initial contact to resolution. We have no data on on pretty much any of those at this point. Write a policy on how to handle complaints against board members

and elected officials. And uh Ron, that was one council chairman Dunn, that's one you had requested. Go ahead. So um 100% of articles have explainer text accompanying them next year. Half of board and commission meetings held with hybrid teams participation available to the public by the end of next year. That one might need to be scaled down, but we'll see. Host six openhouse or drop-in events for the public. Publish quarterly statistical reports from LPD, LFD, and the town clerk on a centralized location. Many of they do these things. We just want to pull them together. 100% of departments tracking response times to priority resident interactions by the end of fiscal year 27. Two boards incorporate a youth member or liaison from Londereary High School or of Londereary High School resident of high school age by the end of fiscal year 27 and a board and appointed member complaint policy approved by the end of this fiscal year. The other thing you'll notice on this slide, I'm sorry, at the end of this calendar year, you'll notice that on this slide, there's now a list of potential partners. Um, these are the communities, these are the examples of people we'll reach out to to help us partner with the community to reach these to achieve these action items and key KPIs.

No questions. We'll move on to C1. All righty. So now we're moving into growth, land use, housing, and economic fatality. And the first one here is improve predictability, speed, and coordination and development review. So these are some pretty ambitious three-year goals that start with this year's the fiscal year 27 action items.

Complete permit portal configuration, standardized comment sheets, review deadlines, and intake requirements. Document pre-application guidance and business inquiry protocols for applicants and existing businesses. Strengthen coordination among all participants in design review. Integrate current use land use change tax notifications in the development review process. Review enforcement inspection coordination to reduce rework and inconsistent direction. A lot of this came from Kelly in that department. Y go ahead.

Establish baseline. And this is where we're establishing baselines for average land use application review time and then baseline error rate in permits and applications. Update all the web pages for all the relevant boards and departments related to design review and development review by the end of next fiscal year. Hold an annual training session, Deb, this is what you were saying earlier for board members on statutory rules, regulations, and design review by March 2027. achieve 100% use of the new heritage review form for applicable cases by the end of this calendar year. A flowchart of design review process to include notifying assessing of a qualifying land use change event by the end of this year and that's already in progress. And the assistant assessor trained in determining highest and best use of property which is a land use um land use change tax necessity by the end of next fiscal year. questions on design review. I I don't and again this is some these are conversations we've been having for any questions on that.

All right. Moving on to C2. Align zoning, housing and growth management with infrastructure capacity and community character. So if the other one's about the mechanics and the operations of design review and development review and redevelopment, this is about um looking at our regulations and requirements and how they impact what happens in lenary. Jeff Penter was a a major contributor to this one which is really helpful.

Roadmap the needed updates for zoning ordinance, site plan regulations and subdivision regulations related to housing use compatibility design quality and growth impacts as outlined in the master plan. Translate the master plan into an actionable implementation framework. Evaluate where higher density or alternative housing types can be supported without unacceptable transportation or service impacts. Connect land use decisions to transportation planning, sidewalk, bicycle connectivity, and infrastructure extension standards. Incorporate sustainability and design considerations into planning and review processes. Develop a heritage informed design lookbook toolkit for applicable projects.

All right. And so for key performance indicators would be identify three to five priority zoning or land use topics for structured public discussion. So pick out three to five topics that we will engage in these conversations of over the course of the next year. Pick them out by the end of this calendar year. complete a prioritized list of updates to the zoning ordinance, site plan regulations, and subdivision regulations by the end of fiscal year 27. This process will this this is a process that will take some money and take budgeting and planning updating these all successfully. So, it's important for us to have that list going into next year's budget process so we can have that road map and plan, develop and publish a master plan implementation matrix and identify the first chapter to address by March 31st. I just want to talk about that a little bit. Uh master plans are obviously good for communities, but a lot of them are nice dust collectors that go nowhere. Nobody knows what they are. Nobody pays any attention to them. If we do that, all the money we just spent and all the staff time and volunteer time to put it together will be wasted. So we and it's it's critical that we have a plan to actually implement those provisions. Otherwise, it's a meaningless document. I would suggest to you

then finalize the topics to be covered by a lookbook toolkit by the end of next fiscal year so then they can be fleshed out. Hold two workshops to discuss integrating sustainability and walkability into design. So that's two basically public forums to talk about it. This was something that came back to us from the public over and over again. create a comprehensive list and map of all existing traffic, utility, and land use studies in one spot by the end of the fiscal year. These often live in many different places um with their particular project files. If we pull them together, we're going to have a better comprehensive view of the town.

Okay. So the um identify the three to five properties and zonings. Who's going to identify those topics for the public discussion? No, not not prop properties priorities zoning or land use topics for structured public discussion. So normally your planning board would do that or the council would do that or both.

So we don't know who really is going to be the one who pushes the topic forward. Normally that comes from your planning board that says, "Okay, these are the ones we want to focus on because they're the folks that are responsible for planning. So they look at all the zoning regulations that they have and say, look, we want to focus on updating these. These are our priority ones." And then we go figure out, okay, what's it going to cost to do that? What's the staffing that's going to be necessary to do that or consultants to help do that? And what's the timeline in the process? Normally, it's the planning board. So my concern is with the changes that go on in these things all the time um with you know RSAs that govern them and rules and laws and stuff sometimes it takes so long that by the time you reorganize and come back to it. I'm not saying we shouldn't do it. I just I like the idea that we have some sort of time thing on it. We had did them before and almost by the time we finished I think we paid the ARC group to do it. By the time we paid them to finish the end of it, excuse me, I hit the thing. By the time we did that, they actually needed to be redone again because it was Do you know what I'm trying to say?

I I am, but all depends on how you do it. Other communities are rather successful at this. They we're going to focus on these couple and they get them done. They have a timeline and they put the resources to it to get it done. So those communities are successful with doing that. But yes, I've seen other communities that have struggled like you talk about and they get nowhere. So that's what I've seen here. So I'm only speaking from what I've experienced. So I just want to make sure how are we going to make sure that there'll be uh triggers to make sure that it does happen. If we're not if the council is not in control and planning board is, you know what I'm saying? Like I want to know how that's going to

Well, you've got a rep to the planning board. council favor. So that's, you know, he he relays that direction, the strategic plans approved by the council. We'd like to see those things. If those people are not doing those, then maybe you should appoint somebody else to those positions.

Okay. And then um on the um the master plan on our last one that we did so many years ago, 2013 I think um we had a whole implementation key in the back and we actually had an implementation committee and they were moving things forward um but then it was discontinued. Um, how do you plan to I mean what's the thought process I guess to have this be more of an implementation? I understand it and I agree with you. It's it because really the only people who use the master plan are the developers when they come up they go but it's in your plan and nobody knows but um yeah

so I mean we've got a busy planning board. There's a lot of applications and they're volunteers and they do a lot of work. So, you can only take small bites of this. Look at updating one or two zoning regulations a year and then every year look at one chapter of the master plan. We're going to update even though we just approved a new one, you should be looking at that one. And then by the time you get to the end, you're constantly it's a living document. It's and you're only taking it small bites at a time because they don't they don't have endless amounts of time. And we don't have endless amounts of staff either to be able to support that kind of function, right?

But if you have a plan on doing that, you will make progress in keeping it live and active. And right now that's a struggle and we don't have a plan. That's what this talks about. And again, Jeff Penta did a good job of outlining this, creating that matrix and a plan by which to do that. And and I understood that. I just didn't know the details behind it. I mean, in concept, I like the ideas. I just didn't know how they were going to be pushed forward. Do you know what I mean? And stay on track.

Yeah. And part of that is that development and publish the master plan implementation matrix. That's a decision that making that decision how you're going to move forward. That's actually part of the plan. How are we going to move it forward? That's step one. Remember that baseline that we keep coming back to. How are we going to do it? That's part of this KPI right here. You've made a plan to do it. That's what will happen. Any other questions on this one? I think you're doing good. We got We got the last one. And you did. All right. Only going over by a couple minutes. We can do this.

Enhance economic development opportunities to strengthen lender's economic identity. nothing like ending with a you know small one. Uh so this is about identifying what we want Londereerry to be in the future to attract the appropriate types of commercial growth that and retain and redevelop properties in such a way that it benefits residents both their lifestyles and reduce linking it to reduced reliance on residential property taxes. Um, take it away.

All right. Define the town's uh place, brand, narrative, and marketing message, including how heritage, recreation, arts, and business, climate support London's identity. Develop targeted outreach materials for airport, industrial air, corridor, and neighborhood serving commercial opportunities. Coordinate with the chamber, local business community, and regional partners to market priority sites and track prospects. Explore strategies to reduce overconentration of retail traffic on Route 102 by broadening appropriate commercial activity in other corridors. Link economic development messaging to revenue diversification and community quality of life assets.

So as part of this one key aspect is to create a list of parcels in town that are currently available for development or redevelopment by March 31st, 2027. Um, hold two public engagement sessions to discuss Londereerry's growth and needs next year. Create a list of priority businesses and industries that would be attractive for and beneficial to the town of Londereerry by the end of next year. Complete a survey of other municipalities place brand efforts and create a roadmap for Londereerry's efforts. So, how did other people brand their community and promote themselves to attract the businesses that they wanted? figure out how they did it and create our plan. Establish a quarterly meeting schedule between town leadership and the two local chambers of commerce and create a business development quick guide summarizing zoning, permitting, incentives, and contacts by the end of next fiscal year. So this is all about using the ideas and trying to attract businesses that are good for the town that are good for the that can form positive partnerships with the town rather than waiting for people to come to us putting ourselves out there to the groups that we want to come in. I mean you ask any resident how how many restaurants we have in town the answer is always going to be not enough right?

So it's but that on a larger scale too. what industries would be beneficial here in town and match with our goals. So, um, when we had a the one of our meetings, um, they they talked about these things and, uh, with the Southern New Hampshire Planning Commission, um, one of my big things that I've seen in other towns and I think is a really great tool, and this would be the the cyber the tech guy, is that on the website they have um an active like um listing of all the businesses like you said and what their uses are um for people to and then they have a list of um some of them are redevelopment new places. Um they also would have like um a a list where people have put in on a survey things they'd like to see in town like we'd like to see a a a world market. I'd like to see um a a Trader Joe's. I want to see whatever. Waffle House is always crazy. But anyway, you put all these things on there and then the the it would be online so that they can reach out to us like they can just go there under economic development. And the way I see these things working really successfully is when we have an economic development committee so that they're not tied to the town per se and can um go out and go to chamber events and and and kind of talk to businesses uh a little differently than the town does to encourage them to come to these towns um or come to our town and say, "Look, well, if you go to our website right online. We have, you know, a listing of all the available um businesses that are there to be, you know, upgraded or that are just open

that could fit your and these are the types of things we want to see. and and and it it's right there like that was something that was brought up and and again I don't know how we do this but I would love to see our town have an economic development committee um that works for this because I really think this helps grow us in line with what we're trying to do um as a town and helps with that clear definition. So for that, Deb, I'm going to point I'm really glad you brought this up because this is a great example of the things that come up during these conversations and how this is a plan that looks forward. This is we have action items for next year, but we're also looking forward to what we're going to want to do and what these action items are leading towards. And that well like that's one of those things that when people say that that's absolutely that is absolutely a goal to work towards. That's definitely like a year two or year three type thing because in order to get that list up there and say what you want and build out that infrastructure. There's a lot of groundwork that needs to be done, right? You need to be able to put out the surveys, you need to be able to define that place brand, right? Like part of this is what do our these all these stakeholders think it is. So once we get that base work, then you take that step. And that's why when we have these conversations, it makes this conversation transparent. So when people say, "Hey, why don't we do this?" we're working towards it. We're going to do this. And so that's actually I'm really glad you ended with that because that's a great example of like where this goes from here. Do you see what I mean? That's a great direction to work towards.

I do. And I and I had to say it because I didn't want it to be lost in case I'm not here. I wanted it to be heard somehow or another. Anything else? We're good. That's an awesome way to end. See, you don't have any questions? I'm good. Wow. Um I want to thank everybody that came tonight. Um, thank all the department heads for your time in attending and helping us and thank the budget committee, everyone that came and helped us. Um, we welcome the ideas. So, we thank everybody for your time and uh, thank you for all your work you guys did to put this together. Work and, uh, you know, it's much appreciated. So, right now, we don't have any changes yet.

So, remember between now and the next workshop, the idea is to make whatever changes you want to make to the draft plan. So, we have a finalized draft to go to public hearing. So, do we have a deadline to get those to you in case we do and we're going home going, "Oh, crap. I should have said this." Well, you have the next sessions on the 22nd. Okay. Right. And we're going to go through the other items that we we only did well half of them. We have to do the rest of them. Um the idea is that if you've got those, you can get those and have those discussions as part of the workshop. Okay?

And then you have a meeting in between that on the 4th. It's actually an agenda item for this as well to finalize that so that we can get it out for public hearing on the 18th. So just be thinking about that because the idea is when we publish the agenda for the 18th we have sort of the finalized draft for public to provide comments on and then you know you may need may need to change that based on that those public comments but we're trying to get it lined up for that. So, the meeting on the 4th of May would be the date that you would hopefully finalize any changes we're going to make in it. Uh, there's a number of items on that agenda. It's a regular council meeting, so you know. Okay. But that would be the last date to do that if we stay on schedule.

And the public that's watching, they should be taking notes and putting their thoughts together for that May 18th, I think. But like anything else, we have we have a regular council meeting on the 20th. You have open the public session the beginning and the end. We have a council meeting on the 4th of May and public comment the beginning end. People can comment then they can use the online form or email you folks directly, call you on the phone, talk to you because your constituents talk to you all the time. There's plenty of time in which to do that before we would hopefully finalize that plan and then kick off the budget cycle for the next year. Okay, that's the whole idea behind that.

Got it. um staff and board members who are here too. If you have any feedback based on what we've shown today, if you saw me put something on there and think I'm absolutely bonkers or I've lost my mind, it's entirely possible. So, please send your feedback on KPI's action items too as well. Um you know, this this is an evolution from both directions. So, this is a group conversation. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it.