October 20, 2026 – Personnel Board – Video & Transcript
October 20, 2026 - Personnel Board
We'll call the Personnel Board meeting of October 20th, 2026 to order at 4 or 5 p.m. And we have in the room Maryanne Peabody. And online we have Paul Morenberg, Dave Williams, and is Mary Ellen there? I believe she is, yeah. Mary Ellen, I don't see you. I don't know why, so... It's okay.
That's all right. Okay. This meeting is in person and remote. And absent is Jill Zukerman. And also in the room with us is Kate Ryan, Personnel Director of the Town of Wayland, and Robbie Bullard, the Zoom Manager.
The location for in-person meetings is wheelchair accessible. This meeting is being recorded and will be made available to the public on WACAM as soon as possible after the meeting. Public will be excluded from executive sessions. We have no executive session today. Pursuant to Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2025, this meeting will be conducted in person and or by remote access in accordance with applicable law.
This meeting has remote access. One may watch or participate remotely, but the meeting link can be found at https colon slash slash www.wayland.ma.us slash 1097 slash public dash body dash meeting dash information dash remote. Persons wishing to provide public comment or otherwise participate in the meeting may do so at the meeting location or remote.
Public Comment. It is recommended that it be limited to two minutes per person. Paul, are you able to take the minutes today? Yes. Oh, thank you. Yes. Great. Okay. So Paul is taking our minutes.
I will leave the agenda for the public. We will have announcements and public comment, then a discussion and a review of the tools provided to the town by the MGT Impact Solutions, the consultant, which did the classification and compensation study and completed it in February 2025. The tools provided include the following position.
Classification reconsideration form, job description revision instructions, scoring template for reconsideration requests, and MGT job evaluation instrument.
Then we will have a discussion and review of new job descriptions that utilize the MGT impact solutions tools provided as part of the classification and compensation study. And the revised job descriptions that we'll be looking at will include the HR benefits coordinator, the IT technician.
The joint communications dispatcher, facilities business manager, and assistant town manager. And then we will have a discussion and update on the proposal for a remote work policy.
Followed by a discussion and approval of open session meeting minutes from June 24, 2026. Then we will set our next meeting date and adjourn if there's no further business. So the first item on the agenda is announcements and public comment. I have no announcements. Do you have any? No. Does anyone have any announcement that they'd like to make on the board? No?
No. And is there any public comment, Robbie? No, there's not. Okay, thank you. So let's take a look at the tools. And Kate, will you give us an overview of them? We had them included in our packet. And I wanted to know, were they difficult?
So, yeah, these are tools that MGT provided as part of our study. The goal is to have a system in place for maintaining our wage, you know, our compensation, our classification compensation plans moving forward, job descriptions, all that good stuff. We've only, so for the reconsideration form, we've just started using that. We've only had a couple of requests to date.
And then the job description revision instructions. Those are a little more challenging, I think, to digest. You really have to read those along with the MGT job evaluation instrument, which shows you how things are scored in the job analysis questionnaire, the JAQ.
So you have to use those together with the revision, the instructions for revising job description. So it is a little complicated, but once I've sort of gotten...
Rhythm going. They are moving fairly quickly. I've been working with our department heads and actually some of the individuals incumbents in the positions themselves to revise some of these positions as they come up. My goal is to actually go through all of the position descriptions and incorporate them in this new format so that everything is somewhat consistent. We want consistent job descriptions.
I brought the tools for you to review. If you have questions about them, we can discuss the process that we're going through. And then some job descriptions as examples that utilize those tools. When I was revising them, I used those tools to do so. Those were some of the tools that we were looking forward to having for a number of years. So I was glad to see them there. Does anyone have any?
Questions or any questions about the tools? Do you have a chance to look at them? I guess I had a question on my side. So Kate, good job so far, you know, because it seems like a lot to take in. So right now you're going through all the job descriptions and revising them. In the future, say there's a new position that comes up.
And what's the process for that person to make any adjustments to the job description? And then do they share it with you? And then do you revise it? Or do they revise it themselves? Or kind of what's the process after this first kind of group of job descriptions are revised?
So through part of the MGT study, what we had employees do is to take a look at their current job description. Many of them are pretty old. And then have them go through and provide recommendations for changes. We also have the department head review those proposed changes. So that was like step one in some of the first job descriptions we went through in revising. Moving forward, I'm going to have employees complete like
Employees can work with their department heads. Usually it comes from the department head when there's a revision that needs to be done. So a job has changed, we're adding, we're combining jobs, we're taking on some new technologies or some essential functions have changed. It generally comes from the department head, but employees also have that opportunity to come forward. So either way, I'm requiring them to complete the job analysis questionnaire on the new proposed job description.
Because I want the employee to kind of map out where the new job falls in our schooling system. And then the department head has to review that and sign off on it and say whether, yes, I agree, or no, I don't agree on this. And then we have a dialogue about it, usually with the department head. And then once we have that, we have sort of a final...
Final JAQ and then a proposed job description. I'll then use the job evaluation instrument to see if any of those changes changes the scoring mechanism and where it may fall in our classification system. So that's the, did I answer your question or was there anything I missed? Yeah, it sounds like a lot. That's why I was curious.
Yeah, so one of the things, we have a personnel policy on how to classify and pay and where we start new employees on pay, which is pretty old. And so one of my next goals to bring to you, to the board, is to revise that entire policy based on this new process so that we have something really
clear and structured for employees to review so they know how to move forward in a process like this. Did MGP do any of the job descriptions with you? They did. So part of the contract is that they did 10 job descriptions. You know, let me just see.
I did not actually include any of those in your examples here. I can bring this back at another time. I'm sorry about that. But you do the ones that are in here or the ones that you were doing? So I will bring one of their MGT ones. I found some of how they structured and some of the language they used to be not as descriptive as I would like in a job description. So they're general summaries. So I modified.
Some of their tools to better meet what our needs are on the town side. So anyone else? Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Hi. Sorry. Kate, some of the scoring seems a little bit complicated and also very subjective. You know, things about planning your day, interacting with the public and, you know.
Pretty much anybody in the town building could interact with the public. Pretty much anyone plans their own day. I mean, is there concern that individual employees might be saying, well, I'm doing things that you're not crediting me for and I should have a higher score for my job or higher pay based on these criteria?
Well, we haven't run into that issue yet. To be fair, we've only done a couple of positions at this point, and most of those actually were identified in the MGT study as ones that needed to review, right? We needed to review. They recommended they may not be classified appropriately. I mean, I think that this system, like no system is perfect, and I think there's, we try to make it, you know, not subjective, but I think that
You know, this is the system that the MGT uses and they recommend. So I'm happy to discuss it. We could certainly modify and move forward as we do this. But starting off, you know, we're using these tools.
Dave, did you have another comment you wanted? Yeah, I was curious. So all the MGT scorecarding and all the scoring pages that they provided, is that just for your reference or is there going to be something shared with those that are hiring as to how to go about scoring?
No, we wouldn't share this externally. This is really for internal processes. The job analysis questionnaire is something that employees would have access to. I don't think it would impact hiring. It's really more for existing positions and maybe even new positions. If we had new FTEs we were adding in the future, which we probably won't. But if that were to happen, how to classify a new position too.
Yeah, and I didn't mean for external, I meant just for internal, like hiring managers, what would be provided for them?
No, I don't think we need to provide the tool. I mean, it's a public document, so it's not as if it would be private, but it's more of an internal tool, I think, for HR. And actually, I could see using it with our department heads and our hiring managers if they were looking to revise and maybe perhaps reclassify, just so they get a sense of where things fall and what the criteria are.
Yeah, I was just curious in case it was something where you could share how you arrived at this. That's all. Yeah. Maryanne, do you have any thoughts or questions on the tool? Just at the first glance, and thank you for providing this, Kate. It's a lot.
And, you know, I don't know how much more time it's going to take out of anybody's day, but it's a lot. So, again, I might have missed some of this. I don't know. I didn't see what MTM. I don't know if I have the initials right, but you know what I'm talking about. I didn't see their initial MGT. And I didn't see where we were going with this. But that's my only comment, Kate. This is like a lot of work, I think. But that's just my opinion.
We used to have one in the past and the whole board used to sit down and do it. It was a little simpler than this, but it was too simple. And we really did need more data.
It was just looking on management things. It wasn't as in-depth as this. And so this is what we had been looking for, a way to have the personnel to be able to do this on their own when the consulting firm went away. The consulting firm, will they be giving us data next year about nothing? No, we're done. Okay.
Sometimes they give you data in the next couple of years as to whether what most towns went up percentage-wise. So you can figure out what you're going to be looking at for that coming year. But the in-depth placing people on a scale within an organization is complicated. And that's what we were looking for. We were looking for some tools. I had some questions, Kate, about that.
Or a suggestion, I guess, is that there were some that they identified as needed to be redone. I would then look at the single jobs where we have people who've been in those positions for a long time. And some of them, one of them would be the health director, the other might be the conservation committee.
Administrator, because those roles haven't, those people have been here for a long time. But there are also assistant department heads in some departments that fall into that category too. And I don't know who everybody is, but there are a fair number of people who haven't had their job description changed since they came and they've been here for a while as a place to start with some of the others.
Yeah, no, I agree. I mean, one of the helpful things about the MGT process is that it involved both the employee, the incumbent in the role who was currently, you know, doing the job, and then also the department head so that they could review it. And then four department heads, those actually went to the town manager and I actually assisted with.
Because it is a lot of work on his part. So, I mean, I think that that's really beneficial for us. And, you know, I think the goal here is to have a really transparent system that is the same for everyone, right? We're going to go through the same process. It's similar for everyone so that we're fair. We want to be fair. We want to be equitable. But we also want to make sure people's positions are classified appropriately.
Yeah, and I think that that's our object, our objective was to have it as objective. Yes, as it could be. And I had some questions on some of the positions that sort of relate to Paul's question, like if someone, in their job description, they have to, they lift 25 pounds.
Periodically and someone else lives 40 pounds periodically and they're both office jobs. Is that accurate? Is that fair? There was one thing that I saw in there. We can look at that when we get to the job description. But in that kind of a thing, I think that that is an area.
And then there were some that could have a high school education and some jobs that didn't seem so different to me required a college education. So I just want to talk about jobs. I may not know enough about them, but it seemed like they were both mathematically oriented jobs.
And would a high school education suffice or did that particular position actually need a college degree as part of the... And that's where I think subjectivity can sometimes come in. Yeah, agreed. Okay. So you want to tell us anything more about that or do you want us to look at the...
particular job descriptions that you've completed. I am happy to do whichever. It might also be helpful. I know in the past
I have brought job description revisions to the board to review. I don't, you know, maybe we should have a discussion about what level of involvement or, you know, if you want to see job descriptions as they come through so you can review them. How do you want to approach it moving forward? Because I'm happy to bring them to you and receive feedback if you think that would be helpful.
If it would be helpful to you, we always used to do them. I don't know what people's interest in that is, but I think that for internal equity, it's an important, you know, it's an important factor. And if it would be helpful to you to have some additional input or viewpoints, then it would make sense.
I think the tool, as I look at the scoring instrument, it's pretty interesting. I mean, I noticed that, you know, if I were putting myself on the scale, I'm a professional and I use a computer, so I get a four. But if somebody works as a computer person, they get more points in that particular aspect. And that's what seems to make sense to me. My perspective is I'm not sure the Personnel Board would...
Need to review or approve job descriptions, but I would think we would be a resource if that's useful. One middle ground might be to sort of publish or inform us that a job description has been added or updated and either share it with us as a kind of a document or it's available if there's interest on the board.
I'm not sure we want to hold up the process for new or revised job descriptions to have a Personnel Board discussion or approval, because I think that's not efficient, and I think that would create some administrative headaches. Okay.
Yeah, I'm happy to do that. So we're putting all of our job descriptions on our website, too. So as we do that, I can create a list and sort of bring it back just for reference. Here are our new, you know, revised job descriptions that have taken place since we met last.
I do apologize. I don't have the ability to raise my hand. It's Mary Ellen. I just want to think, quick question for you, Kate. Now, do we have the old job descriptions in archive just, you know, to have a reference, a point of reference to go back to? Because sometimes they're so fluid and they change that we don't know how the change is in case we wanted to take the time to look back and see what the change is to, you know, to his point of not, you know, passing them all.
out for us to look at them.
Yeah, we do keep an archive of all of our old jobs. I mean, I can't say all because, you know, I'm maintaining an archive that goes back, you know, decades. But for the job descriptions that we had in place when we started the MGT study, we have all of those. And I'm trying to keep track of revisions and revision history so that we understand what job description was in place at any given time because that could be useful moving forward.
Especially if somebody started, I'm sorry, excuse me, especially if somebody started with a very old job description and then they have a new one and they say, well, listen, that was in part when I got hired, you know what I'm saying? So that's why, you know, the archives of the history in my mind is important to keep. But thank you. And one of the things that has happened is we wanted a prototype so that when Kate wrote a job description, they would all look the same because we only saw them.
When they were, when a job was vacated or someone wanted an upgrade. And when we sat to write it, we didn't always write it the same way the original was written. And then the older ones were written in the old way. We had all these different styles in the job descriptions. So that's part of the, part of the.
The quest was to make sure that they're all kind of written in a similar tone, covering the same similar kinds of things in each one. And I'm sorry, Paul, you were about to say something. Just to sort of combine a few of the recent points. So my thought, you know, I think these are all very good points. My thought would be like if a new position or an updated description.
is fairly straightforward and doesn't seem to raise any issues in terms of
Classification or salary that we probably don't have to see it, but when Kate is working on something and there are sort of overlapping job criteria and maybe different educational requirements between different positions or something where there's a question of equity or consistency across different departments, that would be a perfect example of how we can be a resource where you could bring it to us and say, hey, since there are similar jobs and other
In other departments, we thought we'd get the Personnel Board's input on this. But I think it's really up to you, Kate, whether our input would be helpful.
Yeah, I think that that might be a good place to start. We don't have, we're not creating any new jobs right now, so we are trying to rework some of these and some of them are, I think like you said, some of the job descriptions are pretty old and trying to kind of move them into the modern format that we have.
I am struggling with a little bit with how to maintain existing essential functions while ensuring that we add whatever new has happened in the last 20 years since the job description was reviewed, right? So there are some equity, I think there potentially could be equity issues in the work, just questions about classification in the future, and I would be happy for input on that.
And then you gave us some to look at. So we can go through them, and we can go through them in the order in which you gave them to us, if that's okay with your equal. The first one you get, this was Human Resources Benefits Coordinator.
And I didn't know if this person does the newsletter or if there is a newsletter because there's nothing in there about that. There is assist. No, they don't. They don't. They don't. That answers that question. And this was one of the ones where I felt like when I read this, I was good. And then when I went to read the
The business manager in, was it the DPW? No, facilities. Facilities business manager, that's the one. Then I saw, that's the one where I had the question of whether there was equity. They both need a certain mathematical ability. And the person
in the HR Benefits Coordinator position doesn't, just needs a high school education and yet the facilities business manager needs a bachelor's degree. And that's the same one in which the
I think this was the one where the person had to lift, in the HR department, had to lift 25 pounds, and in the facilities business management role, on the second page, on page 44, it's up to 40 pounds. And I wonder whether those are the areas where there are inequities or am I just not understanding the job?
Well, so I think the HR benefits coordinator we're looking at is more of an entry-level role, and maybe the coordinator's not the right title. Maybe it should be assistant. And we really need someone who can come in and do more of the administrative functions, you know, customer service being the point of contact for all town and school department employees and retirees, that type of thing.
And our facilities business manager is actually sort of a higher level function. They're paying bills. They're doing payroll for all of our custodians in all of our buildings. They're working on building projects and things like that, or supporting building projects. So they would actually be called to potentially lift.
More, I mean, 25 pounds, I'm thinking like reams of paper, right? So that's why we put it in there for some of our administrative functions. Yeah, boxes, things like that. But facilities business manager may actually be called to
Lift something that might be heavier than, you know, a couple of rings of paper. I think that was part of the difference. I mean, we could certainly explore whether or not a bachelor's degree is needed for that as a requirement, but I did include language, I think, in pretty much all of them trying to.
Or a combination of education, training, and experience to meet a certain level of proficiency. And that was recommended by MGT to include that language. And the facilities business manager role led me to think about is the DPW person in that department, does that person also handle payroll, department payroll, and attendance? Yes. Okay. And how many of the departments?
Peds do that. Is there someone in finance who does that or just does the payroll? Each department has some of the departments are, well, most of our employees are, well, actually not most, for our hourly employees, we're talking about DPW, police, fire.
Our dispatch center. Those are the most complicated payrolls that we have just because of the different types of pay. They have a lot of overtime that's worked. We have some other departments that are hourly, but they rarely work overtime. So some of our department assistants in building conservation. So their payroll is really straightforward and they do it. They're the department that does it themselves. Okay.
But for DPW Police and Fire,
And then actually facilities would fall into that category because they're managing payroll for our custodians, which is a fairly large group. And again, there's a lot of overtime involved. So, I mean, I don't know. Did that answer your question? Yeah. Is that the school custodians as well? They are the school. Actually, all of our custodians are school department employees with the exception of library. And I think we have one in the police department. But they report to our facilities director. It's just how it's structured right now.
Thank you. Does anyone have any questions or comments on the HR benefits position that King gave us to review? Those are my questions. Since I pulled out the facilities business manager, does anyone have any questions on that one? I asked mine.
But those are the kinds of areas that I thought, Paul, would lend to the education level and the pounds of stuff you had to lift that sometimes could add to putting jobs in different categories. So was there equity in those? And so you answered my questions.
And I do actually want to, if it's okay, just, and it's technically not on your agenda, but I thought, given that these jobs are recent, we've posted these recently, we have made an offer for HR benefits coordinators, hopefully they'll be on board recently, or soon, which is exciting. Our IT technician, I know they're still actively engaged in Interviews, but they should be on board soon. Our facilities business manager has been hired and has already started, and we're still working through the assistant town manager role. But we're making progress. Our open positions are moving forward pretty well. Good job, Kate. So I had a question, I guess, or maybe a bit of a trend. So I saw the assistant. Town manager, and I was actually doing some research on what's posted. I saw the police chief as well. It seems like under the responsibilities, the more tenure the position, the more bullet points. And so there's like 20, 25 bullet points for some of those positions. And I was curious if there was any thought or recommendation from the firm to maybe have Categories under each as opposed to just all bullet points. So like one that was like leadership and development and then maybe a couple bullet points or management responsibilities or something like that as opposed to just a full list of 20 to 25 bullet points. Because the other ones, the more junior positions have somewhere between 10 to 15. So it's a little different, but the more tenured, I didn't know if that was something that they'd shared as a recommendation. They didn't actually. And they didn't do that in any of the job descriptions I asked them to redo. And I've seen that that is a trend. And I actually kind of like the way that's structured because it gives, you know, for our higher level department level roles, it gives the applicant really clear, you know, areas of responsibility. So I think it's something we should explore, especially for those positions. I'd be happy for feedback on that. We did just post our police chief today. That actually went up today. I thought I read that they recommended that. When you said it, I was like, did I dream that? I thought that they recommended it somewhere, but maybe not. It said something about where there were larger numbers of bullet points that they could be grouped. I thought I read that, so I don't know. Okay, yeah, I'll go back through that, because that would be, I think that's a great way of doing it, I think, because if you've got this long list of bullet points, it can be a little hard to follow through the whole job description. And it was, and I would have read it in the Stuffy Bayless, so it might have been in here. Maybe I dreamed it up. I have a question. Sorry. Sorry, I don't mean to interrupt you. So I thought there was an assistant town manager hired. Did I mishear that? I thought we already had somebody hired for that position. We have an offer out, which was accepted. They will be starting in a couple of weeks, so yeah. Okay, good. Thank you for that. And then did we already go with the joint communications dispatch or we haven't gotten that far? No. I was going to pick out the IT technician because it was next, but my only question on that one was how many IT technicians do we have in town? How many positions like that? On the town side, we have one. One. Just one. And the school has their own? Is that the deal? They do. Are they comparable pays? No, I haven't looked at their salaries. That's a really good question. I'll have to look at that.
Yeah, because the school didn't have, didn't participate in this. So, yeah. Interesting to see. In terms of Dave's point, maybe, you know, I like the idea of grouping, and maybe you could use the factors in the scoring sheet, you know, like level of discretion, policy development, planning. Contact with others. It wouldn't necessarily have to be the same, but that might be one framework to consider using for different groups of responsibilities. That's a good idea. Okay, so no one else has a question on IT. How about the Joint Communications Dispatcher? Because that's a position that's going to be regional, right? Yeah, I don't know. Well, it is. They're still working forward on the, it's MREC, and I can't remember what it stands for. I'm sorry. But. SX Regional. Yeah. So they are still moving forward with this. I think there were some challenges regarding funding that they're working through. But I don't know what, I don't have an update on the timeline. Yeah. That's something the town manager has really been working on with our public safety. Fire Chief and Police Chief. Because I noted they monitor the prisoners visually and audibly. That's their job. Because if we don't have them, then somebody else has to pick that up, right? And then it was interesting. They need a knowledge of the layout of the town of Wayland as well as landmarks, local businesses and landmarks. I think that's... Yes. But that must be hard when they're... Do people get a period of time to learn that if they don't know it? Oh, yeah, they do. I mean, they have a very intensive, it's like a three-month training period. It's very structured. They do all sorts of work around landmarks and things like that. Mary Ellen, did you have questions on that one? Because you had some questions. Mary Ellen, are you there? I am. I'm sorry. My error. So I know that this is regional and it's not on Wayland soil. I believe, did I hear this is going to be in Framingham? I just was curious as to how this works. I mean, who's going to supervise these folks? It's usually under the police department and how they're going to be evaluated if there's nobody there in person. And I guess the other question is that when the phone rings, you pick it up no matter what. Town you're covering. I was to your point, Maryanne, about knowing the land. So my understanding, regionalization has been sort of the trend for dispatch for quite a few years. I think the state has really been trying to incentivize towns to regionalize their dispatch. And it is, I do believe it is going to be in Farmingham, where Farmingham is one of the, I think they're the host community. And how it works is that they've already hired a director to run that program. I believe they're working on an assistant. I think they may have already hired a second person. I'm not entirely sure on that. And then all of our dispatchers would have a place because they're going to be starting fresh. They're going to be hiring all new staff. Our dispatchers will all have an opportunity to move over there, have an interview, and then there will be a slot available for them. Is it guaranteed for people who've already been here or not? Yeah, I'm not sure about that. I think that that is the goal, but I do think they would have to go through an interview process. And so once we're fully regionalized, they would no longer be Town of Wayland employees. They would work for the regional dispatch. And they're union employees, aren't they, Kate? So I imagine there would have to be some kind of MOA for them to move, you know, stay in the union or some kind of... What's the word I want? Negotiation. Yep. Yeah, they are. They are part of AFSCME, so there would need to be some impact bargaining or collective bargaining negotiations regarding that. So does that mean this position comes off the payroll and this just becomes a budgeted service charge? Yeah, something, yeah, it's like that. They would all shift over to MRAC, so their salaries would be paid by MRAC, and then the town would be, would have to pay an assessment, basically. I don't, like I said, this is not something I've worked on directly. It was primarily the police and fire chief and the town manager. I can bring more information in a future meeting if you want. It's just, I don't want to speak out of turn on how it's structured. Right. But is the goal for that like some kind of cost savings because different towns are sharing the dispatch? Dispatches could be centralized in Framingham and then the same dispatcher can do Wayland, Sudbury, other towns. And then are we supposed to be saving money? Yeah, that is the goal. And we would be saving money because the state actually helps us invest in building the infrastructure. And then we wouldn't be, you know, each individual town wouldn't be upgrading monitors, software, training. It would all be sort of in one house. So the goal is to save money and to have a more streamlined process, I think.
Any other questions on this particular position? I have a question, but it's not in the position. If they're all gone from the public safety building, then who's going to be there when the public comes in? I'm just curious. I think the town manager and the police and fire chief have been discussing having a... I don't know, like an attendant or an administrative assistant, some agreed, I'm not sure we haven't really formulated what that would be, but having somewhere, at least someone sitting there when someone comes in so they could respond and direct them to the right place or provide them services. I'm sorry, seven, seven. I mean, no, it probably wouldn't be 24 hours. I don't believe so.
I just had a quick format question, and I don't know if it was how it was produced through the system, but the, so for the, if you compare this to the human resources benefits coordinator position, the knowledge and the skills portion for that were all in bullet points, and it almost looks like the knowledge and skills should be in bullet points, but it looks like it's in kind of a paragraph form. Yeah. That's a good call out. I think this one was done fairly quickly because we had a dispatcher leave recently. So the chief wanted to get this out quickly. So I don't think we fully worked through it in a consistent format. But yeah, that's a good call out. I mean, I would like them to all be consistent, as consistent as possible. I think MGT recommended we do that in a paragraph format. But it makes the, rather than the bullet points because it makes it not quite as long. But I find that it's harder to read that way. So I don't know. I mean, I think formatting is a little tricky with some of these. I don't want them to be, you know, 10 pages long, but I also want to include all of the, you know, relevant pieces. Yeah. Yeah, because sometimes if the paragraph is very long, then it's too dense. Exactly. Yeah, I agree with you, Kate, because it's all like broken up semicolons and so it's all on the benefits position. Yeah, that is what, that is the format that MGT recommended. And I think I didn't do that with all of them. So I haven't, to be fair, I wasn't even that fully consistent with some of these, but I think breaking it out makes more sense because it's easier to read. But it also takes more space. And we'll figure out a way of doing that. So these aren't, you know. Ten pages long, so. Yeah. No, I was curious just so it is, like you said, consistent across the board. Yeah. And is there any questions or are there any questions on the assistant town manager position? Now, did this change a lot from how it used to be? I'm sure it changed a lot. It is. Yeah, it changed quite a bit. The prior version of this was still referred to as Assistant Town Administrator. It referred to Selectmen. So there were actually pretty significant changes in this. When we remapped, we rewrote this, revised it, I went out and got examples from other towns, comparable towns, just to get a sense of what. What's out there? And that was really helpful. And this is where we, the town manager actually reviewed as well and provided his own edits. I mean, this could be a, I don't know what the town's policy is on using AI tools, but this could be a good job for as long as it's confidential. Putting some of these job descriptions in an AI tool and seeing if it can be shortened or seeing if it can be organized. And, you know, that might also help with consistency because you could have a you could have like a sort of a library of documents and then you could say as you're updating another job description make the formatting and the structure similar to the other published job descriptions or the ones that have been previously approved. So, I mean, have you done that? And also, does the town have any policies on using AI tools for this or anything else? I have actually been running some of these through AI just to help streamline because the other thing I noticed in our old job descriptions, there was a lot of redundancy where it would say the same thing in different ways. And so it was hard for me to sort of pull those out individually. We don't currently have a policy on AI use. I know our IT director is working on it with the town manager because this is something that he'd keep. really wants to explore and have in place. So I may be bringing something to you sooner, hopefully, rather than later to review. But yes, that's on the agenda. Yeah, certainly the way of the future and like, you know, in my limited use of it, you know, I think it's just important that you have use enterprise grade tools where there's no You know, where the data can't be made public or isn't used to train the AI models so that if, you know, and I mean, the risk for what we're talking about, the risk of any sensitive data is pretty small, but if you want to protect the document from being sort of more widely available to the public, you know, you can use an AI tool that where your inputs aren't made available for training, the broader tool that's available to the public.
Yeah, I've only, to date, I've only ever used AI for job descriptions because I feel like those are not, they're already public, they're on our website, so I'm comfortable doing that, but I haven't used it for pretty much anything else because I'm really concerned about that issue and having data, private data being released somehow. The town probably should have a policy on that about like, you know, can any town employee use the AI tool of their choice or should it be vetted and, you know, should it be approved by the town manager or by you, Kate? And should it be, and should they be tools that are supplied through Wayland as opposed to someone using? Something they have personal access to on their laptop or on their phone. Yeah. Yeah, I will start to bring that to our IT director. I know he's been working on it for the last month or so, a couple months, I think. Do people use their own computers, or do they use town computers, and do they ever mix their personal stuff with the town stuff? I mean, we do on ours, and we're now into some of the system. We're into the email system. So while they're in town, of course, they're using, while they're physically in town hall or any of your other buildings, they're using a town computer that's connected through our network, right, and our firewall. For folks that are able to work remotely, they do have a town, they're given a town laptop, and we have a VPN, so they're only able to access our town data through a VPN right now. Now, whether they're, you know, moving stuff around onto their personal, you know, we do have, we do actually have policies in place for accessing town data, but they are pretty outdated, and again, the IT director wants to address all of these. It's just, you know, we can't do it all at once, so we're working on it, but you're right, it is, it's an important issue we need to get on. Which, if no one has any more questions on this, the next issue is the remote work follows me. Now, we got a copy of that. It's very detailed. And we have promised to get Kate written feedback. I've gone through it. I haven't put it into a document. I think I need to be able to make the document into a Word document. I was going to send a word version, wasn't I? I don't think I did that. Right. That would be helpful to people to get a word version so that we can give feedback to Kate and then she could get it from all of us. We may not have a lot of feedback, but where we do, and particularly with some of the legal wording. I wanted to just bring, we're not going to discuss it in great detail, but I wanted to just bring it up as an issue on the agenda so that we know it's out there and that we did promise Kate we'd get information and feedback to her. I have some thoughts on it, but I wanted to know if people on the board had thoughts and, you know, one of you could speak first and so. Yeah. Is there a new version of the policy, an updated one that was circulated or just the one we saw previously? It's the same. It hasn't been changed or modified. You said you added something that Paul had brought up before. Yeah, well, that is on the table. I haven't actually done it yet. So you had mentioned adding something about reasonable accommodation and how, you know, someone could potentially need one to work remotely 100% of the time or something. So that is... Right. I didn't want to exclude 100% remote work where it was needed as an accommodation. That's more of the concern. Yeah, no, I might have misunderstood, but yeah, no, I thought there had been some kind of update already on that, but I'm happy to get you my input based on the prior version. Okay, did you receive mine? I sent it in today. I thought that we were supposed to get it to you before tonight. Oh, yes, I did receive it. Thank you. Okay. It was before our November meeting. Well, I guess I'm early then, so I can't be deemed for not being early. Then I don't have to forget. I don't want to put you on the spot, Mary Ellen, but since we're not really supposed to be the different personnel board members talking sort of one-on-one. Or by email. It's an agenda item, Paul. You can talk about it. Yeah, no, I was wondering, Maryanne, I wanted to just share her, you know, any of her main points so that I can take notes about them and make sure I'm not duplicating. Yeah. You know what? That's fine, but I do have to find it because I'm on my phone and I don't have my computer. No, no, no, no. It's fine. I mean, I would just name a couple of things and Kate does have it in front of her. So, you know, one of my concerns was people are pulling folks back into the office and they haven't been, you know, letting people work remotely. I understand that there are times when You know, that is appropriate or should be done, say, inclement weather. Or I know if they're voting in the town hall that they want the spaces and the room or whatever that they, you know, they work from home at that point. But it's an exception, not a rule. So when I looked at the... The policy, and I saw, you know, three days, I thought that that was in excess, maybe one day, and maybe it's just an occasional thing, an ad hoc, and, you know, not to have to be put out a year in advance, but just to say to your boss, hey, tomorrow such and such, can I work from home? And the other concern with that was, you know, what days do you work from home? Friday's a half day, you know, that doesn't make sense. Monday doesn't make sense to be a three-day weekend. You know, are we working, you know, in Massachusetts? It shouldn't be used for out-of-state work. It also shouldn't be used, you know, when you're on vacation to extend a vacation. You know, these were all considerations that I was thinking about. And also, and again, it's not in front of me, so I'm sure I'm missing some points, is that, you know, ergonomics, I think somebody just mentioned that, is... Is the workstation at home going to be ergonomically sound? And I make a point of that because it does say something about work as comp, you know, from home. And, you know, if the space that you're using at home isn't ergonomically sound, that could lead to some kind of injury, maybe short-term, long-term, you know. So, again, that was a consideration of mine. And I think, what else, Kate? Put you on the spot. Yeah, sorry, I'm trying to find, I have so many emails, I was trying to, sorry. It's probably a long. Oh, here it is. Three days, ad hoc.
You had mentioned employees, certain employees need to be on site. Oh, yes. Face-to-face employees should be on site. Department heads should be on site. And employees, and I don't know who they are, Kate, you can help me with this. But employees who interface with other departments, like, what did I put for an example here? The water department with, who are the other people? I'm sorry.
Let me see, the highway department and the water department, because those folks do, you know, interface with each other. So that was my more or less looking at, you know, looking at it from, you know, outside with a different eye. And then I just went through the different parts of the remote policy. I thought that Needham's was very succinct and very much different than Wellesley's. But, you know, I just went through the definitions. You know, what you use for definition of lack of available spaces, you know, there's plenty of space in the town hall. I'm just, you know, just my point of view or my opinion. And I don't know what they mean by alternative workspace. I thought that that could use some work. And again, full-time remote, we already went through that, not face-to-face. And then Maryanne brought up briefly the firewall. You know, what do we use? Do they use VPN when they're home, Kate? Do they dial in? Do they have a, you know, some kind of key that they put in the computer? How do you keep the information that they have in another workplace safe and private and not to be, you know, not to have anybody hack that? Dave, do you have any thoughts you want to share? Thank you, Mary Ellen. I think having a document could be helpful to share everything because I think mine were like little pieces of different parts of the document. So I think some of the things off the top of my head, just trying to figure out where it was, like in terms of eligibility, what's their probationary period? It's six months. Six months, okay. Yeah, like that. The one approval of remote work in the past is not guaranteed a future, continued or future approval of remote work. I don't know that I think that can be, that's kind of dicey. It could be taken, I don't know, I think that might be something just to look at as to if I had already done something in the past and it was approved now, it's not in the future. The wording of that was just something that caught my attention. Then I think what's just mentioned was what's What's permitted in terms of days from the office and days remote. So I think it'd be helpful if maybe I just put all this on paper or we all put something on paper so I can put these notes together for you guys. There's a lot. It's a complicated policy and we should give Kate the feedback and then she can look at it and it's going to be difficult to do but then we can make some decisions. My thought is we need a policy even for the ad hoc stuff because it's ongoing and we have no policy. So we need that, number one. But then I also shared some of the concerns that Mary Ellen had and also from a standpoint of IT security and what do we have in town and how secure. Is the information when it's accessed in a different environment. And I suggested to Kate that the IT director really needs to weigh in. I know the town manager won't really need to weigh in, but I think we need to help her think about a... A policy. I'm comfortable with the ad hoc part of the policy. I'm not so comfortable with the permanent part of the policy for several reasons. One, equitable. Some people can't work remote. And because some people can, does it mean they should? Is it helpful for the town, for people to work remote? Because what I'm seeing, and sometimes it has to be, as Paul said, if someone needs an accommodation. But what I'm seeing in my work is that more companies are calling people back into the office because they found that teamwork got Wasn't working as well as it used to. And for different reasons. At first, they benefited by not having to have that all that space, but then they lost something for it. So we need to think about who can work. Who should work remotely? We are a municipality, after all, and we're face-to-face with citizens, so somebody has to be present, and then is that where the equitability issue comes up? So I think we have to decide who can and if they even should, but I think on some occasions, people need to be able to Have some time to pull a grant together or a proposal together or something like that. And that's more ad hoc. So if we start there, but we still need to think about if we are going to move and expand it to sort of like a permanent work, remote work, the legal argument that was included in our packet from the town council talked about Towns not being able to attract employees. But nowadays in the world of work that's changing a bit, and it may not be by this point in time that it's so much of a problem in attracting employees. I think people like it because they don't have to commute and it saves commuting time. I think we all have benefited from that every now and again. But I think we really need to really think it through so that it's equitable. It's fair and it's clear and people know what the ground rules are for doing it. It's just not an easy policy from my perspective. But I want us to give her feedback and I want to go over all the wording because if we need one, we need one. So that's where I'm coming from on this. I think those are all good points. I would just point out that It is, I don't think you can say it's necessary for recruitment or retention, but it certainly has, you know, it did kind of become a norm or a trend in the workforce during COVID and post-COVID. And now I think there is an expectation in the workforce or in much of the workforce that that is an option for Many people in many roles. It doesn't necessarily have to be. Certainly someone who that is enough. A public-facing position may need to be primarily in person, but for a lot of jobs, remote work makes a lot of sense and can be more efficient. It depends on what the role is. Just stating the obvious, we're sort of supporting town business here, and three of us are remote, and we're generally... A mix of remote and in-person and more remote. So the same forces that make it more convenient for us to do a remote connection to this meeting apply to employees as well. So I don't, you know, and I think, you know, the concerns about IT tools and confidentiality and data security, that, I think that's, I don't know what you're doing precisely, but I assume it's, I presume it's pretty good. Protections already in place based on, you know, IT protocols and cloud and servers and use of cloud-based systems. So I imagine that even when people, whether people are remote or in person, they're probably accessing the same, you know, IT resources that they would whether they're sitting in town hall or at home. So I don't know that's a whole lot different. We did have an incident a few years ago, Paul. We did have an incident in town that was significant. And so I don't know. We have a new IT director. I don't know how much. How much progress has been made and do they feel everything is as secure? Yeah, I can't really speak to that part. I know that cybersecurity has been something he's really been focusing on. And I did actually send this policy to our IT director and to, we have a new program manager up there in IT as well. And they reviewed it and provided some comments. So I didn't have it. Time to get those to you today, but those will be coming because they do have their own concerns, I think, and really so about IT security for individuals accessing outside and the type of data that we're accessing. So that was my question as well, because I think the policy, and I don't have it open in front of me, is that it would be their own private computer, their own laptop and their own desktop. I don't think that the town is supplying everybody a town, you know, laptop for remote work, or are they, Kate? Because that would be an excess. No, I think, I thought there was language in here. So right now, you can't really work remotely without a town laptop. Well, I mean, you can check your email on your phone, right? But for the most part, if you're trying to access data or a particular software package, you have to go through the VP. So I can look at the language in the policy, make sure that's clear, because I think that is something that IT director wants to make clear to employees. So my question is that we're not supplying each employee who's working remotely a laptop, correct? No, we are. We are. But that could be, you are right now, and how many employees are that? Because that's what my, that's in, you know, if it's going to be 100 employees, then you're going to have 100 laptops that you have to purchase to supply. That was my question. Is it, is it there, that should be taken into consideration for cost? Is that there, is the individual employee supplying their own laptop? Or is it the town? Because I think that that would make a difference regarding how many people work remote. And if the equipment's going to be shared. No, it's a good call-out. Cost could certainly be an issue. We don't have 100 people working from home right now. I know that all of our department heads and our sort of second-layer managers all have laptops. Like, I have a laptop that I can access through VPN. It makes sense. And then we have a handful of other people who have them, like our payroll administrator. You know, in case something happens, we need to make sure that that person can process payroll, things like that. But there aren't 100 people using Town of Wayland. Do you know how many there are? I'm just curious, Kate. How many folks would you say? I don't. I mean, all of our department heads. So that's, what, 16 plus some of our second in command, another 20. I mean, I'd say maybe 30 people. Maybe. Okay. Okay. That's an estimate. Back of the envelope. I'd have to get an exact number from the IT director. Okay. Thank you. Are there any people who are not department head or assistant department heads who are working remotely? And do they then get issued a laptop if they don't have one already? Yeah, there are individuals. Like I mentioned, our payroll administrator is one. And there are a handful of others. I'm just trying to think of, I mean, most of the individuals in my office have them. So our HR generalist has one, our assistant town manager, our management analyst. Yeah, I can bring you a list. I just, off the top of my head, I'm not. But there are individuals who aren't department heads that do have laptops and work from home occasionally. And the policy, the tenor of the policy doesn't restrict. So it's open, it's like it's open to everyone, and that's the question. Does the town want it open to everyone, and is it beneficial for the town to have it open to everyone? Because it says it's not a right, and yet we know people like it, but, you know, it's... It may not be what the town wants to have done, and it may not be consistent with what's happening in other kinds of companies these days. It's up to the organization, I think.
So, but if we could get our feedback back, because I think we owe it to you to at least have something ready if that's the way that, you know, the town manager wants to go and the IT director. The IT director at town meeting was talking a lot about all of the work that he does have to do as far as that stuff. So that's why I thought of that in particular. Okay. So we can, if we can get that to Kate by our next meeting, that would be great. So how are we going to do that? Are we going to send them to her individually or how are we going to do that in terms of one document? Yeah, so I will send you a Word document. If you can do it and track changes, I can then combine all of the changes. I think it will do it so that it identifies who did what change, I hope. We each get a different color automatically. I mean, I've done that in the past. I'll do my best. But yeah, but you have to send it to me directly. You can't distribute it to the group. Okay. So where I already submitted mine, am I going to get overtime for putting it on that page? Yes. Okay. I get approved. Thank you. The overtime. Okay. The next item on the agenda is open session meetings from 6-24-26. And I think that Dave, you did those ones? Correct. Right? June 26th. Yes. Anybody have anything to add on those minutes? Which one were you doing? They were in the packet June 24th. Which day are we looking at first? We only have one. June 24th, 2026. Oh, it's only one. Okay. I thought you said there were two.
So I just have a quick question. So number three about Personnel Board Working Group. Are we supposed to be bringing this back to the group about To revisit the concept in the fall about continuing the policy? We already did. We decided not to do it. We decided to do it the way we're doing it with Kate gives us the proposal and then we don't get it by the next, we're not going to get it to her by the next meeting, but by the meeting after that, she should give us enough time to give her input that can make her have time to act on it because otherwise it was just like... We'd talk about it at the meeting, but then there wasn't, you know, there wasn't any time to get it done. So this is a way to try to get it done. I will say the only things that I saw on the minutes, Dave, were more things that are formulaic that we have to do, like we should have the date, June 24, 2026 at 4 p.m. at the select board meeting room on the top of the minutes. And then when we go into executive session, there's a certain way that we have to write it. And I went ahead and I typed it up. The chair moves pursuant to Massachusetts General Law Chapter 30A, Section 21 to move into executive session to hear a grievance. from the Whale and Firefighters Union, and I didn't even have the number there, because to do so in open session could be detrimental to the collective bargaining position of the town. The motion was seconded by Paul Morenberg in this case. The chair took a roll call vote, and then I have the roll call vote. Paul, yes. Dave, yes. Jill Zukerman, yes. Maryanne Peabody, yes. Motion passes, which you had done on all the others. Four, yes. Zero, no. No extension. And then the chair invited into executive session Taylor Ziegler Miller, President Whalen Firefighters Union, Firefighter Doug Williams, and Kate Ryan, Whalen Personnel Director. The chair announced that the Personnel Board would adjourn directly from Executive Session. Sometimes the chair decides that we're going to come back and we give a time that we think we're going to be back at, but in that meeting we thought we would adjourn directly from Executive Session and not return to Open Session. And then the Personnel Board moved into Executive Session and I looked it up online and it was at 5.03 p.m. And the part where you have the executive session adjourned at approximately 5.55 p.m. goes on the executive session minutes. So if you want, I could just give this to Kate. Yeah. And she could change. Yeah, I have your Word document, so I can just modify it for you as long as you vote to amend based on her language. Okay. Thank you. It's just that that's how you're supposed to do it when you go in. Yeah, I just was doing it. My first time at it. Yeah, that's exactly right. I think these minutes are great. I think all of us are to include, especially me, include too much detail. And I think this sort of describes the themes and important. Parts of the discussion without getting into like, you know, this person said this and this person responded to this. And I really like this style of minutes. Yep. Thank you, Dave. So can I have a motion to accept the minutes as amended? Yes. Second. Mary Ellen? Yep. Paul second. Okay. Roll call vote. Mary Ellen? Yes. Paul? Yes. Dave? Yes. And Maryanne? Yes. So next meeting date, right? Is that the next thing on here? Yep. So that means that we have to get our feedback on the remote work policy. You had some other job descriptions you wanted us to look at? Sure. Yeah, I can link some more back to you. Okay. And then is there anything else that you're anticipating? Well, I am working on that policy for a classification piece. I'm not sure that I'll have that ready in time to get feedback before November meeting, but that is on my plate. Okay. All right. So do we need one for November or should we shoot for early December? What makes sense?
I mean, we could meet in November, but we need to get all of our feedback to Kate, which I think we can do. So the week of Thanksgiving, I assume no one will want to meet if that's... I will not be here, so... But maybe either the week before or the week after, which is the first week of December, so... Okay. What do you guys think? I'm open. I don't have a preference. I mean, I think... I mean, I think we probably could meet in December. Okay. What about the first week in December? Let's see. End of the November 30th. So December 1st is a Tuesday. Oh, is that? You have a meeting the first week? No. No, that works. No? Yeah. How about everybody else? Because as we get closer to the holidays, we're going to have times that we'll run out of base. Is there any day that week that works for people? So if we're going to meet the first week, and are they, are you folks off on the 27th? Is the, when's Thanksgiving? Yes, yeah. Yeah, Town Hall is closed on the Wednesday, sorry, the Thursday and Friday the week before. Yeah, so that's not going to help as far as packets are concerned. Unless we do them by the 25th. I won't be able to do that. I'm not in that week. All right. What about the week of December 7th? Yeah, it's okay with me. Yeah. You couldn't have the packets done because you're not there. Is that correct? I'm not sure that I heard. Okay. All right. That's fair enough. Yeah. That's fair enough. Okay. How about December 8th or 9th? I can't do nine, but I could do eight. Okay. And how about you, Dave? Could you do the eight? Yes. Why don't we choose Tuesday, December the 8th? 4 p.m. still works for everyone? Sure it does. Yes. Okay. Yeah. I have to check on one possible conflict, but I think I should be able to... We should be able to manage it. Okay. All right. And so we'll get the feedback that went on and then we'll take a look at those other positions, which was fairly straightforward to do, actually. So Tuesday, December 8th at 4 p.m.? Yes. So there being no further business, may I have a motion to adjourn? Motion to adjourn. I second. We're out the door. Right. All right. I'll roll call vote, even though I don't believe me. Paul? Yes. Dave? Yes. Mary Ellen? Yes. Mary Ann? Yes. Mary Ann? Yes. Okay. All right.
But those are the kinds of areas that I thought, Paul, would lend to the education level and the pounds of stuff you had to lift that sometimes could add to putting jobs in different categories. So was there equity in those? And so you answered my questions.
And I do actually want to, if it's okay, just, and it's technically not on your agenda, but I thought, given that these jobs are recent, we've posted these recently, we have made an offer for HR benefits coordinators, hopefully they'll be on board recently, or soon, which is exciting. Our IT technician, I know they're still actively engaged in Interviews, but they should be on board soon. Our facilities business manager has been hired and has already started, and we're still working through the assistant town manager role. But we're making progress. Our open positions are moving forward pretty well. Good job, Kate. So I had a question, I guess, or maybe a bit of a trend. So I saw the assistant. Town manager, and I was actually doing some research on what's posted. I saw the police chief as well. It seems like under the responsibilities, the more tenure the position, the more bullet points. And so there's like 20, 25 bullet points for some of those positions. And I was curious if there was any thought or recommendation from the firm to maybe have Categories under each as opposed to just all bullet points. So like one that was like leadership and development and then maybe a couple bullet points or management responsibilities or something like that as opposed to just a full list of 20 to 25 bullet points. Because the other ones, the more junior positions have somewhere between 10 to 15. So it's a little different, but the more tenured, I didn't know if that was something that they'd shared as a recommendation. They didn't actually. And they didn't do that in any of the job descriptions I asked them to redo. And I've seen that that is a trend. And I actually kind of like the way that's structured because it gives, you know, for our higher level department level roles, it gives the applicant really clear, you know, areas of responsibility. So I think it's something we should explore, especially for those positions. I'd be happy for feedback on that. We did just post our police chief today. That actually went up today. I thought I read that they recommended that. When you said it, I was like, did I dream that? I thought that they recommended it somewhere, but maybe not. It said something about where there were larger numbers of bullet points that they could be grouped. I thought I read that, so I don't know. Okay, yeah, I'll go back through that, because that would be, I think that's a great way of doing it, I think, because if you've got this long list of bullet points, it can be a little hard to follow through the whole job description. And it was, and I would have read it in the Stuffy Bayless, so it might have been in here. Maybe I dreamed it up. I have a question. Sorry. Sorry, I don't mean to interrupt you. So I thought there was an assistant town manager hired. Did I mishear that? I thought we already had somebody hired for that position. We have an offer out, which was accepted. They will be starting in a couple of weeks, so yeah. Okay, good. Thank you for that. And then did we already go with the joint communications dispatch or we haven't gotten that far? No. I was going to pick out the IT technician because it was next, but my only question on that one was how many IT technicians do we have in town? How many positions like that? On the town side, we have one. One. Just one. And the school has their own? Is that the deal? They do. Are they comparable pays? No, I haven't looked at their salaries. That's a really good question. I'll have to look at that.
Yeah, because the school didn't have, didn't participate in this. So, yeah. Interesting to see. In terms of Dave's point, maybe, you know, I like the idea of grouping, and maybe you could use the factors in the scoring sheet, you know, like level of discretion, policy development, planning. Contact with others. It wouldn't necessarily have to be the same, but that might be one framework to consider using for different groups of responsibilities. That's a good idea. Okay, so no one else has a question on IT. How about the Joint Communications Dispatcher? Because that's a position that's going to be regional, right? Yeah, I don't know. Well, it is. They're still working forward on the, it's MREC, and I can't remember what it stands for. I'm sorry. But. SX Regional. Yeah. So they are still moving forward with this. I think there were some challenges regarding funding that they're working through. But I don't know what, I don't have an update on the timeline. Yeah. That's something the town manager has really been working on with our public safety. Fire Chief and Police Chief. Because I noted they monitor the prisoners visually and audibly. That's their job. Because if we don't have them, then somebody else has to pick that up, right? And then it was interesting. They need a knowledge of the layout of the town of Wayland as well as landmarks, local businesses and landmarks. I think that's... Yes. But that must be hard when they're... Do people get a period of time to learn that if they don't know it? Oh, yeah, they do. I mean, they have a very intensive, it's like a three-month training period. It's very structured. They do all sorts of work around landmarks and things like that. Mary Ellen, did you have questions on that one? Because you had some questions. Mary Ellen, are you there? I am. I'm sorry. My error. So I know that this is regional and it's not on Wayland soil. I believe, did I hear this is going to be in Framingham? I just was curious as to how this works. I mean, who's going to supervise these folks? It's usually under the police department and how they're going to be evaluated if there's nobody there in person. And I guess the other question is that when the phone rings, you pick it up no matter what. Town you're covering. I was to your point, Maryanne, about knowing the land. So my understanding, regionalization has been sort of the trend for dispatch for quite a few years. I think the state has really been trying to incentivize towns to regionalize their dispatch. And it is, I do believe it is going to be in Farmingham, where Farmingham is one of the, I think they're the host community. And how it works is that they've already hired a director to run that program. I believe they're working on an assistant. I think they may have already hired a second person. I'm not entirely sure on that. And then all of our dispatchers would have a place because they're going to be starting fresh. They're going to be hiring all new staff. Our dispatchers will all have an opportunity to move over there, have an interview, and then there will be a slot available for them. Is it guaranteed for people who've already been here or not? Yeah, I'm not sure about that. I think that that is the goal, but I do think they would have to go through an interview process. And so once we're fully regionalized, they would no longer be Town of Wayland employees. They would work for the regional dispatch. And they're union employees, aren't they, Kate? So I imagine there would have to be some kind of MOA for them to move, you know, stay in the union or some kind of... What's the word I want? Negotiation. Yep. Yeah, they are. They are part of AFSCME, so there would need to be some impact bargaining or collective bargaining negotiations regarding that. So does that mean this position comes off the payroll and this just becomes a budgeted service charge? Yeah, something, yeah, it's like that. They would all shift over to MRAC, so their salaries would be paid by MRAC, and then the town would be, would have to pay an assessment, basically. I don't, like I said, this is not something I've worked on directly. It was primarily the police and fire chief and the town manager. I can bring more information in a future meeting if you want. It's just, I don't want to speak out of turn on how it's structured. Right. But is the goal for that like some kind of cost savings because different towns are sharing the dispatch? Dispatches could be centralized in Framingham and then the same dispatcher can do Wayland, Sudbury, other towns. And then are we supposed to be saving money? Yeah, that is the goal. And we would be saving money because the state actually helps us invest in building the infrastructure. And then we wouldn't be, you know, each individual town wouldn't be upgrading monitors, software, training. It would all be sort of in one house. So the goal is to save money and to have a more streamlined process, I think.
Any other questions on this particular position? I have a question, but it's not in the position. If they're all gone from the public safety building, then who's going to be there when the public comes in? I'm just curious. I think the town manager and the police and fire chief have been discussing having a... I don't know, like an attendant or an administrative assistant, some agreed, I'm not sure we haven't really formulated what that would be, but having somewhere, at least someone sitting there when someone comes in so they could respond and direct them to the right place or provide them services. I'm sorry, seven, seven. I mean, no, it probably wouldn't be 24 hours. I don't believe so.
I just had a quick format question, and I don't know if it was how it was produced through the system, but the, so for the, if you compare this to the human resources benefits coordinator position, the knowledge and the skills portion for that were all in bullet points, and it almost looks like the knowledge and skills should be in bullet points, but it looks like it's in kind of a paragraph form. Yeah. That's a good call out. I think this one was done fairly quickly because we had a dispatcher leave recently. So the chief wanted to get this out quickly. So I don't think we fully worked through it in a consistent format. But yeah, that's a good call out. I mean, I would like them to all be consistent, as consistent as possible. I think MGT recommended we do that in a paragraph format. But it makes the, rather than the bullet points because it makes it not quite as long. But I find that it's harder to read that way. So I don't know. I mean, I think formatting is a little tricky with some of these. I don't want them to be, you know, 10 pages long, but I also want to include all of the, you know, relevant pieces. Yeah. Yeah, because sometimes if the paragraph is very long, then it's too dense. Exactly. Yeah, I agree with you, Kate, because it's all like broken up semicolons and so it's all on the benefits position. Yeah, that is what, that is the format that MGT recommended. And I think I didn't do that with all of them. So I haven't, to be fair, I wasn't even that fully consistent with some of these, but I think breaking it out makes more sense because it's easier to read. But it also takes more space. And we'll figure out a way of doing that. So these aren't, you know. Ten pages long, so. Yeah. No, I was curious just so it is, like you said, consistent across the board. Yeah. And is there any questions or are there any questions on the assistant town manager position? Now, did this change a lot from how it used to be? I'm sure it changed a lot. It is. Yeah, it changed quite a bit. The prior version of this was still referred to as Assistant Town Administrator. It referred to Selectmen. So there were actually pretty significant changes in this. When we remapped, we rewrote this, revised it, I went out and got examples from other towns, comparable towns, just to get a sense of what. What's out there? And that was really helpful. And this is where we, the town manager actually reviewed as well and provided his own edits. I mean, this could be a, I don't know what the town's policy is on using AI tools, but this could be a good job for as long as it's confidential. Putting some of these job descriptions in an AI tool and seeing if it can be shortened or seeing if it can be organized. And, you know, that might also help with consistency because you could have a you could have like a sort of a library of documents and then you could say as you're updating another job description make the formatting and the structure similar to the other published job descriptions or the ones that have been previously approved. So, I mean, have you done that? And also, does the town have any policies on using AI tools for this or anything else? I have actually been running some of these through AI just to help streamline because the other thing I noticed in our old job descriptions, there was a lot of redundancy where it would say the same thing in different ways. And so it was hard for me to sort of pull those out individually. We don't currently have a policy on AI use. I know our IT director is working on it with the town manager because this is something that he'd keep. really wants to explore and have in place. So I may be bringing something to you sooner, hopefully, rather than later to review. But yes, that's on the agenda. Yeah, certainly the way of the future and like, you know, in my limited use of it, you know, I think it's just important that you have use enterprise grade tools where there's no You know, where the data can't be made public or isn't used to train the AI models so that if, you know, and I mean, the risk for what we're talking about, the risk of any sensitive data is pretty small, but if you want to protect the document from being sort of more widely available to the public, you know, you can use an AI tool that where your inputs aren't made available for training, the broader tool that's available to the public.
Yeah, I've only, to date, I've only ever used AI for job descriptions because I feel like those are not, they're already public, they're on our website, so I'm comfortable doing that, but I haven't used it for pretty much anything else because I'm really concerned about that issue and having data, private data being released somehow. The town probably should have a policy on that about like, you know, can any town employee use the AI tool of their choice or should it be vetted and, you know, should it be approved by the town manager or by you, Kate? And should it be, and should they be tools that are supplied through Wayland as opposed to someone using? Something they have personal access to on their laptop or on their phone. Yeah. Yeah, I will start to bring that to our IT director. I know he's been working on it for the last month or so, a couple months, I think. Do people use their own computers, or do they use town computers, and do they ever mix their personal stuff with the town stuff? I mean, we do on ours, and we're now into some of the system. We're into the email system. So while they're in town, of course, they're using, while they're physically in town hall or any of your other buildings, they're using a town computer that's connected through our network, right, and our firewall. For folks that are able to work remotely, they do have a town, they're given a town laptop, and we have a VPN, so they're only able to access our town data through a VPN right now. Now, whether they're, you know, moving stuff around onto their personal, you know, we do have, we do actually have policies in place for accessing town data, but they are pretty outdated, and again, the IT director wants to address all of these. It's just, you know, we can't do it all at once, so we're working on it, but you're right, it is, it's an important issue we need to get on. Which, if no one has any more questions on this, the next issue is the remote work follows me. Now, we got a copy of that. It's very detailed. And we have promised to get Kate written feedback. I've gone through it. I haven't put it into a document. I think I need to be able to make the document into a Word document. I was going to send a word version, wasn't I? I don't think I did that. Right. That would be helpful to people to get a word version so that we can give feedback to Kate and then she could get it from all of us. We may not have a lot of feedback, but where we do, and particularly with some of the legal wording. I wanted to just bring, we're not going to discuss it in great detail, but I wanted to just bring it up as an issue on the agenda so that we know it's out there and that we did promise Kate we'd get information and feedback to her. I have some thoughts on it, but I wanted to know if people on the board had thoughts and, you know, one of you could speak first and so. Yeah. Is there a new version of the policy, an updated one that was circulated or just the one we saw previously? It's the same. It hasn't been changed or modified. You said you added something that Paul had brought up before. Yeah, well, that is on the table. I haven't actually done it yet. So you had mentioned adding something about reasonable accommodation and how, you know, someone could potentially need one to work remotely 100% of the time or something. So that is... Right. I didn't want to exclude 100% remote work where it was needed as an accommodation. That's more of the concern. Yeah, no, I might have misunderstood, but yeah, no, I thought there had been some kind of update already on that, but I'm happy to get you my input based on the prior version. Okay, did you receive mine? I sent it in today. I thought that we were supposed to get it to you before tonight. Oh, yes, I did receive it. Thank you. Okay. It was before our November meeting. Well, I guess I'm early then, so I can't be deemed for not being early. Then I don't have to forget. I don't want to put you on the spot, Mary Ellen, but since we're not really supposed to be the different personnel board members talking sort of one-on-one. Or by email. It's an agenda item, Paul. You can talk about it. Yeah, no, I was wondering, Maryanne, I wanted to just share her, you know, any of her main points so that I can take notes about them and make sure I'm not duplicating. Yeah. You know what? That's fine, but I do have to find it because I'm on my phone and I don't have my computer. No, no, no, no. It's fine. I mean, I would just name a couple of things and Kate does have it in front of her. So, you know, one of my concerns was people are pulling folks back into the office and they haven't been, you know, letting people work remotely. I understand that there are times when You know, that is appropriate or should be done, say, inclement weather. Or I know if they're voting in the town hall that they want the spaces and the room or whatever that they, you know, they work from home at that point. But it's an exception, not a rule. So when I looked at the... The policy, and I saw, you know, three days, I thought that that was in excess, maybe one day, and maybe it's just an occasional thing, an ad hoc, and, you know, not to have to be put out a year in advance, but just to say to your boss, hey, tomorrow such and such, can I work from home? And the other concern with that was, you know, what days do you work from home? Friday's a half day, you know, that doesn't make sense. Monday doesn't make sense to be a three-day weekend. You know, are we working, you know, in Massachusetts? It shouldn't be used for out-of-state work. It also shouldn't be used, you know, when you're on vacation to extend a vacation. You know, these were all considerations that I was thinking about. And also, and again, it's not in front of me, so I'm sure I'm missing some points, is that, you know, ergonomics, I think somebody just mentioned that, is... Is the workstation at home going to be ergonomically sound? And I make a point of that because it does say something about work as comp, you know, from home. And, you know, if the space that you're using at home isn't ergonomically sound, that could lead to some kind of injury, maybe short-term, long-term, you know. So, again, that was a consideration of mine. And I think, what else, Kate? Put you on the spot. Yeah, sorry, I'm trying to find, I have so many emails, I was trying to, sorry. It's probably a long. Oh, here it is. Three days, ad hoc.
You had mentioned employees, certain employees need to be on site. Oh, yes. Face-to-face employees should be on site. Department heads should be on site. And employees, and I don't know who they are, Kate, you can help me with this. But employees who interface with other departments, like, what did I put for an example here? The water department with, who are the other people? I'm sorry.
Let me see, the highway department and the water department, because those folks do, you know, interface with each other. So that was my more or less looking at, you know, looking at it from, you know, outside with a different eye. And then I just went through the different parts of the remote policy. I thought that Needham's was very succinct and very much different than Wellesley's. But, you know, I just went through the definitions. You know, what you use for definition of lack of available spaces, you know, there's plenty of space in the town hall. I'm just, you know, just my point of view or my opinion. And I don't know what they mean by alternative workspace. I thought that that could use some work. And again, full-time remote, we already went through that, not face-to-face. And then Maryanne brought up briefly the firewall. You know, what do we use? Do they use VPN when they're home, Kate? Do they dial in? Do they have a, you know, some kind of key that they put in the computer? How do you keep the information that they have in another workplace safe and private and not to be, you know, not to have anybody hack that? Dave, do you have any thoughts you want to share? Thank you, Mary Ellen. I think having a document could be helpful to share everything because I think mine were like little pieces of different parts of the document. So I think some of the things off the top of my head, just trying to figure out where it was, like in terms of eligibility, what's their probationary period? It's six months. Six months, okay. Yeah, like that. The one approval of remote work in the past is not guaranteed a future, continued or future approval of remote work. I don't know that I think that can be, that's kind of dicey. It could be taken, I don't know, I think that might be something just to look at as to if I had already done something in the past and it was approved now, it's not in the future. The wording of that was just something that caught my attention. Then I think what's just mentioned was what's What's permitted in terms of days from the office and days remote. So I think it'd be helpful if maybe I just put all this on paper or we all put something on paper so I can put these notes together for you guys. There's a lot. It's a complicated policy and we should give Kate the feedback and then she can look at it and it's going to be difficult to do but then we can make some decisions. My thought is we need a policy even for the ad hoc stuff because it's ongoing and we have no policy. So we need that, number one. But then I also shared some of the concerns that Mary Ellen had and also from a standpoint of IT security and what do we have in town and how secure. Is the information when it's accessed in a different environment. And I suggested to Kate that the IT director really needs to weigh in. I know the town manager won't really need to weigh in, but I think we need to help her think about a... A policy. I'm comfortable with the ad hoc part of the policy. I'm not so comfortable with the permanent part of the policy for several reasons. One, equitable. Some people can't work remote. And because some people can, does it mean they should? Is it helpful for the town, for people to work remote? Because what I'm seeing, and sometimes it has to be, as Paul said, if someone needs an accommodation. But what I'm seeing in my work is that more companies are calling people back into the office because they found that teamwork got Wasn't working as well as it used to. And for different reasons. At first, they benefited by not having to have that all that space, but then they lost something for it. So we need to think about who can work. Who should work remotely? We are a municipality, after all, and we're face-to-face with citizens, so somebody has to be present, and then is that where the equitability issue comes up? So I think we have to decide who can and if they even should, but I think on some occasions, people need to be able to Have some time to pull a grant together or a proposal together or something like that. And that's more ad hoc. So if we start there, but we still need to think about if we are going to move and expand it to sort of like a permanent work, remote work, the legal argument that was included in our packet from the town council talked about Towns not being able to attract employees. But nowadays in the world of work that's changing a bit, and it may not be by this point in time that it's so much of a problem in attracting employees. I think people like it because they don't have to commute and it saves commuting time. I think we all have benefited from that every now and again. But I think we really need to really think it through so that it's equitable. It's fair and it's clear and people know what the ground rules are for doing it. It's just not an easy policy from my perspective. But I want us to give her feedback and I want to go over all the wording because if we need one, we need one. So that's where I'm coming from on this. I think those are all good points. I would just point out that It is, I don't think you can say it's necessary for recruitment or retention, but it certainly has, you know, it did kind of become a norm or a trend in the workforce during COVID and post-COVID. And now I think there is an expectation in the workforce or in much of the workforce that that is an option for Many people in many roles. It doesn't necessarily have to be. Certainly someone who that is enough. A public-facing position may need to be primarily in person, but for a lot of jobs, remote work makes a lot of sense and can be more efficient. It depends on what the role is. Just stating the obvious, we're sort of supporting town business here, and three of us are remote, and we're generally... A mix of remote and in-person and more remote. So the same forces that make it more convenient for us to do a remote connection to this meeting apply to employees as well. So I don't, you know, and I think, you know, the concerns about IT tools and confidentiality and data security, that, I think that's, I don't know what you're doing precisely, but I assume it's, I presume it's pretty good. Protections already in place based on, you know, IT protocols and cloud and servers and use of cloud-based systems. So I imagine that even when people, whether people are remote or in person, they're probably accessing the same, you know, IT resources that they would whether they're sitting in town hall or at home. So I don't know that's a whole lot different. We did have an incident a few years ago, Paul. We did have an incident in town that was significant. And so I don't know. We have a new IT director. I don't know how much. How much progress has been made and do they feel everything is as secure? Yeah, I can't really speak to that part. I know that cybersecurity has been something he's really been focusing on. And I did actually send this policy to our IT director and to, we have a new program manager up there in IT as well. And they reviewed it and provided some comments. So I didn't have it. Time to get those to you today, but those will be coming because they do have their own concerns, I think, and really so about IT security for individuals accessing outside and the type of data that we're accessing. So that was my question as well, because I think the policy, and I don't have it open in front of me, is that it would be their own private computer, their own laptop and their own desktop. I don't think that the town is supplying everybody a town, you know, laptop for remote work, or are they, Kate? Because that would be an excess. No, I think, I thought there was language in here. So right now, you can't really work remotely without a town laptop. Well, I mean, you can check your email on your phone, right? But for the most part, if you're trying to access data or a particular software package, you have to go through the VP. So I can look at the language in the policy, make sure that's clear, because I think that is something that IT director wants to make clear to employees. So my question is that we're not supplying each employee who's working remotely a laptop, correct? No, we are. We are. But that could be, you are right now, and how many employees are that? Because that's what my, that's in, you know, if it's going to be 100 employees, then you're going to have 100 laptops that you have to purchase to supply. That was my question. Is it, is it there, that should be taken into consideration for cost? Is that there, is the individual employee supplying their own laptop? Or is it the town? Because I think that that would make a difference regarding how many people work remote. And if the equipment's going to be shared. No, it's a good call-out. Cost could certainly be an issue. We don't have 100 people working from home right now. I know that all of our department heads and our sort of second-layer managers all have laptops. Like, I have a laptop that I can access through VPN. It makes sense. And then we have a handful of other people who have them, like our payroll administrator. You know, in case something happens, we need to make sure that that person can process payroll, things like that. But there aren't 100 people using Town of Wayland. Do you know how many there are? I'm just curious, Kate. How many folks would you say? I don't. I mean, all of our department heads. So that's, what, 16 plus some of our second in command, another 20. I mean, I'd say maybe 30 people. Maybe. Okay. Okay. That's an estimate. Back of the envelope. I'd have to get an exact number from the IT director. Okay. Thank you. Are there any people who are not department head or assistant department heads who are working remotely? And do they then get issued a laptop if they don't have one already? Yeah, there are individuals. Like I mentioned, our payroll administrator is one. And there are a handful of others. I'm just trying to think of, I mean, most of the individuals in my office have them. So our HR generalist has one, our assistant town manager, our management analyst. Yeah, I can bring you a list. I just, off the top of my head, I'm not. But there are individuals who aren't department heads that do have laptops and work from home occasionally. And the policy, the tenor of the policy doesn't restrict. So it's open, it's like it's open to everyone, and that's the question. Does the town want it open to everyone, and is it beneficial for the town to have it open to everyone? Because it says it's not a right, and yet we know people like it, but, you know, it's... It may not be what the town wants to have done, and it may not be consistent with what's happening in other kinds of companies these days. It's up to the organization, I think.
So, but if we could get our feedback back, because I think we owe it to you to at least have something ready if that's the way that, you know, the town manager wants to go and the IT director. The IT director at town meeting was talking a lot about all of the work that he does have to do as far as that stuff. So that's why I thought of that in particular. Okay. So we can, if we can get that to Kate by our next meeting, that would be great. So how are we going to do that? Are we going to send them to her individually or how are we going to do that in terms of one document? Yeah, so I will send you a Word document. If you can do it and track changes, I can then combine all of the changes. I think it will do it so that it identifies who did what change, I hope. We each get a different color automatically. I mean, I've done that in the past. I'll do my best. But yeah, but you have to send it to me directly. You can't distribute it to the group. Okay. So where I already submitted mine, am I going to get overtime for putting it on that page? Yes. Okay. I get approved. Thank you. The overtime. Okay. The next item on the agenda is open session meetings from 6-24-26. And I think that Dave, you did those ones? Correct. Right? June 26th. Yes. Anybody have anything to add on those minutes? Which one were you doing? They were in the packet June 24th. Which day are we looking at first? We only have one. June 24th, 2026. Oh, it's only one. Okay. I thought you said there were two.
So I just have a quick question. So number three about Personnel Board Working Group. Are we supposed to be bringing this back to the group about To revisit the concept in the fall about continuing the policy? We already did. We decided not to do it. We decided to do it the way we're doing it with Kate gives us the proposal and then we don't get it by the next, we're not going to get it to her by the next meeting, but by the meeting after that, she should give us enough time to give her input that can make her have time to act on it because otherwise it was just like... We'd talk about it at the meeting, but then there wasn't, you know, there wasn't any time to get it done. So this is a way to try to get it done. I will say the only things that I saw on the minutes, Dave, were more things that are formulaic that we have to do, like we should have the date, June 24, 2026 at 4 p.m. at the select board meeting room on the top of the minutes. And then when we go into executive session, there's a certain way that we have to write it. And I went ahead and I typed it up. The chair moves pursuant to Massachusetts General Law Chapter 30A, Section 21 to move into executive session to hear a grievance. from the Whale and Firefighters Union, and I didn't even have the number there, because to do so in open session could be detrimental to the collective bargaining position of the town. The motion was seconded by Paul Morenberg in this case. The chair took a roll call vote, and then I have the roll call vote. Paul, yes. Dave, yes. Jill Zukerman, yes. Maryanne Peabody, yes. Motion passes, which you had done on all the others. Four, yes. Zero, no. No extension. And then the chair invited into executive session Taylor Ziegler Miller, President Whalen Firefighters Union, Firefighter Doug Williams, and Kate Ryan, Whalen Personnel Director. The chair announced that the Personnel Board would adjourn directly from Executive Session. Sometimes the chair decides that we're going to come back and we give a time that we think we're going to be back at, but in that meeting we thought we would adjourn directly from Executive Session and not return to Open Session. And then the Personnel Board moved into Executive Session and I looked it up online and it was at 5.03 p.m. And the part where you have the executive session adjourned at approximately 5.55 p.m. goes on the executive session minutes. So if you want, I could just give this to Kate. Yeah. And she could change. Yeah, I have your Word document, so I can just modify it for you as long as you vote to amend based on her language. Okay. Thank you. It's just that that's how you're supposed to do it when you go in. Yeah, I just was doing it. My first time at it. Yeah, that's exactly right. I think these minutes are great. I think all of us are to include, especially me, include too much detail. And I think this sort of describes the themes and important. Parts of the discussion without getting into like, you know, this person said this and this person responded to this. And I really like this style of minutes. Yep. Thank you, Dave. So can I have a motion to accept the minutes as amended? Yes. Second. Mary Ellen? Yep. Paul second. Okay. Roll call vote. Mary Ellen? Yes. Paul? Yes. Dave? Yes. And Maryanne? Yes. So next meeting date, right? Is that the next thing on here? Yep. So that means that we have to get our feedback on the remote work policy. You had some other job descriptions you wanted us to look at? Sure. Yeah, I can link some more back to you. Okay. And then is there anything else that you're anticipating? Well, I am working on that policy for a classification piece. I'm not sure that I'll have that ready in time to get feedback before November meeting, but that is on my plate. Okay. All right. So do we need one for November or should we shoot for early December? What makes sense?
I mean, we could meet in November, but we need to get all of our feedback to Kate, which I think we can do. So the week of Thanksgiving, I assume no one will want to meet if that's... I will not be here, so... But maybe either the week before or the week after, which is the first week of December, so... Okay. What do you guys think? I'm open. I don't have a preference. I mean, I think... I mean, I think we probably could meet in December. Okay. What about the first week in December? Let's see. End of the November 30th. So December 1st is a Tuesday. Oh, is that? You have a meeting the first week? No. No, that works. No? Yeah. How about everybody else? Because as we get closer to the holidays, we're going to have times that we'll run out of base. Is there any day that week that works for people? So if we're going to meet the first week, and are they, are you folks off on the 27th? Is the, when's Thanksgiving? Yes, yeah. Yeah, Town Hall is closed on the Wednesday, sorry, the Thursday and Friday the week before. Yeah, so that's not going to help as far as packets are concerned. Unless we do them by the 25th. I won't be able to do that. I'm not in that week. All right. What about the week of December 7th? Yeah, it's okay with me. Yeah. You couldn't have the packets done because you're not there. Is that correct? I'm not sure that I heard. Okay. All right. That's fair enough. Yeah. That's fair enough. Okay. How about December 8th or 9th? I can't do nine, but I could do eight. Okay. And how about you, Dave? Could you do the eight? Yes. Why don't we choose Tuesday, December the 8th? 4 p.m. still works for everyone? Sure it does. Yes. Okay. Yeah. I have to check on one possible conflict, but I think I should be able to... We should be able to manage it. Okay. All right. And so we'll get the feedback that went on and then we'll take a look at those other positions, which was fairly straightforward to do, actually. So Tuesday, December 8th at 4 p.m.? Yes. So there being no further business, may I have a motion to adjourn? Motion to adjourn. I second. We're out the door. Right. All right. I'll roll call vote, even though I don't believe me. Paul? Yes. Dave? Yes. Mary Ellen? Yes. Mary Ann? Yes. Mary Ann? Yes. Okay. All right.