October 17, 2025 – Finance Committee Appointing Board – Video & Transcript
October 17, 2025 - Finance Committee Appointing Board
all right it is 10 o'clock right 10 o'clock um and miranda mine ended up in um my trash too so
don't worry i had to go find it again oh isn't it oh okay yeah somehow when you accept it yeah
so it's okay oh that's right i had accepted it that's why and then it went away yeah but you
know like i had a memory of it being that was well i did too and i actually oh hey mom there's it was
good they were very organized all right anyway it is still 10 o'clock on friday october 17th 2025 and
i'm going to call this meeting of the finance committee appointing board to order and today
we have a full contingent we have miranda jones carl martin and myself cherry carlson um we will
um we're we're meeting fully remotely as allowed by law so there is no in-person attendance by either
the board or members of the public we'll take both public comment and participation
um on our agenda items via zoom and you can access that through the town's main page um where it shows
the public meeting information and you can click on the zoom link there um we will also be recorded
by wacom and posted online on their page um according to their process um i think those are all my
technicalities so i'm going to review the agenda for the public then we'll have announcements from
the board and any public comment our main purpose for meeting today is to discuss um two candidates
or the finance committee um we'll follow up with any um information we need to do on recruitment after
that we'll take a look at our draft minutes from our last meeting in september talk about the next
meeting date hear any reports and concerns from our committee members um right now i don't have any
topics not um anticipated reasonably anticipated 48 hours in advance and then we'll adjourn um at the
completion of our work um any announcements comments from the board nope okay um i do want to note um
the board did receive an email and resume from pam roman yesterday afternoon and i apologize that i didn't
get that added to the packet um but it is because it came to all of us it is part of the public record
i think it came at like uh 2 30 or 3 yesterday afternoon yeah um and um just as a way of announcement
i do expect that rob quimby will be joining us um pam roman cannot join us today so um that's where we are
with that um i will open it to public comment um if there is any okay i'm not seeing that we have
um any public comment our one attendees are interviewee so we are good there um and so with that um let's why
don't we move on to agenda item three which is the interview um and jaylen i think you're doing this but
if you can move rob quimby over that would be great yep i just moved him over okay thanks so much
hi there you go hi it's so interesting to put names and faces together with everybody so rob i'm cherry
we've uh emailed and to set this up um and we have also on my screen miranda jones on the left and carol
martin on the right not certain how they are on your screen um thank you for joining us um just to set the
the stage for everyone who is watching um we are interviewing because we have two positions um open
on the finance committee one with a three-year tenure and one with a two-year tenure um pam roman is
currently in the one with three-year tenure um but just serving out of the uh goodness of her heart
until we find a replacement um and so rob reached out probably last month or the month before and i think
has done some homework and took us a little while to set up a meeting um but uh this worked for everybody
and so we'll we'll get to meet him today um so rob if you're ready i just would have you start um first
thank you for your your interest in fincom um and i would just have you start telling us a little bit
about yourself um and why fincom and we do have as you know in the public packet um we do have your resume
so we have that as background as well great awesome so first thanks for the consideration
um my name is rob quimby i moved here with my wife and our son uh moved to wayland a little under
two years ago um and we have since added a daughter to the family um you know we aspire to be here for a
long time right we moved here because we're we're excited about wayland we're excited about the school
system plan to put our kids through the public schools here um and as we're putting down roots
you know interest in getting more involved with the town um and the place that we want to make our home
um the finance committee seemed like it might be i guess i saw a lot of emails saying that you were
looking for people to serve on the finance committee uh and when you up it to two right we had two
openings uh it's kind of when i reached out um finance committee seems like it's potentially a good
fit for my skills um it's an area that's interesting to me um so my background is not
explicitly in finance so i've worked in tech my entire career i guess um first as a software
engineer then as a product manager and most recently essentially as an executive
um at a couple of different startups a lot of background with modeling and spreadsheets
and revenue projection and budgeting um a lot of cross-functional teamwork right so a lot of my job
is sitting down with the engineers and the designers and the sales teams and making sure everybody
understands each other and is on the same page um so a lot of what that often means is sort of like
data interpretation and understandability right taking a big pile of numbers and figuring out what's
actually important in there and how to sort of explain it and visualize it to people
which in my mind is kind of a big part of what the finance committee in some cases does right so
reading back through some of the town warrants reading the the letter from the finance committee
a lot of it is about helping the town understand helping you know the citizens of the town understand
the finances of the town and then helping kind of prioritize and make choices within that
um so i think that's kind of the two pieces right one is i'm interested in getting more involved in
wayland in the town because we plan to be here for a long time three pieces two the finance committee
seems like an area of need for the town and three i think the skills i have from my career are pretty
applicable to what i understand the job of the finance committee to be great i appreciate that
overview thank you um i will open it um to miranda or carol for questions or to start the discussion
you want to start carol no you can yeah okay well first of all rob i'm miranda jones i'm the town
moderator thank you so much for your interest in being willing to serve i mean we're all a bunch
of volunteers here and so anytime anyone's willing to serve on any of the committees i'm incredibly
appreciative of it um are where did you guys come from before wayland was it a town arlington
arlington okay so representative town meeting so um so we're a little bit smaller than arlington and so
um we um it's a obviously a smaller community we have a town manager here uh versus the town
administrator it's run more like a c ceo of the town he actually our our current town manager he
creates the budget used to be slightly different um have you um have you done any other work with
interest in town government just to ask have you been exposed to it before not significantly no okay
understood and aware of like open meeting law things need to be done very transparently that type
of thing okay um and are you have you do you have any questions about the time commitment that's
involved with the finance committee so i did and that's part of why it has taken a while for this
to get arranged um so i spoke to sherry and phil i believe phil right that the current chair and
and uh pam actually to kind of get get more of a feel right because my first thought was you know
what is the time commitment yeah my first thought to some extent was hey i'm probably better than
nobody but my second thought was i should i should do some research to make sure that's really true
right and that i really understand what what i think the committee does and what the commitment
is and that i can actually deliver on it um interestingly sherry and pam and phil all said about the
same thing in terms of kind of time commitment um which was reassuring to me and something i think
i can make fit with my my schedule great super i've never served on the finance committee so i'm the only
one who really doesn't know how much of a commitment it truly is so because i'm a lawyer they said no math
so it's not exactly my bag no no worries okay yeah carol yeah thank you yeah so spoiler alert i am
also a um finance committee alum but i can serve on the select board um and i know you had reached
out to phil because he and i've had a couple conversations which was great um and you spoke
with pam did you have a chance to either watch any of their meetings um or read the minutes to see
where it's kind of where they're at if you will yeah yep i i did a little i did a little bit of each of
those i did not go extremely deep right but i i did a little bit each of those i reread um you know
a chunk of the town warrant the most recent one to kind of get get that context um and i've tried to
kind of read up because it it seems like the the town finances are at a a bit of an inflection point
as i understand it um and i wanted to make sure i had a at least some grasp of kind of where that is
and what the the challenges before the committee are likely to be um still a lot to learn because
there seems like there's a in general a lot going on but i think i at least have the general lay of the
land i think so miranda touched on a key point and i'm sure cherry already mentioned it to you if you
did tell me i won't waste our time here um that under the town when we served on finance committee
town administrator form of government and finance committee was much much more involved i would say
yeah in the weeds of the budget development they didn't actually develop it but they were very much
involved interviewed a lot of the department heads as miranda has stated under the town manager form of
government it is by code that he creates a budget that he then submits to the finance committee for
review so but your job really is as i always say to be the eyes and the ears of the resident
to let them see what you see are challenges and then of course they make a recommendation to town
meeting on a budget and it's hopefully a very collaborative process uh should there be any
thoughts that you know the budget should be different hopefully it's all collaborative
so that by the time we get to printing a budget in the war and going to town meeting everyone the
town manager the finance director the fincom select what everybody's on board that this is the budget
that we're going to present to town meeting but frankly yeah yes yeah so we did talk about that
and frankly that was to some extent very reassuring for me on kind of two levels right one is the
finance committee's role seems not necessarily negative way but but smaller right which to the
point about the time commitment and my confidence that you know i can can deliver it it's higher under the
town manager framework than it would be under a town administrator framework um and then two also just
kind of a skill set right like kind of you say eyes and ears and i think also you know summarizing an
interpretation seems like kind of a key part of it right it's taking a lot of very dense data that
the town is really in the weeds on and helping sorry the town you know the town administrators are
really in the weeds on and trying to help pull out the important things and the key trade-offs and
to summarize that in a way that the rest of the town can kind of understand and make good decisions
about and that i do a lot of that in my job i do a lot of like facilitating of decision making
so great i think i'm all set thank you terry okay thanks thank you rob um thank you um so so raven i did
talk about the time commitment and and if you were to go back and look at our meetings which there's
no reason for you to do there's don't do that but we do talk about the time we we do talk about the
time commitment a lot because and carol you don't alluded to this but when she and i were on the
finance committee it was a very heavy lift um and rewarding you know and you make great friends
because you're you're there um and as you and i talked and as i think phil um juduchi is working
very hard to do it is truly becoming a management finance committee exactly as you have said to
bring the information to our residents and voters for good decisions and bring it at a level or with
the salient points so that everybody understands what they're doing and so i i like and i know that you
heard that from phil i'm carol it makes me feel good to hear it from you we're all working in that
direction and so i know that is what part of makes this appealing to you and if we do go ahead and
appoint you i would say please take on continuing to move us in that direction that um because that's
important and it follows what we should be doing with the town manager act you know sometimes it's hard
to leave bad old habits so i think yep helping to move towards the new ones is good um i i do well
one i love to see olin on a resume i think i i do it's a great it's a gem um so that that was a fun
thing changed a lot i was i was in the second class so that's really yeah i think the experience being
there while they were still building it versus yeah that was 20 years later yeah yeah um i and i guess
another thing for you to think about and i don't need an answer now that the idea of how to phrase
things for the residents is really of interest to me the finance committee report and communications
are are important and i think in listening to you one of the things you bring to this is one the
work experience but um being new to wayland and moving here because of what i'm going to say you
think wayland is going to deliver for you and your family is i think really important it's something we
haven't had on the finance committee in a long time we've tended to have people who have more
um town seniority for the good and the bad of that um and and so i would just be um i guess that's
another thing i would just ask you to take on it's not fair to ask you how you would do that
communication right now um and you have to be really careful that you're not speaking for the
committee and you know open meeting law stuff but um i i think there may be an opportunity there that
is new for us in terms of who we've appointed to the finance committee one of the things i'll say
i'm really interested in that i think i heard mentioned but i haven't seen a lot of is benchmarking
right because as a person who's who's new to the town coming in trying to understand
understand where we are and how to think about some of these things um be very interesting in my
mind to get some benchmarking of how some of these things compare to other towns around us
you appear communities um yeah yeah sure and we we in the usually so going this dates me rob but going
back when we had more regular um overrides we did a fair amount of that and i will say when those
pressures come off the budget there's a little bit less of that that is that goes on or that is
needed um and to your uh word choice of inflection point we've had inflection points in the past and
had to do deep dives in pure in benchmarking and pure um comparisons and so i think you're actually
very accurate on that but it is something that it helps to make your case hopefully helps to make
your case yeah okay all right i'm gonna add um yeah go ahead please yeah what is wrong with my phone
today i'm sorry here are you fine yeah you're fine i didn't want that phone ring and it's great
oh um joe brings up a good point i think i was one of the first uh persons who didn't have direct
finance uh experience mine sales and marketing although i did go to bamston from my graduate work
i was there i think around the time all and was right after it was being built um so and when we
talked i said to cherry i think what i can bring to the committee is um sales and marketing like how
to write things how to present it so that it's um user-friendly and rather than a finance document
and i think this finance committee report has moved in that direction but i think to cherry's point it could
move even more um and i will add the select board is in the process of looking at streamlining the
morning because it's gotten um i think it'll be more is there's a lot of it it's more is not better
right more yes i wasn't going to say it that way but i was going to use a lot of it so thank you
we think we think at this point perhaps it's it could be a tad overwhelming when you look at 130 pages
to read for two weeks so we think we're going to try and go in the other direction that's going to
also include streamlining the finance committee report i've spoken with um i am the finance
committee liaison and i've spoken with them so these are the kinds of things that how to communicate
clearly but maybe more concisely and is there an opportunity to like stage the information and
like say hey you know the town warrant is 30 pages long the finance committee report is you know two
pages long but also there's a link to a 20 page version of it so if you don't want the you know
the warrants is the executive summary of everything and there's a link to the rest of the content
it's what i'm thinking too i mean for example my moderator's rules i have to have them but they
don't have to be printed in the warrant link to it every every 95 of the american population has an
iphone it has some form of a smartphone it's probably that percentage is probably higher in
massachusetts so if we can make it available other ways then um yeah and we could also print off
some copies for people who want them but i i agree with you and we've done that for some of the um
presentation dense materials rob um but yeah i think taking it to that next step is certainly
interesting to look at and miranda we would just have to make certain that everyone getting out their
iphones we've got enough bandwidth at town meeting that we don't mess up our electronic voting so
that's yours i understand that's yours personal hotspots that have to be turned out now that i've hung out
with the elvis committee for so long you know more yeah i'm sorry i'm starting to get you're learning
you're learning it's all these things we learned from a volunteer experience yeah that's right
absolutely it's it's really it's marvelous i have to say rob i think your timing is great because
one of the things i think is ideal about you is the fact that you have a very young family here
in whalen and and i'm sure part of the incentive or the attraction to whalen was the school system
it is very very good school system we so i mean my put my three kids through it they're long
long gone and um you have a different perspective than a lot of people which is helpful and it's it's
nice to get sort of it's always good to get new blood onto any committee um because you you bring
the way you parent is going to be different than the way i parented and what your expectations are
that sort of thing and so and you know finances are a big part of it we're a small town of 13 000
people we have very limited industry here so our tax base is really on the on the homeowners and so um
coming from a community like arlington where you have a lot more yeah a lot of commercial industry
going on in there it's it's a lot different so um so being able to be creative and understanding
here's what we're looking for because you know the the school departments takes up what is it 50
percent of the budget so typically and so yeah probably even the best bang for your buck
um here given how expensive property values are how high the taxes are on real estate and um so
so it's great it's great to have sort of a refreshing viewpoint come into so i'm gonna pop on this i'm
actually um probably i'm 100 sure of this but even though it's probably not doesn't i'm probably going
to be the one on uh spearheading the streamlining of the warrant project and uh the other thing the
finance committee does is they write up um a little blurb about each article that's going before time
we need that has financial impact and then they write the pros and the cons and they get a bunch of
material from the spa article sponsor yeah and what we have noticed is they give you that material to
work with but often it's kind of a cut and paste and we really need someone um i'm hoping they're
going to help fill this role um to help streamline those before they get voted on and then come
through because otherwise we're ending up trying to streamline them at the end of the process which
never works yeah well excuse me well you know no no no no which is a painful but rewarding
it works but it is so time consuming so labor intensive and it's yes the worst of it is it's a
we volunteer so our time doesn't have a price tag but there's a huge opportunity cost when we have to
do and redo and back do and then reformat and this and that on the staff so um i'm going to be coming
to the finance committee talking about this so you're getting the spoiler alert but i really look
at least one person there who's going to be able to say that would assume that we that would assume
that we appoint him he's getting a spoiler alert we do have to wait until something actually
occurs i've got lots of spoiler alerts but i know you do i'm gonna just um rob i will i do know that
um you were aware that pam was trying to decide what her future would be on the finance committee
um she did end up asking to be considered um and i apologize we just got it yesterday at three so
it's not in the packet but she did send um this board an email with her resume um stating that she
would be interested in serving through this budget cycle through town meeting um um as a courtesy to
the the chair asked and as you know as a courtesy and to lend some seniority and knowledge to the
committee so i just wanted you to be aware of the information that we as a board also had um
so seems like good news yeah no i great news we have to we have to discuss it but yes i think that
will be a uniform opinion um okay any other questions for rob before we deliberate thank you
no no okay um rob you're welcome to stay i would just ask that you because they are public meetings
i would just ask that you you mute or you are free if you have other things to do and i will be in
touch with you um after the meeting with either um so i'll let you deliberate without me just so you
don't okay it's a little weird to the right when i'm in the room sometimes um so yeah i appreciate
the consideration and i'll look forward to hearing from you perfect thank you very much all right take
care thank you so i'll start so i think yes we have two candidates two positions thoughts now i have
a question first so we have one candidate that's willing to serve i thought about this that's why i
didn't call you wait one can't call me so yeah we have one candidate who's willing to serve for
the to the end of the fiscal year which is 26 but we don't have a term that does that so i'm thinking
right do we do that do we just let the persons the candidates stay in the slot until we find someone
which is why we have a statement here and then appoint the other candidate to one of the other two
slots that was my question well how do we achieve our objective here so i would say so first just
that you know i did ask rob when i spoke with him um if he had a preference on the two versus the three
year and he's willing to do either so my thought is that we plug him into the three year if we want to
appoint him that we plug him into the three year slot um i did also speak with pam yesterday about just
that question carol about whether she just continues to serve or whether we appoint her
um i think i would be more comfortable appointing her and she oh you just froze comfortable than
resigning after town meeting okay my back that was my back okay no it's just it goes in and out but
it's it's fine i'm sorry so pam you want to put her into the so my thought was to appoint her
to make it official yeah yeah and then she would go i move resign okay go ahead may i sorry i move
that uh the finance committee appointing board uh appoint pamela roman to the finance committee with
the term ending june 30 2027 and robert quimby with the term ending june 30 2028 is there a second to
that um i think that in my mind is the thing to do to make it official that we've appointed pam rather
than let her just continue to serve so i just think it it just makes it more official um i like it because
it's clean but sometimes the candidates when we have someone who's interested but they're only
interested to serve a year are uncomfortable taking a two-year term or a three-year term when they've
already pretty certain they may not fulfill which is why i was coming up with this no it was good
and also having this on a list and knowing what their their positions are and so when we need to
fill it again whenever that is for pam we have the date what her term is we keep track of all that
yeah um and carol it doesn't surprise you that you and i would approach this similarly which is why i
had that question to ask a pam yesterday so yes all right so we have a motion and a second in front of
us to um appoint pam to the position ending in 27 and rob to the position ending in 28 um if there's no
other discussion i'll do a roll call vote carol yes miranda yes cherry yes and miranda do i see you
taking notes i realized that okay thank you thank you no problem okay um i will um reach out to both
of them and send them the letters that they can be sworn in and i'll let phil know because he'll be
very happy so excuse me do you send out the letters because i do because yeah no i do i checked
we have to confirm no it's a we appoint and so we send out the letter it's not the town manager who's
appointing so the letter comes from me um and i copy oops i copy the town managers hold on one of
my earpods just left me yes it did uh that's why it's the finance committee appointing board carol
yes right um well i want you to know miss carlson that you know i was being efficient
no no that's all good yeah the first time we did this we're meeting on the 24th next friday and i
wanted them appointed before they're meeting on the 3rd of november which is the finance committee
meeting and so i can remove that from my agenda thank you yeah no i'll send it i'll send them
out this afternoon um but we did the very first time we did this i can't remember miranda if we
checked with town council but it definitely it comes from us because we appoint again yeah
you guys are the f we are the fcab so i think we are it we are it yeah we are right that's what
town meeting voted for yeah okay so i'll take care of that um and then it's up to them to get
sworn in but that's that'll be off our plate all right um that takes number four off our agenda
because we don't have recruitment efforts at this point right um if you do we do not need to do it
now but in the spring carol right sort of in the town meeting time we will start our like preparation
for having to post the open positions and we'll look at the recruitment statement then so just you
know in the back of your mind if anything ever comes up that you want to change just sort of keep
notes of it and we'll go over it then all right the minutes from um september 18th is it the 18th oh
i put the 17th on the agenda sorry okay i put the 18th on the minutes does anyone oh wait so when did
we actually hold on i'm gonna look to see when we actually met oh the 18th we did meet on the 18th
yep you're correct i think i had october 17th on the brain not a problem um i didn't have any
anything thank you carol did oops carol went away carol do you do you have anything there was
one is september 18th meeting minutes now right yeah um did you find something one one word i don't
have it in front of you one word that didn't seem right in the middle of the paragraph on the second
page big help i am okay uh well the second page has uh barely enough paragraphs it's uh beside
next meeting date no it was something else never mind i'm i'm fine we're discussing there are
currently two openings like we wrote uh in the expiration of handlers term it's romans
until we find the success of there's one person who has been doing research for the committee
will gauge his interest in joining as a member we will can there is one person who has been doing
research yeah that's what it was it's on the committee not for the committee about how about
about the committee about the committee perfect yeah you're right because he's not serving on the
committee okay so so how about a motion to approve as amended second i would take that miranda
oh wait a minute carol we have to say the uh the minutes of september 18 20 yeah as amended yeah
yeah and and carol gave the second okay and second uh if there's no other discussion i'll do a roll
call vote carol yes miranda yes cherry yes three to zero thank you for doing those of course um we
don't need to do a next meeting date at this point nope um any reports and concerns no no nothing all
right i don't have any topics not reasonably anticipated so i think dear committee members
that we can take a motion to adjourn all right 10 32 so moved 10 32 second great um and just before
we do adjourn you know we'll be in touch in the spring i'll i'll call a meeting as we as they're
looking at starting to fill positions again so all right um we have a motion in a second to adjourn
we need to do one more roll call vote carol yes miranda yes and cherry yes three to zero
we need to do one more roll call we're meeting the posts that we'd be in touch tomorrow
we're waiting to ask will be down table to end up on the other joining us in the
assignment we'll be right back with theング police cam
so that's the number of questions we can take up to date everything we can take down
we need to remember joining us we all need to set up we have a so much for Republicans
the lowestoh to go member and stay back five options that you'd be
to the most important to that we have done
well you can also we need to appreciate why we're done
and remember changing questions as well we can use the cup board could take a
situation before the third time and ask for the question that we can
it please run through all right just this confusion question that when we can't