I'm not hearing you, Don.

There we go.

Now you can hear me.

Part of the process that I do.

So let me just tell you a little bit about myself.

I'm a retired main manager.

I had over 38 years in the profession with his manager in uh Gorham for 10 years, then I went to Brunswick and I was there 20 years and retired.

Last few years or 15 years I worked for a consulting company doing what I do now, which is help communities hire managers.

I also did interim work in communities.

And uh most recently I started my own uh consulting business.

So I've done over 75 of these type of searches in my career, uh comparable communities.

Uh I've done Bangor, Lewiston, Waterville, Auburn, a number of communities.

So part of the process is that I do is to have a session like tonight to give the public an opportunity to give us some input into the process.

Um I'm gonna go over the process in a minute, and then I'm gonna open it up and invite you to uh answer two questions that I asked is what are the issues facing Bitafid in the next five years, and what are you looking for in a new city manager?

Education, personality, experience, whatever.

I have one rule for tonight, and that's for people that are here, people that may be watching online.

We're here to move forward.

We're not here to go backwards.

So let's be positive.

Let's talk about what we're looking in the future because that's why we're here.

If someone starts going into the past or raising issues that I don't think are appropriate, I will not continue with that person.

So I just want to be up front with everyone.

That's how we run these.

And uh how I think uh it can be very informal this evening when I start asking from the the public to speak.

I want to give everybody an opportunity to speak once, and then after that, if people want to speak a second time, that would be great.

Um I have met with all the department heads one on one and asked them the same questions, so I have that information.

I've asked the mayor and the counselors to give me this information, the same questions I'm asking you.

When this is done, I will put a document together of what I heard.

Now it won't be you said this or they said this, it will be the information that I heard.

And what this does is starts to paint a picture of what the community, what the department heads, employees, and the citizens are thinking about those issues.

I think we'll help the mayor and the the council in their deliberation.

It will help candidates to get an idea of what's going on in in Bitafid and maybe some of the issues that they may face.

And I think it's just a great way to start the process.

So that's how it will work and how um I do the process with the uh with the mayor and and the council.

So I'm just gonna talk a little bit right now.

Any questions about any questions about what we're doing or how it's gonna work?

There are uh handheld mics here that we'll use, so you don't have to get up and walk to the podium.

Again, I like to make these very informal, so we'll use those.

So I'm gonna talk a little bit about the schedule and how this process works.

So tonight is and I met yesterday with the department heads.

Um my email is on the uh web page, and anyone who can't be here tonight uh and would like to send me their thoughts.

My email is is dhairish at yahoo dot com.

If you want to send me your thoughts, I will respond that I got it and I will use them.

Please have them in no later than Monday morning because I've got to put the document together and I've got to meet with the with the mayor and the council next week.

So tonight is is the the start really of the process with the public.

I will meet with the mayor and the council the we um the 21st and we will finalize the ad for the position and we'll have to discuss areas like salary how much they would like to advertise the position for talk about where they want to advertise it.

We don't use newspapers anymore.

It just is not productive and it's it's costly.

So we go to associations MMA and ICMA which is the International City Managers Association and that's where people are looking for jobs they will go to these sites.

I also recommend and we'll talk with the mayor and the council to advertise in the New Hampshire, Massachusetts, maybe New York league associations to kind of get the flavor of New England people that might advertise.

So we'll put the ad out we'll run it for about four weeks each all the resumes will come to me.

I will uh let the mayor and the council know how many we've gotten each week and how many from New England and just to an idea of the numbers and what we're seeing as I said to the mayor and the council most of them come in the last week that's just the human nature and that's when we see them.

Once they come in I will review them and I will put together a booklet with all the resumes in them and they will be delivered to the mayor and the council along with my recommendation on who I think they should consider to interview.

So they will see all of the resumes but I will then make a recommendation.

I will anyone that I recommend I would do a preliminary background check, talk with them, make sure I feel comfortable and then we will meet in executive session go over all the resumes and decide who they would like to interview.

From there we will schedule the dates for those interviews they will either be in person or they will be by Zoom but we will schedule those probably hopefully two days if we have some good candidates be I hope we'd have five or six good candidates to look at but we'll see and then we'll do the first round of interviews I assist the uh with some gested questions to be asked but the final say again rests with the the mayor and the council we'll do the interviews and after that we'll narrow down the candidates and kind of find out who the finalists are.

Once the finalists are named I do complete background checks on those candidates so that uh and that's criminal that's financial that's uh background of talking to where if they've worked uh what those experiences were and and produce a document for the mayor and council on the finalist we will then schedule second round of interviews at that second round we will invite candidates to come here and spouses if they have spouses to be part of the process there will be interviews by the department heads with the finalists the and the way that works so everyone understands is the candidates meet with the department heads I'm at the meetings questions are asked from the candidate to the department heads and also from the department heads to the candidates at the end of that interview they don't vote they just I ask them a question what do you like what or what concerns do you have and we do it with the finalists and we'll then have a second round of interview with the mayor and council and then decide on who the finalists are and then hopefully be able to negotiate a contract and I offer my services to help negotiate that contract.

So that's in a nutshell I kind of went to detail but I think it's important that everybody understand how the processes work.

Anyone have any questions about the process yes the timeline is if we follow the timeline we hope to have somebody named by the first week in September.

So it's a very stringent timeline.