Good evening, everyone.

Welcome and thank you for all who came to the pre-reception prior to our meeting to welcome our two new counselors as well as our city administrator Brian Pelletier, who will be joining us in January.

So I would like to call the meeting to order for December 1st, 2025 at 6 30 p.m.

Would like to make note of all members present this evening, including City Administrator Hole Prescott.

And would you please join me for the Pledge of Allegiance?

Thank you very much.

All right, next item.

Item four this evening.

We do have committee correspondence to council.

Are there any committee members wishing to speak?

Okay, not seeing anyone seeking recognition.

Moving on to item number five.

We do not have any general this evening.

Item six is public comment.

If there is anyone wishing to speak, please step forward to the podium, state your name and address for the record, and you will have three minutes to address the council.

All right, moving on to item seven, that is action items.

Item A this evening is the remarks by myself, Mayor McPhail.

And first off, I would like to wish a good evening and thank you, everyone, for coming tonight.

We are here for two reasons.

First, we are here to welcome and confirm the oath of office of our two newest members of the Sacco City Council, Jeff Owen and William Gale.

I have had the pleasure of working with both of these gentlemen over the past few years and have seen firsthand their dedication and willingness to serve the residents of SACO.

Jeff has been a respected and vital volunteer serving on the Shoreline Commission, and Will has brought his knowledge of all things DOT to the Traffic Safety Committee, as well as serving on the school board.

As we welcome two, we must must acknowledge the loss of two.

So here I go, and I promise to be short.

Mike, you have been a strong and steadfast advocate for the residents of Ward 4.

We would not be where we are today without your never-ending fight for Camp Bellis and the shoreline and keeping all of us on point and on track.

You have brought thoughtful and engaged conversations to the dais and have earned the respect of all sitting up here, including myself.

And Phil, four and a half years ago, I went against the opposition and voted on your appointment to the City Council.

There has not been a day that has gone by that I have regretted that decision.

And you are an example of community and forgiving back.

You have always been there when I needed an air to listen to, or a good debate, or just checking in to make sure I was okay during the busy times.

So to both of you again, I say thank you.

Thank you so much for more than what we have just stated here.

And I, as I did, promised to keep it short.

So with that, I would now like to present both of you with a gift of gratitude and also ask former counselor gunn to receive a parting gift as well on his um leaving us last month due to some residents' uh concerns and issues, but uh Joe, you have done an amazing job as well, and you were a vital part of this council, and we wish to recognize you as well.

And next on the item, we do have the swearing in of our two new elected officials.

I would like to ask Will and Jeff to please come up with our city clerk Michelle Hughes for the swearing of the oath.

Do you solemnly swear that you will support the Constitution and will obey the laws of the United States and the state of Maine?

And that you'll in all respects observe the provisions of the charter and ordinances of the city of Socco and will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of um city councilor for your respective ward.

Um, for the next item with them, and that will be some ethics and forward training that are required annually, as well as the continuation of city business.

Thank you.

So next on the item, we do have the FX and forward training with our city solicitor.

She will be conducting the training for us, and we do have the members of the school board as well as our new council.

Leah.

Thank you.

Good evening, everybody, council members, new council members, members of the school board.

I don't think I've met many of you, and in fact, I don't think there are new school board members, right?

Okay, so um I would imagine that folks here, many of whom have served for a long time, and there are some new folks.

So I'm hoping, you know, some of you could probably teach this course better than I could, um, but I hope everybody will get some takeaways as we move through.

Um you will see in front of you, I have provided a packet.

Um, it's basically the materials that we're going to be discussing, and there's some links to some additional resources that may be helpful as far as the order of operations and and our agenda, what we're going to be doing is hitting three major topics.

First, your duties under the Freedom of Access Act, which I'll refer to as FOA.

Um, second are concepts of conflict of interest and bias, and the third is basically the cities and the school board's respective codes of ethics.

And what you'll find with respect to the ethics codes, um, a lot of it will be what we've already covered through FOA training and conflict of interest.

Um, and so you know, bottom line is all of the policies that we're talking about are um very much related.

Either sometimes they reiterate each other, but in any event they're always kind of complementary.

And um, you know, if you learn nothing else tonight, or if you hear nothing else tonight, the we're we're talking about two overarching concepts.

First is just good governance, right?

That um what you're doing here is you're engaging in practices that instill confidence in government, and I don't think it will be shocking to hear that, you know, these days there is less and less of that, right?

And so it really seems when I'm looking at these policies, that that is the goal.