001hello and welcome to policy beast on today's show we have Yolanda green she is running for reelection for the Ashland Board of Selectmen for the three-year seat and she's also been on the Beast before so I'd like to welcome you back Yolanda thank you thank you very much for having me i look forward to our conversation well i hope to have a very wide-ranging talk tonight and you know i think there's a lot of love things that people would like to know about you and why you're you're running for reelection but before we get into that why don't we just do a little bit of the board selectmen 101 again okay okay so what what what is the board of selectmen what's what's our function in the town so the main function of the Board
002of Selectmen is to set policy and procedure okay and then we hire the town manager that's our one higher is the town manager and he then with the policy and procedures that we've created goes and does the day-to-day operations okay and he reports back to us and we were we discuss with him as things come up but we are not involved in any of the day to day it's pure policy and procedure so the police chief has to get hired that's the town manager okay fire chief has to get hired that's the town manager and it's because based on our charter we have a strong town manager position okay so when did you bore when did you join the board and Fleck I joined the board of selectmen three years ago in May of 2012
003okay and what were your initial why did you initially jump into this did you feel a compulsion to serve or what what made you put your hat in the ring so my first foray into town politics was as a school committee member okay I had worked on the first school building project and at that time as I was working on that project I had a number of people come up to me and no you'd be really good as a school committee member so when the school building the same election where the school building project lost by 28 votes I was then elected to the school committee I spent five years on the school committee various roles i finished as the chair and i really enjoyed it but when i left school committee I felt for
004personal reasons and family reasons I needed to step down and and focus on family and different things and but I always stayed involved I would go to town meeting I knew people who were on the board of selectmen people who were on the school committee so I kept up to date with things that were going on and then I started thinking okay I'd like to get involved back I'd like to get back involved i'd like to get on the board of selectmen but i had i was involved with some other things I'm also interested in dance I was on the board of an organization called the Massachusetts Dance Festival and I had made a commitment to them so at first I wasn't going to run in 2012 and there was a lot of negative things
005going on in town we were in the paper almost every week because of issues with the police department things going between the selectmen and the town manager and people started saying if you're going to run this is the year because we could use your help we could use your level headedness we could use your experience from school committee and town finance to come in and and sort of help resolve some issues that were going on so I officially don't talk to every with my family so decided in January that I was going to run and got a lot of support a lot of people remembered me from my time on the school committee and they supported me they like the work I had done and they said yes it would be great to have one
006your experience from being on school committee your involvement in town and volunteering in other ways but also it would be good to have a woman on the board we had had a woman a number of years before but she had then since stepped down so with a lot of support and a lot of encouragement i ran for the seat in 2012 knowing that there was a lot going on that i was going to need to understand quickly and take a look at I won that election I got the most votes that year there were five people running for two seats okay and I took the most votes and here we are three years later and why I'm running again I feel like there's still things that I want to help with and work on moving
007forward I'm going to ask you more about some of those things in a minute okay before we do that yep I want to ask that you are the chairwoman yes how does that happen how does that work do they just oh please be chair well so what happens we have a five-member board yes and after each election either the meeting right after or the second or the first meeting in June there's discussion amongst the members as to who would be best to leave the selectmen the Select board in the coming year so I was elected in 2012 and Steve Mitchell became the chair that year then after leading into the second year it was either myself or one other person who would have made the most sense to be the chair and Steve Mitchell had
008done it for one year and he it was it was a very tough year so he decided he didn't want to be chair again one of our other members was an employee of the town so we said we all agreed that it wouldn't be appropriate for him to be the chair because he'd have to recuse himself for different things okay as an employee because as the employ as an employee his direct or indirect boss would be the town manager so it was between myself and one other person and a number of people in town came to me and said it would be good if it were you you're less of a lightning rod you can bring people together you have a way of listening to people and realizing that you can't make everyone happy you
009at least try to get people to understand and you can come a situation down so I became chair in May of 2013 that's was when we brought on our town manager he had joined us in the end of March and we got through the whole police issue brought on a new police chief and things went pretty well that year the next year we had an election and there was no change in the board in regards to who was sitting there and it was decided that for continuity in working with the town manager and just other things it would be best if I stayed chair for that year so that's this year and that's finishing up in May and I would expect that when I'm reelected I will not be the chair again okay I'm ready
010to to give it to the next person the chair it's it's interesting people say to me well as chair don't you have more power I said no the only power I have is I get to run the meeting and I work with the town manager to set the agenda for the meetings but what's been nice is this past year we've been having the assistant the vice chair Joe mignon ii has been sitting in on the agenda planning sessions as well so there's been doing us two of us having that discussion with town manager anthony Schiavi discussing what needs to happen and so it's been it's been a really I've enjoyed being chair but I'm ready to if I'm reelected not be chair for a year and sort of get to sit back a little in
011and support whoever does become chair but but they're out but not have that that responsibility because it is I mean my vote is just the same as anyone else's vote but if the responsibility of running the meeting and setting the tone for the meetings or which at times can be difficult depending on what's going on we saw during the whole budget issue this past spring when we had a number of people coming before us and upset about you know the school's not getting the money that they wanted and and it's a matter of you know letting people know that they're being heard and we can't always do exactly what they're asking us right then and there but I personally always take it back think about it and then make decisions based on that well I'm
012glad you talked about the budget a little bit because I segue into some of the issues that you said you wanted to help out and so the issues you care about I know the budget was definitely first and foremost on your mind so let's talk a little bit about that just hit the issues right on so sure so talk to me about the budget process a little bit maybe some folks aren't familiar with how that all works in town initially and then talk about this particular budget cycle and sugar issues that we've been facing as a town some of your viewpoints on okay so let's start with how the budget process works so in the fall the town manager works with our financial committee to create and draft a budget letter that talks about timelines
013and the expectations of each of the departments presenting their needs for the upcoming fiscal year budget now realize this is October and we're starting to ask them for what they think their fiscal year fiscal requirements will be for the following July okay so nine months ten months ahead they're just having to budget and think about what initiatives they may want to do if they're going to need personnel what changes they may want to do and on the general government side tony has put in place an objective based budget he has eight goals and objectives and each department has had to look at his goals and objectives and if they're requesting new funds or if they have new initiatives that they want to do they have to work within those eight initiatives those eight goals and
014objectives has set forward for the town so that starts in October people start drafting their budgets working with the departments so the general government all reports to tony and then the school budget is the responsibility of Jim Adams our superintendent and the school committee and they go through their similar process they'll work with their departments and their schools and say okay they'll say these are what our needs are so the schools work a little bit differently in that they're not working with an objective based budget I believe this year they did a zero-based budget so starting at zero build on your needs right and and I know Tony and and Jim have been having discussions about how we you know what we need to do moving forward is a town to make sure we're we're
015really showing people what we need so in January or end of January we gotta look at the school budget and they had a ten percent increase based on contractual agreements some new positions that they need to do based on special education costs some new out of district placement issues things like that so that's when the discussions started happening so Jim Jim Adams the superintendent put this information out to the to let them know where where the needs were and they started having their discussions we started as a town as you know general government side working with Tony and looking at his projected budget and what his needs were and where he thought he needed to make some changes and and some of our contractual agreements so you know a lot of discussion back and forth
016between the general government side and the school side and then we came to a somewhat very unique agreement in that we didn't want to just take money straight out of our Stabilization Fund we've been doing that for many years and it's a one-time budget hit so you take the money out of stabilization you put it in your butt your budget and that money is then gone out of the Stabilization Fund and you can't then rely on that the next fiscal year unless you take the same amount of money out of your stabilization fund okay okay so in looking at the school budget it was decided well what and through some work by our assistant town manager Michael Herbert and town manager and Jim Adams they and I think Barbara Durand our assistant superintendent they came
017up with an idea of creating a new Stabilization Fund for special education costs okay so you'd still be moving money out of this our main Stabilization Fund but it'd be going to another Stabilization Fund and all of this still needs to get voted at Town Meeting I was about to say this isn't yes so what this is not in place this is related to the fiscal 2016 budget and this will be something town meeting will have to vote on so they'll have to they'll have to vote the creation of this new stabilization fund it will only be able to use for special add cost special education costs all right and then they'll vote to put money into that stabilization fund as part of the whole budget process and discussion at town meeting and then if
018the school's find that they need to use these funds that they you know next year they're going through their budget let's say okay we need to pull from that stabilization fund they will come to town meeting next May and ask to pull money from that stabilization fund so that was one of the ways we resolved our 16 budget crisis and I call it a crisis because there's a lot of needs at the schools and people were wanting us to try to do an operational override for this year and I don't think there was enough information and there wouldn't have been enough time to educate the people and give them enough information to make an educated decision as to whether or not that was the right thing so a couple couple things you mentioned share is
019so going back to the special education stabilization that's not man in stone that that has to go to town meeting what happens is that goes to town meeting and it's it's it's not past what what what well is what occurs if that happens well if that does not happen if the vote does not go to say yes we want to create this new Stabilization Fund I see one of two things will definitely have to adjust the budget on town meeting floor and it will either be take the money out of stabilization and just put it to the bottom line budget or it'll be you don't have that money available and then this the you know Tony and Jim would have to work together to figure out how to cover those that loss of revenue really
020okay and you did mention operational over right now to to my knowledge we have never had Ashland has never passed an operational override we've had we tried since I've been in town we've tried once oh and before we get to okay with the weeds let's talk about the different kinds of overall I don't want to go down this path so an operational override means you are adding money to your operating budget and it's there forever so currently we're allowed to increase our tax levy by two and a half percent every year and here in Ashland we usually we usually do the full two and a half percent because of contractual agreements and increase in costs and health insurance we need that full amount sure so an operational override would say okay we're going to add
021an extra half percent so instead of doing two and a half percent we would do three percent or three and a half depending on what the needs are so you would vote that and you would see that moving forward then there's something called a debt exclusion override those we've passed many of because as a town we've seen the sort of seen the light that if you want to build things that is the way to do it so we've done debt exclusion overrides for the library for the town hall for the community / senior center for the high school those are the recent ones and I think there was an operational override back in the mid-90s mid to late 90s when they did in addition to the current middle school and it was then making it
022a junior / senior high school and they did some additions to the Warren school so typically debt exclusion is for construction children and we've used it but you know for almost every town building that we've done we've used the debt exclusion which if we decide to move forward which I know one of the things the other we're going to talk about is one of the you know some of the what are the things that I would like to do be involved with if I am reelected or we would need to look at a public safety building okay and that has been talked about a lot here in town and it's getting to be time where we really need to start doing some planning for that because our debt are excluded debt that we've used for
023the high school the Town Hall that numbers starting to go down so it would be good to from a financial planning standpoint okay instead of just letting it die all the way which i think is still 10 years out is you try to keep it level so you bring in a new project to keep that dead excluded amount level to be able to do other projects now going back to the operational override piece there are a lot of folks who are calling for that on the cycle we were lot of people or or against that like what what were some of your concerns around that what did you end up eventually so do we have what we called we have them we call them try board meetings so it's all the members of the board
024of selectmen all the members of the Finance Committee all the members of the school committee plus the two town town manager and assistant town manager and superintendent and assistant superintendent and it's in those meetings that we were able to bring about this budget this 2016 budget we've been doing try board meetings for a number of years and there were some real collaboration this time between the three boards between you know Dan Conroy the chair of the fin come lori toski the chair of the School Committee and myself we really felt this was a good way to have this discussion it was decided though that for this year because of the Stabilization Fund issue and and using that and just looking at the needs we were able to say you know what this is not the
025year to do an operational override we found a way we're still not whole I mean there are still things that are not going to be happening in the schools and on the general government side there are positions that may not get filled new initiatives that people might have wanted to do to improve what's going on in town will not happen because we're not doing the override but it was decided that that's a big word operational override and it's a big decision and we need to make sure that before we go that route that we have a true discussion with the citizens but also that we can show that we are using every tax dollar that we currently get to its fullest and that there is limited waste and limited use of money in a mean
026we need to make sure that we show that we are using every tax dollar to the best that we can before we ask for more so that's part of what has to happen and there was no way to do that between now and May when you know we started having these discussions in February in March so moving forward and we already had there's already a try board meeting scheduled for June eighth which will be after the elections and after all the boards have their reorg organization meetings and sessions right and that's the next time that the three boards will come together to say okay what do we need to do and how can we work with the public to find out if this is what they really want because it's not I mean yes the
027board of selectmen of the one who decide to put on a ballot and on and bring it to town meeting but it's a true community discussion it's not we can't just hear from one small group we have to make sure that we talked to everyone because everyone in town will be impacted hopefully they'll be impacted in a positive way in regards to better services some increased services but we will all if this were to happen our tax dollars our tax bills would go up so one of the things for me is if this is the way we go I've already talked to town management and we need to find a way that it doesn't impact people who maybe can't afford it you know people who are on fixed incomes so it's not just it's not
028just a one thing decision there's a lot of parts and a lot of moving pieces in regards to whether or not this is the right thing for Ashland speaking about other things that you feel may be the right thing for Ashland you talked a little bit about the public safety building issue let's talk about that a little bit so you're primarily concerned about physical plant what what what's the city what's the current situation and why are your concerns our current police building was built sometime in the 70s I don't have the exact date okay when there were no female officers they were all male officers and town wasn't as big there wasn't as much going on the police probably were not as busy as they are now so in our current facility there's a trailer
029in the back for the female officers we just within the last year moved our administrative staff so our chief and his two lieutenants and his and his assistant into a separate space so that they could have privacy they could have security for their records and just so our Police Department they're doing I mean that the thing that's always hard is we have a very good Police Department and they're doing a great job and we but the facilities that they're in are not up to twentieth set you know 21st century needs and I mean we just made some changes there were some glass that wasn't bulletproof there were computer issues that if someone was working on a computer that needed privacy they didn't have okay so it's it's it it was a building designed for a
030smaller community and we're a much larger community we have a bigger Police Department I don't know exactly how many more officers we have but i know we have more officers and the same with our fire department you know people look oh what a nice quaint old fire building right well our fire department personnel don't sleep there in the downtown building because they're too they sleep right so we have the smaller firehouse downtown and then we have the more modern one over on Cedar Street right and the one on Cedar Street that's where they sleep but they had to split it up again because when we went from just mail personnel to female personnel as well they had to create sleeping areas for them so that you know people can sleep comfortably and have privacy and
031you know that building isn't as old and I would think that even if we do a do public safety building I would think we might keep that cedar street building just to have fire apparatus on that side of town but that's all part of the discussion but also if we do some kind of new public safety building we bring our police and fire together okay so their collaboration would improve and by having a newer bigger building there's a possibility than of regional collaboration whether it be for dispatch or we're not sure what okay but by having a space that's more modern and open to new things you could possibly increase some revenue okay well in the time that we have left we don't have a lot of it but I want to make sure that
032we cover this you know you talked a lot about some of the issues you've tackled with while you've been on the board you know talk a little bit about some of the some of the accomplishments that you're most proud of that you know during your service and let's know what sure and that what's interesting I was talking to someone else about this and everything you do on the board of selectmen a lot of it is as a team you know it's not one person making a decision so one of one of the big things that we did was bring on tone town manager Anthony Schiavi he came from a different background but he came in and he hit the ground running and he has been learning and proving himself every day he thinks outside of
033the box he really looks for new initiatives and is a very strong leader for the town employees and and we that's that's been a really feel very good about that accomplishment with his help and we've put in place some new financial policies for the town we have a financial reserve policy we have our new capital improvement policy and there's one more and I keep forgetting what days but there are these different policies then so one of the one of the good things is so now when we have our free cash after our funds get approved when we go to November town meeting we know what we're going to do with that free cash what percentage is going to go into our Stabilization Fund what is going to go to our oppa which is our other
034post-employment benefits and what is going to go to capital so once and once we meet our ten percent so the reserve policy says okay once we have ten percent in our Stabilization Fund we can increase the percentage to some of these other things and the other thing that I haven't talked about this too much is when i was on school committee we always did something called the state of the schools in january we invite people and we do a big presentation about what's going on in the schools and there'd be pictures so once Tony came on board and I said you know it would be really cool to do a state of the town you have the state of the state you have the state of the nation let's do a state of the town
035of address so we tried doing it last year in 14 and because of different things it didn't work out but we had our first one this year it was the state of the town address it was combined general government in schools both did about 20 25 minute presentation and then myself and Lori toss dr school committee chair and Dan Conroy are a finance committee chair we each spoke about five minutes and it really was a chance to celebrate all that is good in Ashland and even though we talked about financial difficulties and problems and we actually have a very good town we have so many great volunteers and to be able to bring people together we had almost 200 people come for this first state of the town s and to know that you know
036with myself and Tony you know in the support of the board we were able to bring that together and bring the community together and the other accomplishment that I feel like I've really spearheaded is the last two summers members of the Board of Selectmen have been at the Farmers Market on Saturday the first summer that we did it so too this will be our third summer for so three summers ago we have a tent and it's called the town tent and we and I made sure that first summer that one at least one or two members of the Board of Selectmen was at the farmers market every saturday just to get feedback and we got all kinds of feedback that first summer hmm and people said oh that's really cool that you guys are there
037so last summer as we were preparing for it I said wait a minute let's get other members other volunteer committees and boards to come and be part of this so I reached out to every committee in town and we had school committee members come we had fin con we had Planning Board and there's so many committees that I know I'm going to forget a few but at least once through the summer a member of every board was at the farmers market meeting with people answering questions and people really responded to it and the committee seemed to enjoy because they were getting their information out so those are some of the things I'm pretty proud about for for my first term fantastic as we make our final approach ok I will ask you the question that
038I've been asking many of the candidates for this position yep if someone were to say you know give me one reason one reason to vote for Yolanda graves what would it be experience and consistency so I've been on the board for the last three years so i can bring that experience forward to another term of three years plus having some consistency from one board to another because as I was explaining to someone if I'm not reelect a'dreea Khalib rand new board of selectmen members moving forward because you'd only have two remaining and I know Rob share one of my opponents has been on the board before but it's it's been a while and this is a very different town from when he first ran and first was on the board so i think the my
039experience of the last three years and having that consistency and you know I don't always talk about this but having a female perspective when I walk into a meeting I think there's a different feel to a meeting than if it's just all men and I think it's important as a town that we have representation from both sides male and female sitting on the board of selectmen and there you have it Melinda thank you so much for coming on the show you're very welcome our guest for this episode of policy beast has been you Linda Greaves she was running for the three-year seat the Board of Selectmen election election day in Ashland is May nineteenth so make sure you get out and vote thanks so much for joining us for Policy Beast I'm maquina Kagan take
040care you