Okay, I called the meeting to order for the finance committee on Tuesday, July 14th, 2026 at 6 p.m., it's now 6 p.m.

Um, the agenda was posted, and um, and you're here.

So um to read the instructions here that pursuant to Governor Baker's March 7 March 12, 2020 order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law and Governor Healy's March 3rd, 2025 order extending remote participation by all members in any meeting of a public body.

This meeting of the finance committee will be conducted via remote participation.

Um, and you're here in the audience as well.

Specific information and general guidelines for remote participation by members of the public andor parties with the right and or requirement to attend this meeting can be found on the town's website.

For this meeting, members of the public and committee members may attend the meeting remotely following the instructions at the top of this agenda.

And every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time via technological means.

So given that, uh we need a roll call.

Michelle

here,

uh

Jeff, your Rayo, your Madonna here.

So we are a quorum, we are all present.

Um there we go to the next item, which is um committee member announcements or statements.

Does anybody have anything to say?

Okay,

Michelle.

Um, as you know, we had a special town meeting on June 29th.

And obviously, being a finance committee member or if you're on any other board at any time to the special uh annual town meeting, special town meeting, people are always going to use the taxes or through high, I don't like the school budget, blah, blah, blah.

This time around, it was really striking to

me

that the one word that came up over and over again wasn't any of that.

It was trust.

I have no trust.

And that was a painful thing to hear.

So I really uh hope that we can rebuild that and order that because you are a trust, it's not blindly given.

So I think we should keep that in mind.

Uh, and I just was so surprised by that.

I don't trust town government, I don't trust you.

I, you know, it's me and so on and so forth.

And so hopefully we can turn that around uh and as we go into the new budget season.

I like to uh echo that, and that was it was really striking.

I did think that we had a trust issue moving in, or like going into the meeting, but at the meeting it was just so um transparent, like the we have a big trust issue.

And you know, I'm trying to probably sound like a broken um record at this point, but I do think what we need in order to turn this around to regain the trust and build trust is a change in the narrative um that we have.

You know, just the other day um I was you know on you know on my car listening to NPRs, I always do.

Um my children, of course, getting tired of that.

But um, and you know, the famous biologist was there and a scientist.

And it's anything science, of course, facts matter, and we have to present facts, but ultimately it's the narrative.

We have the narratives are what allows people to understand the science and allows us to move forward.

And as a town, I think we could do our best to present a lot of facts, present a little data, transparency.

That's going to start to help rebuild this trust.

But that alone, I don't think it's enough.

We need to present a narrative to help to lead allow people to uh to trust us again.

Um, so I think that's something we need to really work on.

And to that end, um, I want to address communications, even among us, and as they go out to the public.

Um, I just want to point out we got to do better as finance committee members, um, how we communicate.

Um, and this is no secret, you know, at a special town meeting, I was taken by surprise by Rayo's presentation.

I didn't know about it until and um yes, there's open meeting law, but information can be pushed out through the chair as that and um so for us, if we're talking openness and transparency begins with us and what we do, and obviously within the parameters of the open meeting law, we do

it.

But um I I felt that blindsided, and which is not a good thing with my best committee number.

So hopefully moving forward.

We have improved communications.

Something I do want to put on a future agenda is buying agenda packets to the public, much like the select board does.

If we're talking about openness and transparency as much as possible, have a packet ready to go.

So somebody sitting in the audience goes, okay, this is what they're doing.

I study packets, whether it's planning board, CPA, SLEC board.

Why aren't we doing the same thing?

So I'd like to put that on an agenda when we get to that agenda items and this agenda.

Thank you.